“Children of Gods, forgotten by their Exalted Parents. Is that blasphemy or heresy from the Most Holy, or is it not proof they are as faulty and imperfect as any of us? That they are not Gods?” – Whispers of a Nightmare
***
The door closed. A soft click. And an eternity of silence.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. Paralyzed, broken, in disbelief. Lost to the world. Taylor didn’t remember. Not the shower. Not how she got to bed. But somewhere, some when long before the first rays of the sun would pass through her window, she finally felt the realization fully sink in. She was alone.
Not even her father believed her.
She was “That Girl”. The girl who filled up her own locker with…
Threw herself in…
A car passed by outside, sending a wild web of shadows dancing across her ceiling.
And sabotaged one of the hinges, so she’d come right back out again, covered in all that gunk and break a school locker. There were police. Investigating her for destroying school property as multiple witnesses had stepped forward to tell how crazy, loner, Taylor Hebert was lashing out for attention.
As the light outside died, something broke inside.
***
Taylor came to with a heavy headache. Her glasses were gone and she had no time to look for them. Her stomach rebelled. She lurched upright and ran to the bathroom. She made it, but her whole stomach decided it wanted out. It was nasty and burned her throat, even as the injuries from the previous day throbbed. She wobbled her way back to her room through familiar halls, before feeling around for her glasses. Finally found them just beneath her bed, as usual.
Yet when she put them on, something incredibly weird happened. She’d felt and sort of seen some kind of cards scattered around and on her bed, but with better vision, what she thought might have been notebook papers, or playing cards turned out anything but.
The cards were glossy, shiny, almost glowing. There were lines in them that shined with golden light, and tiny gems that had to be fake. Yet touching them, holding them? She felt… she felt power. Potential, like a dream that could be if she but wished for it. Carefully, slowly, throat still raw and disturbed by the unnatural certainty filling her, Taylor searched her room until she was sure she got all the cards and laid them out on her bed.
There were eight cards, each showing a different person.
The first was an armoured giant. Bulky metal plates wound their way around body of a man, woman? They wore a full face helmet as well but probably a man. The armour was a deep, dark blue. The giant held a large mace covered in lightning, raised high as if to smite someone. In his other hand, a stupidly large gun rested, and what looked like grenades hung from the belt. He looked like he’d just come out of a war, or was holding a containment zone. Forbidding, powerful, merciless and utterly assured of his own sense of righteousness.
Taylor hated him on principle. How many times had she been judged by people utterly sure of their bullshit?
The second card showed some kind of necromancer. He was festooned in skulls and wore flowing white robes, all the while the bald old men was smiling like someone’s favorite grandfather. The contrast was disorienting. It didn’t help that the image all but radiated authority, as the robes were covered in fine golden thread, almost shining from the card. Compared to the first, the second man’s expression was worse. Not so much intimidating, as inevitable. As if his victory was something preordained.
Taylor shuddered in almost visceral disgust and picked up the third card.
Here was something almost familiar. Winslow was hardly a temple to learning, but more than anything else, the man in the card looked like a soldier in a war documentary. He carried an odd, futuristic rifle that spewed red light as he stood his ground and fired. His armor was visibly worn and seemed flimsier than the first card, but if anything the man only seemed more defiant for it. Like the soldier was standing for something worth dying for. She felt drawn to the card, and put it aside.
The fourth card was almost as bad as the second. But while the second was a necromancer, the fourth had more of a Vampire look to them. Or maybe some kind of serial killer. Skulls, skulls everywhere and the killer had multiple bits of tinkertech equipment. More than anything, it reminded her of some of the people she knew to avoid. It reminded her of Sophia Hess, and it was not a good feeling. Sleek, more than anything, the card felt final. Dressed in some kind of synthetic leather. It felt like the touch of the Grim Reaper.
Taylor put him back. It felt too much like holding a naked blade.
