Seed 14

June 20th, 2032.

I leaned back and forth on the balls of my feet as I waited for mama to come pick me up. Four weeks or so had gone by in a flash. My mom had been lenient with Ultima, and I wondered why that was.

She had trusted the witch in an instant. Had been shockingly offhand outside of the occasional phone call once a week, and leaving gifts and supplies behind, along with setting up a bank account to leave the money that Ultima was paying me as her apprentice.

Two thousand dollars in the bank was a healthy chunk of change for a sixteen-year-old. Especially considering she was paying me to learn literal witchcraft. Then again the money she earned as a freelancer was mostly spent on high quality materials for her to fashion into her wares.

Humans had higher quality materials when it comes down to various metal alloys, limited only by the lack of magic in their forging. But Ultima was literally all about placing qualities, powers, and otherkind creatures within concrete objects. Like the axe she had infused a ghost into, allowing it to project powerful blasts of ice and cold.

Ghosts, echoes or vestiges are in most cases, mere echoes of events, a slice of a person in time, of every little death they experienced once a second. It was one of the ways the energies which connected all things manifested, an incomplete version of something greater. It was a rare thing indeed for a vestige borne of death to possess the soul of their originator.

Such beings were labeled Ancestor Spirits, a soul manifesting a presence in the material reality, refusing to fall into the arcane machinery of incarnation. They were powerful, comparable to the more sapient of spirits, and free of their bans and banes. Which was an interesting thing to learn with Althea.

Althea already had an instinctive grasp on spirit metabiology but there was a lot that was entailed in the practice of shamanism. For example most spirits seldom ever reach sapience. But they were very much alive, if made of pure spiritual essence. Spirit quintessence was the official term, and was apparently a potent source of raw magical energy.

All forms of magical power could be considered the same kind of energy, allotropes of spiritual energy. I knew there was spirit quintessence, soul substrate, glamour, and the energy which fuels vestiges, the echo.

Anyways, we had learned a fair bit of the ecology of spirits, ideally balancing each other out in both worlds. Though imbalances existed that could cause unnatural disasters. Spirits operate on a food chain, beginning with puny aspect spirits, motes of light which represent every aspect of a material object, generating as long as there is something which it is an aspect of in Physical. They were basically a combination of plankton and landscape, as supposedly the very ground you walk on in the Spirit World was made of spirits.

Those kinds of spirits had the most wide-ranging bans of action and thought, the easiest to control, manipulate and relocate. Those were the spirits which most easily came to Althea’s call when she did her incantations, both empowered and enticed by her prayers. Barely sentient wisps and reflections.

Above that, are simply the spirits, forming when enough aspect spirits come together to become something of greater complexity and intelligence, only forming spontaneously from animals. But even the smartest of spirits were restricted in a way beings like witches and humans weren't, locked within a certain pattern of behavior. A lust-spirit will always seek out carnal pleasures, a spirit of violence will always enjoy a fight.

That was one of the main ways one could differentiate a witch from the more intelligent of otherkind.

The only tier above that was that of a Keter Spirit, beings who had surpassed the word of their ban. Evolving beyond their natural purview, often those who represented an overarching concept or ideal, a Spirit of Death or Life, an incarnation of an Idea. There was only one I knew about, spoken in sharp whispers and ancient songs.

The Meretsegger, their world’s spirit of death, a spirit being of unimaginable power and might. The personification of a quarter billion years of death in every form, refined and rarefied violence, millions of generations of evolution giving it Form and Purpose. It was how I had learned their planet did have a name, Ersete. Which was derived from the glyph name for earth.

Which was fine, most translations of names for Earth amount to calling it dirt, ground, ball, or round. So it was fine—

I yelped when Ultima clasped my shoulder. I ignored the phantom sensation of barely hidden claws, hidden under the glamour she had created. It was a Craft developed from the fae and their own vast powers, using the spiritual matter made of lies and dreams.

The fey were a strange group, a mix of Firstfolk and Oddfolk, more a paraphyletic grouping like fish. Magic fish. The elves and their close kin were the ones that interacted the most with other peoples. Very touchy and slightly neurotic people but nice. The true fae are far less well known, and far more dangerous.

Glamour was powerful, the ability to bring dreams and ideas into reality, as long as the illusion holds, feeding on attention and subconscious acceptance. Almost anything was possible, but glamour could run dry, it can be challenged, flaws torn open into them. Inherently fragile and easy to break, weak to brutal and physical forces.

