Frantically, I cut off the trickle of Anima going to my Aura Sight spell. I did not want to see that creature in any more depth than I already had. Its arrival had already left a greasy stain on my memories that would take a long time to get rid of.
The creature paused across the room from me. It swayed back and forth slightly, hovering above the ground, the crystal floating between us. The folds of its cloak - its body? - rippled in a phantom breeze that only it could feel.
“If you’re going to do something,” Sergeant Chase said, “do it fast!”
If the enchanted bodysuit I was wearing under my clothes didn’t absorb moisture, I’d’ve been sweating like mad. Do something? What could I do? The ribbons of energy flowing into and weaving through the crystal were formed into an incredibly complex knot of power. If I did this wrong…tugged on the wrong thread of energy, or accidentally combined streamers of energy that weren’t meant to be, very bad things could happen. If I destroyed it without understanding how it was held together…
The last time I’d done something like that had been during my first encounter with my half-sister Brenna. Athena, Artemis and I had been tasked with bringing home an old ritual dagger that had been extensively used for dark magic, so that Hollis could destroy it. Brenna had attacked us on the train back from Edinburgh, stolen it from us, and used the dagger to summon an enormous snake made of smoke and shadow.
I’d countered it by casting an enormous fire spell in the shape of a phoenix. It had destroyed the shadow snake almost effortlessly, and I’d guided it to ‘bite’ the dagger, disrupting the Anima woven into it. The resulting explosion had knocked us all out for a few minutes and blown open the back half of the train car.
That had been a fraction of the total amount of energy that was woven into this big chunk of quartz crystal.
I froze.
The creature threw its cowled head back and screamed, then visibly gathered itself to lunge at me.
“Alys!” Athena shouted from behind me.
I was hit from the right by a large, furry wrecking ball. Artemis tackled me to the floor as Athena shouted, “Sergeant, get down!”
When I looked up, she was standing over me, legs spread and braced, her big LeMat revolver lining up to shoot. But she only had two silver buckshot shells left. She could delay the thing, but…
She started shooting.
One of the reasons she’d chosen the LeMat revolver was because of its versatility. Yes, it had a chamber for a single shotgun shell, but it also had an oversized cylinder that packed nine .44 caliber bullets.
Athena unloaded all nine rounds into the crystal.
I had just enough time to throw my Anima into creating a force bubble around the crystal before it exploded violently. I managed to catch most of the blast…but it was an awful lot of kinetic energy concentrated into a fairly small space. My makeshift shield collapsed quickly, but held long enough to keep us from being sprayed with hundreds of sharp crystal slivers moving at high speed. It did not hold long enough to absorb all of the shockwave of force that rippled out from the exploding crystal.
Fortunately, we were already on the ground…but it flattened the human remains beneath it and destroyed a fair bit of what was left of the ritual circle. It also knocked the creature back a few feet.
Athena was already back up on one knee and frantically reloading her revolver as the creature shrieked again and charged towards her. But there was already a visible difference in it: it had become translucent. I could just see the hole it had made in the wall through its cloak-like body.
Instead of hitting Athena, it washed over her and passed through her, barely causing any ripples in its body. Then it dissipated, coming apart and blowing away like smoke, leaving behind one last fading, keening howl of anger.
Athena shuddered. “That felt really nasty.”
I rolled out from under Artemis and crawled to Athena’s side. “You’re all right?” I asked, frantically running my hands over her arms and back. Everything felt normal, and I couldn’t sense any damage to the flow of energy in her body.
She gave me a little smile. “Just freaked out.” Her expression shifted into one that was half exasperation, half concern, and I felt those emotions wash over me from her in equal parts. <
I winced and sat back on my knees, feeling drained. Using your own Anima - like I did for the shield - was considerably more tiring than channeling external Anima. <>
<
Most of the time, I love the bond I share with my familiars. Sometimes, however, it can be awkward. For one thing, it means I can never lie to them without them knowing.
Athena pursed her lips, but said nothing. I could feel her disapproval and concern anyway, and sighed. I knew we’d be talking about this later, and that probably wasn’t a bad thing.
“Job well done, ladies,” Chase said as he approached. “Everybody all right?”
Athena nodded, rising. “We’re fine.”
I pushed myself to my feet, leaning on my cane a little as I got my feet under me. “No harm done. Sorry about…about freezing up there.”
Before she could reply, Meyers’s voice - and it was a relief to hear it - drifted in through the opening the creature had created in the back wall. “Hey! The spiral staircase just vanished! Is it over?”
Chase sagged with visible relief, then called back. “It’s over. You all right?”
“I’m stuck on the roof,” Meyers called. “Other than that, I think that thing dislocated my shoulder on its second pass. Ow.”
I headed for the hole in the wall. “I’ll get him down. Athena, start sketching what’s left of the circle, please.”
“On it!” Athena said from behind me.
Chase met me at the hole and we stepped out together, turning and looking up. Meyers was leaning over the edge of the roof, looking a bit dazed. He waved weakly with his left arm. “Hey.”
“Hold tight, Meyers,” I lifted my cane in my left hand. “I’m going to levitate you down.”