The fifth card was some kind of wizard. Balls of flame and some kind of arcane magic hovered around them, but the woman herself was somewhat unnerving. She looked sickly, almost monstrous, even as magic poured out of her. Out her eyes, out her flesh, it looked painful. She was showing disdain for whatever she was fighting. Taylor wasn’t sure what it was, but more than any other card this one almost dripped potential. But it was tempered by an equally powerful sense that to take steps on that path would cause the path to crumble, revealing it to be nothing more than the dull edge of a giant blade.
More than any of the cards before, this one felt like there would be…consequences. Taylor put it back with the rest she’d already inspected, before taking a deep breath and letting it out. Her breathing hitched some of her new bruises, making Taylor hiss in pain. She wandered over to the bathroom, and brought back their first aid kit, such as it was. Started patching herself up, as best as she could. The card ended up on the other pile, even if it filled her with unease.
The sixth card was some kind of robot, or cyborg in deep red robes. Mechanical limbs that had to be attached to some kind of backpack harness, or grafted on the spine, were spread out around their masked head, almost like pet dogs, keeping watch. Taylor had no idea what was under the robes, but she wouldn’t be surprised if it was more metal. Metal and flesh, melding, mixing, devouring one another. Even with very little body language, the cyborg felt rigid, set. Solid, hard, unyielding. And oddly frail, to the right kind of weapon. Like if struck just the right way, they would shatter.
Taylor picked it up, and after some consideration, set it aside. Tinkers were valuable. When you could hand out tools and tricks, getting help wasn’t a problem.
The seventh card was a mousy woman in pale yellow robes. The skull motif was present, but on her the thing looked more like an accessory, or a symbol of office. She carried a quill of all things, as well as a very large book. Her smile was absentminded, as if she was contemplating some great matter. Of all the cards, she seemed most mundane, but also the happiest. There was still a gun strapped to her belt, but just a pistol. Some bits of tech that looked it might be attached to her, but nothing like the cyborg. She gave off the feeling of a secretary, a teacher, or an absentminded professor.
Her heart ached. A trembling hand put it aside, on the top of the “maybe” pile.
The eighth and final card looked like a cross between Robin Hood, a pirate, a thief and some Casanova. The grin was utterly self-assured, cocky as hell and worse, the card was actually handsome. Handsome enough Taylor felt herself blush as piercing blue eyes almost seem to follow her from the card. It felt wild, dangerous and tinged with desperation. Like a conman with a loan shark on his tail.
“No.” Taylor set it aside, and with but a whisper, she willed the main pile away. The cards didn’t explode or burn, but it was something sort of like it. They “whooshed” turning into flakes of multi-colored light that faded. Taylor could feel them come back to her. A simple twitch of her fingers to be called up again. Like a stage magician pulling cards from their sleeve, except hers was real magic.
Or. Well. Power. Because that had been real. The lights, the feeling. Which meant she was a Parahuman. And she had no idea how to deal with that. So with a pounding headache, Taylor turned to her maybes.
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Looking at each closer, she could almost hear something, each a song, in whispers.
The Soldier. “Defiant to the End, We March to War Eternal.” It was defiant.
The Wizard. “Jump Into the Deep , Gaze into the Abyss of Creation.” Power and danger.
The Cyborg. “Enginseereing a Better Tomorrow Today.” Almost a jingle, cold and corporate.
The Clerk. “Little Cogs Turning the Whole World.” Poems before for bedtime.
The Rogue. “You Really Shouldn’t But You Know You Want To.” Seductive and with a desperate beat.
***
For what felt like a long time, she debated which card to pick. But in end one drew her. The one that made her heart ache.
As she picked up her chosen Card, the dissolution of the rest bathed it in a halo of multi-coloured light that flowed back into her. Even as Taylor brought the Card closer, there was some resistance to it. Like a bubble around her, or moving through water. It beat with her heart, and all the fear that this was some trick, or that the Card would only give false hope, be a trap, or just make things worse circled around and around in the back of her mind.
Yet she looked at that absentminded smile and a memory rose up deep within her. A painful memory, terrible in its finality, yet oddly comforting in this moment. A flute played in her mind as she stared in the eyes of the Card, and slowly, so slowly, the fear, the worry, abated.