I hadn't been allowed to work with glamour. As I was still learning many aspects of both magic and spellcasting and being able to shape it was not an easy process.

Ultima squeezed my shoulder and I breathed out, ignoring the growing black spots in my eyes. “Sorry.”

“It's fine, I've met your mom enough times to understand she can be… intense,” Ultima smiled nervously, and I remembered that she wasn't that much of a people person either. “Makes me wonder what kind of place she works at.”

“She works for the Sun Streak Institute, a research consortium focused on developing solutions to human problems, food security, climate change, and pollution. Started up back in ‘78, and has been responsible for some advancements in energy technology, usually individual components. The diode problem for rectenna solar panels, or increasing the durability of linear fusion reactors.” Of which the first working one was still being used by Microsoft by the company that bought the research to accelerate their own.

“Wait, you guys finally figured out how to make miniature suns that don't involve fiery death?l

“Sadly it'll still take a long time for them to ramp up cheap, clean energy and we can't produce it fast enough to matter.” It was better than nothing, but we had already exceeded certain limits pretty recently.

“Are you sure she's an accountant?” Ultima asked with an unreadable expression, eyes shadowee by her white locks.

I tilted my head. “Yes? Mama has always been in that kind of work, it was my father who was the researcher with interesting work. Applied Metaphysics.”

Ultima blinked. “Isn't metaphysics like philosophy?”

“Yep, metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of reality. Applied Metaphysics is focused on studying fundamental aspects of reality and how they link with human cognition and biology. So they work pretty deeply with quantum biology like in photosynthesis, magnetoreception, little minor quantum tricks like that, and cognition in the brain.”

“And that has applications?”

I nodded. “Some, I remember he was actually studying a new kind of quantum field beyond the Standard Model before he…” I swallowed my tongue, feeling oddly numb.

Ultima nodded. “You don't have to talk about it,” she said kindly. “Your mom will be here soon and it'll all be okay.”

I sure hope so.

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It was not.

I coughed, as my mom awkwardly stared at me with a curious narrowing of her hazel eyes. A color I hadn't inherited from her. My eyes were a dark, dark brown bordering on black, pupils hidden under normal light.

“How have things been with Ultima?” Mama asked the simple question with a neutral expression. “I heard you've been making progress with coding?”

“I have,” I responded back with a shrug. “I've been working on a project every other day to get the fundamentals built.” It wasn't even wrong. Ultima did know code due to aspects of native textual magic being quite similar. It was why her enchanted products were so good, they were deeply layered sets of words and numbers, to focus and weave magic into shape. Cyfrin chains and rune threads fused as one.

The former taught her syntax while the latter taught her binary.

Most of her code was written poetically, and worked better than it should. Though she hasn't figured out how to integrate magic with human technology that deeply. She didn't know the intricacies of all technology outside coding, and most of her side tinkering involved using magic.

I rolled my neck, brushing back stray black bangs from my face. “It's been nice to be out of the house.” Without the constant pressure to do more with my life because I'm so ‘gifted’. “It's also nice to have some people my age to talk to.”

At least I had friends that didn't hate me for being so much younger. For being weird and antisocial, for being gifted but not gifted enough, and for being exactly what I know I am. My mama had tried to set me up with other smart kids… who had proven to be various levels of assholes and insensitive jerks.

It wasn't her fault I had never told her, not her fault I was a bad daughter.

“Celia?” My mama murmured with a worried look from across the restaurant table.

“Sorry, I was thinking…” I muttered a reply absently, doing my best to focus. “It's been going great really. I've been learning a lot.”

Why was she looking at me like that?

My mother didn't get the chance to speak as the restaurant alarm system turned on, and she leaned back with a serious look.

The hair on the back of my neck rose, as the sensation of magic washed over my body. It was foul, my nose catching a whiff of rotting eggs and the sweet scent of butane. It cloyed and pulled at the world, aching to damage and rust and destroy, like a rampaging child.

Something small slid out of the burning kitchen, something filthy and ugly with wide bulging eyes of black, skin covered in scab-like scales. It looked like it had leaped right out of a fantasy book.

Or from another world.

Oh shit.

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“Ultima, we have a bit of a problem,” I whispered harshly into my phone which had my mentor’s number in it. “There’s a gremlin that made us leave the restaurant.”

Ultima cursed. “Hel’s bells, I've been working my ass off cleaning up what I can when it comes to things leaking between worlds. But more and more things have been leaking through in the past four years.”

“Are there other people who cover this kind of stuff? Because I feel like it should have been obvious there were magical beings crossing over a while ago.”

Ultima snorted. “You’re overestimating the frequency of portals between realms, we’re talking about events spread across decades or centuries. Not every location is suitable for crossroads either. It's only in the last decade that I've started noting the uptick.”

“You didn't answer the question,” I said with a flat tone.

“No one local or close by,” Ultima sounded reluctant to explain. “Sorry kid.”

“People who want their privacy or are in hiding, I understand.” I nodded to myself, not needing anything more. “Do I need to do anything or should I leave it be?”

“Leave it unless it follows you. A gremlin is easy enough to play off as a sick bat or raccoon. We don't need your mother asking too many questions… unless you want to tell her you're training under a great witch?” Ultima was being sincere. She didn't seem to like hiding it from my mother but did it for my sake.

“No. Is there anything else I might need to know?”

“The Celestial Convergence is going to be starting soon. Starting with the summer solstice,” Ultima added with a quiet tone. But I could hear a gentle excitement in her words.

“That’s the week-long period of magical events due to numerous cosmic alignments right? When the spirits and the Others are more active.When the barrier between the Real and Unreal grows thin.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Indeed it is my dear apprentice, the Celestial Convergence is a magical time,” Ultima replied. “Where witches can commune with the spirits and gather unique energies and perform rituals. It's also a time to have fun and enjoy the Old Ways without being accosted as lawless, wild witches.”

“I imagine it's a good time for crafting potions and tools?” I asked with a hint of excitement. Mixing together potions was fun and rewarding, and the possibilities were limitless. Just the potions for my transition alone would be a godsend to so many people on Earth.

“Each day offers a different power source of fuel for our Craft, I've been preparing for the past week.”

“Celia?” I could hear my mother calling and I jumped in response.

“I'll call you back.” I hung up immediately and walked over to my mama who gave me a once-over with her eyes.

She chuckled. “Talking with Ultima?”

I nodded. “She’s easy to talk to, very good at teaching.”

“She’s a good woman,” there was an affectionate glint in her eyes. “She reminds me of your father and…” She trailed off, and I just offered a watery smile.

“I miss them too mama, but papa is gone and mo— she vanished off the face of the Earth when everything changed.”

I still remember that day, we had thought it was over. There was a bright light and everyone was—

“Is there anything you wish to tell me?” That was what she asked instead and I was confused at how she worded that.

“No? At least there isn't something I can think of right now.” There couldn't be anyways, she didn't know.

Something scurried behind me, and I absentmindedly kicked it with full force. There was a crack of bone and I heard a high-pitched squeak slowly fade out as it was launched away.

“What did you just kick?” My mama asked with a bewildered expression.

I looked behind me, and found only a thin splash of blood on the ground which was so red was almost black.

I shrugged. “A rat, a bat, a cat?”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm guessing you didn't see it?”

“Nope.” I cheerily replied. “I kinda wasn't looking when I kicked it. So what's this about having tea with my mentor?”

To my disbelief, she blushed. It was a redness spreading down to her neck, eyes darting away from my gaze. Oh.

Oh.

Ohoho!

I gave her an innocent look, batting my eyelashes at my sweet, sweet mother.

“So it is something, tell me, tell me, tell me!” No pretexts here, I just wanted to know what was going on.

“We talk about you, that's all. Ultima is a good teacher for you, so I like her. That is all.”

“I bet you do.” I lightly patted her shoulder with a grin, bouncing on the balls of my feet.

There was so much material here to tease Ultima. Especially with how often the bitch insinuated anything about Althea and I. I might be gay as fuck, but that didn't mean anything even if I thought she was pretty.

It was going to be wonderful payback… after I get to reading some material on her world. Questions I needed answers on.

Many, many, very relevant questions even. But whatever.

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I licked my dry lips as I paged through a book detailing aspects of the hierarchy of the Chantry. It had an uncomfortable similarity to certain religious orders like the Knights Templar. A military religious order that was essentially an international organization across the continent.

The Teitáne Chantry is the largest international organization across the known world, with its center of power held in Calafia, with twenty seven lands holding a Circle of Chantry witches, with each Circle often holding hundreds of thousands of members.