Until it was just Taylor, holding a Card. Still timid, guided by some instinct, she carefully pressed the Card over her heart. In sank right through her skin and unnatural warmth passed through Taylor’s chest and settled in her heart.
How did she know?
Because she was suddenly, viscerally aware of her heartbeat. Or her heart. With the warmth filling it, she could feel every beat. And it was spreading. Thin lines of uncomfortable warmth reaching out to every part of her. Quickly, Taylor laid down in bed and hoped. Then, one line climbed into her head and suddenly, she was falling.
***
Stars zipped by her, like she was traveling in some sci-fi jump drive. But there was no feeling of speed, or motion. The movements were too sharp, turning on a dime. Taylor wasn’t at all sure what the hell was going on, but even trying to close her eyes did nothing, for it was like her body was behind a wall of glass. She could still feel it, but not move an inch. Then one star suddenly swelled and grew until she was afraid she would hit it only for her view to lurch yet again.
In the few seconds she had on approach, Taylor noticed the orb hanging in the void before her was similar to Earth. But it wasn’t Earth. The continents and the oceans were all wrong, and the whole sphere was subtly off in color, as if someone had spilled a tinge of red all over it. Then the clouds came up followed immediately by a glimpse of a massive, massive city, with skyscrapers that reached for the sky. In what felt like an instant, the city came up and she slammed into a crowd.
***
Judicca bibbed and bobbed her way through the crowded streets without sparing much thought to it. She was jostled by the good servants of the Emperor, but paid little attention them. Magistrea was prosperous enough as a city, and the guards vigilant enough, that she could work while she walked with little fear of accident, injury or pickpockets. So she moved on to her next task, even as her feet and habit carried her safely to her workstation. Now, to sort by starting letter the list of invites to a minor noble’s wedding.
***
Judicca went to work in a massive complex, teeming with rivers of people going in and out. She sorted lists, copied documents, searched the massive, underground and heavily secured Archives for the ordered documents, and even managed to sneak an hour for personal research. A number of menials passed by her scribe workstation, reporting and managing weddings, funerals, taxes and so on. Every time one of them signed something with an x, or a mark, she thanked the Emperor for all the opportunities she’d been given. That she had risen beyond her parents stations to join the Administratum.
Finally, the long shifts came to an end, and she packed up her things, slipped the Stub Automatic into her robe pockets and departed to evening prayers. The Father was in an especially zealous mood, and Judicca learned from some of her fellows that there might have been heretics afoot. Heretics that the city Arbites had put down with prejudice of course, but a couple of surviving prisoners had been donated to the Cathedral.
After a blistering oratory, Judicca raised her voice in song, ringing hymns of glory to the Emperor echoing far beyond the walls of the Cathedral. There, knowing she was part of pushing back the darkness and the enemies of the Imperium, feeling the weight of thousands of voices raised as one, Judicca was content.
As the hymns reached their apex, fires sparked in the grates built into the walls, distant wailing and screams rising with the warmth flooding the room. As well, the scent of burning flesh mixed with the congregation. Judocca paid them little thought, well used to a good burning. Sending them on their way to the Emperor on blessed ground, hoping that holy flames would help purge their sins. It was the only real mercy that could be given to the souls of heretics.
Taylor all but reeled from the experience of watching, her fugue broken. Having lived behind Judicca eyes as though in a dream she was violently pulled up into the star field and ejected.
Taylor woke with a breathless gasp.
***
Even as she rose from bed, a scream on her lips her hands came up and both palms strangled it at her lips. Pressing, choking, till nothing but a strong whine erupted beneath her covered lips and nose. It hurt and made her head pulse with pain, but at least it was quiet.
It took a few minutes for her heartbeat to calm, but Taylor managed to strangle any scream, quietly panting in her room. After the first few pained, sickened noises, she managed to make her breath near silent even as she soaked through her warm PJs. Her stomach roiled, but Taylor managed to fight it down.
Slowly, she came back to herself, left with vague impressions, and one what wasn’t.
“Religious nutcases.” Taylor muttered to herself as she stood up and started gathering her things for a quick shower. She couldn’t sleep like this. Yet as she stripped, the world caught up to her. The unnatural warmth that had flooded her flesh was mostly gone. A warm orb of it remained in her heart, the Card lingering there. But in passing, her power had not been idle. It had left gifts.
Covered in sweat Taylor stretched and flexed, feeling her muscles work. She wasn’t suddenly buff. It wasn’t like that. But she felt wonderfully light. Everything was smoother, her grip firmer. She gathered up a replacement pair of winter pajamas and softly padded to the bathroom. Under the bathroom light, her face hadn’t changed, and that was a relief. But where before there was a slight paunch on her belly, now her whole body was smooth and her muscles felt more like coiled cables.
She wasn’t suddenly a body builder, but Taylor had the giddy feeling that “Lean, mean, fighting machine” suddenly applied to her. She was still a fifteen, well, fifteen and a half, girl version of it. Nothing really superhuman, but better, so much better overnight. And with it came a feeling of loss. Or maybe, of something crucial missing. Though she was standing in her own bathroom in her underwear, she felt entirely naked in a new and disturbing fashion. Something, something crucial was missing.
She was unarmed.
Taylor’s hands wandered, missing a weight to them. Something to break, bleed or stab anyone who came at her. And Taylor had no idea how to fix that.
Danny was supposed to take her to their insurance covered doctor in the morning, to have a look at her wounds, but looking at it in the mirror, it didn’t seem so bad.
She had multiple scrapes along her ribs from the door and crawling out of that filthy pit, as well as along her arms. But the bandages the school nurse had applied hadn’t bleed through and as she carefully wiped herself down with a wet sponge, they twanged and hurt, but not so much that she was afraid of the wounds getting worse. If anything, a slight tingling around the site told her they were nothing to worry about.
“Some kind of enhanced healing maybe?”
Again, not actual regeneration, or they would have healed by now, but if she could heal in days what should take weeks, who was she to protest? Which left her with a choice, did she want to go to the doctor now that she had superpowers? She could check in the morning, and if the wounds really were closing, that might be a problem. What else was different, that she hadn’t figured out yet?
Would the Doctor notice? Inform her father? She didn’t want that. But she couldn’t risk not going either. He didn’t believe her, how was she supposed to convince him not to go?
Taylor’s thoughts were interrupted by a massive yawn that nearly pulled her to the ground. She had to lean on the sink to stay standing. No. Wash. Bed.
.
.
.
As Taylor slept, the Card in her heart slowly bled its starting potential right into her dreams and body.
***
Her dreams were filled with books. Technical manuals and fairy tales mixed and spilled over her table in a crowded library so grey and generic, it almost looked like a movie set piece that had been reused a hundred times over. But the crowd did not press in, rather, it was as if those few times even her height had melded, disappeared into a mass of humanity. For once, she did not stand out, but rather, it was as if the crowd had a sound, a tone, a music of its own.
And as long as she listened to it, followed along, she was no one. No one important. And nobody would bother her. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes cried, as the people in the books lived their colorful lives. The music of the crowd echoing in her head. No one disturbed her.
This was far preferable to the second dream of the night.
In it, she was trapped in a large Gymnasium. Trapped with the devil. A man in military uniform adorned with skulls that drove and beat her endlessly. Always, always hitting hard enough to bruise, but not break. He came at her with a bewildering array of weapons: clubs, knives, blades, axes, staffs and other things she could not name.
The beatings were completely one sided, for all that every time she was given the same dulled, or padded training weapon. The worst part was what came at the end of each session. Running, endless running where the Devil would randomly scream at her that “You are being shot at acolyte, move, move, move!” and start beating her with a stick while effortlessly keeping up with her.
Until finally one cycle he told her “One of the worst acolytes I’ve ever had the duty of training. Well, one of the worst that still passed, anyway.”
Taylor woke to a brightening sky, in time to catch the first light of a new day.