There is a fourfold division to the rank of the Chantry below the Grand Magisters: The magisters, the acolytes, the clerics, and the adherents. The magisters are the most experienced and visible branches of the order, both teacher, warrior and leader, drawn from the nobles and periodically from a promoted commoner. Beneath the magisters are the acolytes, drawn from the commoners, serving as the backbone of the infrastructure and machinery of the beast.

Clerics are the most loyal scholars and priests of the Chantry, passing down the word of the Titans through the Pale King, with their own duties and tasks. The fourth rank is that of the adherent, which represents the bulk of their numbers, civilian witches initiated into the Circles, as a replacement for the covens that once terrorized witchkind. It is the will of the Titans that we are bound, it is the true Way of the Craft, for the whole world to be at peace.

I closed the book with a bad taste in my mouth, a subtle shudder running down my spine at the words. Everything about them was a red flag. It was an enormous militaristic religious order which essentially served as an extension of the will of their prophet and king. Involving a strict hierarchy that must be enforced.

Their goal was to spread their teachings to every corner of the world, that all witches needed to be saved from the dangers of wild, unrestricted magic, that the world was always under threat from the vilest of forces, that through sacrifice and belief they would seal away the blinding light that plagues the world.

It made me sick to my stomach. As I recalled what that kind of thinking had led to in my world. How many had been murdered, tortured because of reasons like that? How many cultures were eradicated and destroyed, children stolen, and lives stolen?

I clenched my hand around my amulet, as it had an enjoyable texture and I liked fiddling with the chain. It also helped me focus on the bits and pieces of the strange dreams I had been having. Deep, dark dreams, flashes of images and sounds, and feelings.

The amulet didn't seem to be responsible for their start, but it had definitely contributed. Ultima said it was a multitudinous construct, showing traces of principles relating to binding and sealing magic, the type of magic that involves otherkind entities, spirits, various kinds of fey, and more esoteric species sapient or not.

Whatever it was, it was absolutely layered in terms of being turned into a vessel for an Otherkind. It was twisting the realms and layers of existence into a knot, a maze extending in seemingly hundreds of dimensions. So much so that its immunity to magic was a side effect of the seal. And it had bonded with me when I had utterly reduced the Oscura into motes of ideal.

I had tried chucking it into the ocean once and it had come back when my back was turned. Ultima said the artifact had a touch of the abyssal layers of reality, the ground-level realm that caught anything that fell out of existence. Which was very concerning?

I sighed, and leaned over to a sheet of paper covered in notes on glyph magic, working off what I had learned so far. Mainly on whether combining glyphs is even possible.

What I had learned so far was that each glyph had a set of meanings and deep spiritual aspects of reality attached to them. Ones I had acquired from both experimentation, as well as the glyph names themselves having meanings attached to them.

Sifra was the glyph of the void, and in texts. It was said to be the pure potential of the nothingness, the void which cradles, the void which creates. It could be used to shape and attract and pull at the esoteric forces of reality. I had seen, felt how the void could eat away at the rules of existence.

Because it was the uncertainty from which those rules had settled. I had been very careful with it so far, once I realized just the applications when it came to altering gravity and kinetic forces.

I could feel gravity yawn and ache… I could feel my fingers eagerly twitch to crush matter and energy down until it became an impossible point of infinite density, warping and contracting space and time. Which would definitely kill me if I tried.

Void was negation.

But it was also the endless depths of the unknown. So I decided to try something against my better judgment. I drew out a circle, and decided to make the attempt modeled off the functioning of cyfrin chains, words linked together in a loop.

I drew the glyphs along the line of the base circle, four sifra glyphs firmly linked together. I tapped the glyph without thinking… and was utterly caught off guard when the circle began to pulse with silver, space twisting around the four-glyph array.

What the fuck?

I barely managed to think before I managed to wrestle the energy into shape, and I felt my body go cold, as the void sang in my veins. This was exponentially more powerful than four individual glyphs!

My mind flashed with the possibilities, of warpfire devouring the room, of gravity increasing a hundredfold and crushing me, of a Kick so strong it tore the house asunder.

So I reached out to the strands of something else instead of the physical world, kneading the ball of the seething void, which danced with ultraviolet and motes of silver, and pushed it into the amulet like a spear. They had the answer, buried in Light and Dark.

That proved to be a mistake.

My head snapped back as I was struck by a massive headache, and I saw nothing but stars.

Oh, I did not think this through.

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I was leaning against a tree, a pounding headache building between my bushy eyebrows.

Where am I?

Memories slid back into place at my thought. I stood up with a pained squeak. The between-place, the place sitting at the edges of death, the one that held—

“I didn't expect to see you back so soon, friend!” A voice ringing with the sound of dying stars rang in the not-air that filled this world.

Chara, the Star.

“Hello again.” I greeted the strange being, whose skin rippled in excitement, practically bouncing with joy. “It wasn't planned, I was messing with using the void to get some answers and…”

Chara hissed. “Better be careful, channeling the void is hard for mortals,” she folded her fingers together, stars shifting between them as she warned me. “I don't know as much as I should. But I know the void is powerful, the pull of gravity, the promise of entropy. That emptiness is not nothingness, the answer and the question. And you might not always like those answers.”

“I'll thank you for the warning. I’ll be careful.” It had been a big lapse in judgment to experiment like I had.

“Simply treat the void with respect, and it will cradle and create for you.” Chara said, arms swinging back and forth with their voice. “So welcome back to my… home for all of eternity.”

There was something unhinged in her smile, and I mirrored it to try to relax her. “I see you took charge of what I did with the glyphs.” There were pools of water lapping against the ashy sand, along with statues and structures built from the earth I provided.

Chara nodded, clearly mimicking a human gesture. “I don't have access to many of my abilities… besides the strength of my body, and being able to catch glimpses of the outside.”

She demonstrated by waving her hand, and the floor under us turned into a mirror, showing… me?

I was conked out on my own bed, splayed out in all directions while drool drizzled down from my lip. Oh that is not dignified.

Chara giggled softly, eyes gleaming. “My sight is normally not so clear, I just catch misty glimpses of freedom. It got boring after a while.”

“So you can't watch me while I sleep then?”

“Why would that matter?” She asked with a confused expression.

…

I did not believe I would have to explain the idea of privacy when I knocked myself out.

“It's a matter of respect. It's a tad creepy to be observing people against their will.” I said honestly. “At least if it's something you don't have to do.” Had to account for spirits and their general weirdness. “But I can understand why with how dreary it is here.”

Chara smiled, with a low subsonic hum that landed in my teeth like an electric brush. “It's better, because of you.”

“You’re still trapped though,” I pointed out. “I don't think that's enough.”

Chara hummed. “This place has only a single locked key, sealed on both ends. The seven-fold key was not meant to be opened.”

“Then why am I here?”

The star god shrugged, stars dancing along the weaved heavenly firmament that was their skin. “I don't know, all I remember is the seven-fold key and traces of who I was before I came here.”

I clenched the amulet around my neck… and paused. “Wait, I have the key here?”

Chara blinked slowly, and in a moment she was inches away from my face, looking up from her short willowy stature. “Show me.”

I did, pulling the amulet taut so she could examine it with those cosmic eyes. They shined brighter, murmuring incomprehensible language under their breath.

“Oh.” Their voice shook with the voice of a legion, whispers stacking over one another.

“What's wrong?”

Chara breathes out, releasing puffs of swirling hydrogen and helium clouds. “It says ‘One must seek the seven paths of the Craft to free the star within, to break the barrier, to breach the darkness and the light within that that was once void. To free the last kind echo of a dead age.”

I frowned. “That’s odd, isn't it? That no one else has tried?”

Chara shrugged. “If it could not be read they could not seek to free me.”

I nodded. “If I remember anything about this… I'll look into it.”

Chara stared at me like I had lost my mind.

What?

“Nothing, but you're waking up.”

I didn't get to respond further as the dream shattered apart, and—

…

…

“Arali?” I stared down into his dark eyes with a slow blink. “Why did you wake me?”

The little demon shrugged, tail curling in and out. “Just wanted to, who were you talking to?”

“Huh?”

“In your sleep, you were mumbling to yourself.” He replied to my question.

Eyebrows furrowed. “I haven't…” I trailed off, as flashes of mist parted slightly.

A glimpse of a slender frame, of constellations scattered like freckles across shadowy skin, of a too-wide smile and starry eyes, of a soft voice backlit with the sound of stellar radiation and pulsating gravity waves. Of a terrible buried grief, and a sunken place of death.

Who…

“I don't know.” I replied hollowly.