“Cool.” He slumped over a little.
I reached out with my senses to touch the ambient Anima in the clearing and was relieved - deeply relieved - to feel the greasy, dark, twisted aura of it fading towards normal. It would take a while, but the Anima in this clearing would be mostly natural again in time. The grass might even start to grow again.
I gathered Anima, resisting the urge to replenish my natural reserves from this place, and channeled it into my cane. “All right, hold still now.” With a little effort of will and a murmured “Movere,” I cast a complex little force spell that was a variant on the one Jonathan had taught me to move snow. Lifting my right hand as a visual focus, I carefully scooped Meyers up off the roof with an invisible ‘hand’ of force, wincing as he grunted in pain. “Sorry!”
Slowly, I moved him over the edge of the roof and lowered him towards the ground. Chase was there to meet him, getting under his good arm to support him as his feet touched the ground and I released the spell.
“Thanks,” Meyers said, looking pale and drawn. His right arm dangled loosely and the joint definitely looked dislocated.
“I’m going to take him back to the car and call for a forensics team,” Chase said. “Will you be okay here for a few minutes?”
I nodded. “I’m going to help Athena sketch out as much of that ritual circle as we can. Maybe we can figure out what whoever set it up was trying to do here. And how long they’d been at it.”
“All right. You’ll have to come back to the station with us to answer some questions and fill out a report, of course.”
“Of course. The endless onus of paperwork.”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Chase smiled lopsidedly. “Goes with the territory. I’ll be back shortly. Come on, Meyers, one foot in front of the other.”
They started off around the side of the building, avoiding the collapsed part, as I went back inside through the hole the creature had made. Athena had dug a notebook and pencil out of our bottomless bag, and was busily sketching what was left of the circle. “The clearing’s Anima is starting to…to unknot already. It’ll be a while before it’s really back to normal though.”
Artemis was sitting near the door we’d entered through. <
I winced. “I…” I struggled to find the right words. Dr. MacMoran had insisted that it was important for me to talk to Athena and Artemis whenever something like this happened to me. Yes, they instinctively knew what had happened and why…but it was healthy for me to acknowledge it out loud and not ignore it.
They waited, Athena continuing to sketch the circle. Dr. MacMoran had been equally firm with them about not talking for me in this instance. It was, she’d said, important for me to figure it out for myself.
Bah. I may acknowledge the importance of self-assessment in such circumstances, but that doesn’t make it any easier or less uncomfortable. Even if I already knew why I’d hesitated.
“I froze because I was afraid that if I did the wrong thing to destroy that crystal - dispelled the wrong enchantment, tugged on the wrong thread of Anima - that I’d blow us all up,” I admitted finally.
“And the solution to that fear is?” Athena asked, looking up from her sketching. She had a serious, frowning expression on, but I could sense her concern fading to be replaced by an impish amusement.
“Ask Hollis for lessons in safely destroying heavily enchanted items,” I said, as if repeating a lesson, then nodded. “I’ve been meaning to for a while anyway. It’s his specialty, after all.”
“Mmhm.” She looked down at her notebook and frowned, then started writing beside her sketch. “You’ve been meaning to ask for those lessons for more than a year now.” She pointed to the last intact exterior circle with its strange, curling symbol in the center. “I don’t recognize that one, do you?”
I shook my head, moving around the edge of the circle, being careful not to step on it. “No. It feels familiar, but…I can’t place it. Just copy it down exactly as it is. No,” I corrected myself, “make a small change to it and note the change, just in case it’s a wizard’s Sigil.”
Athena nodded. “Good idea. You’re going to ask for those lessons, right?”
My turn to nod. “Yes, mistress.”
She shot me a look that was half-amused, half-annoyed, then went back to work. Instead of pressing the matter, she asked, "Do you think this is a wizard's Sigil?"
I shrugged. “In the absence of any evidence either way, safest to treat it as if it is one.”
A wizard's Sigil is a unique pictographic design that is used - basically - like a signature. Except they're internationally registered, and it's not only illegal to use a wizard's Sigil without their permission, it can also be very dangerous. Many wizards protect their Sigils with all manner of unpleasant and potentially lethal spells.
My own Sigil, chosen when I achieved Journeyman Mage status, is made up of an arc radiating rays over a series of shortening horizontal lines; the resulting symbol is meant to evoke a sun setting over the ever-distant ocean. The reflection of the sun on the water makes up the bottom of a curved, stylized 'A.' Unfortunately lots of people mistake it for a rising sun instead, which is understandable, and I don't really mind. Amusingly enough, the three lines beneath it which were meant to represent waves also look somewhat like claw-marks.
The caution Athena and I had agreed upon in copying the symbol down was well placed. If it was a Sigil, it would be the matter of a few hours of research to identify the person who'd created the circle. The small deviation Athena made in copying it down would protect her against any potential magical backlash from the possible owner, without making it any harder to identify.
By the time Sergeant Chase returned and informed us that he'd called for a forensics team, Athena and I had reproduced as much of the circle as we were going to be able to. It amounted to a little more than half of the circle, rendered in both Athena's notebook and one of my own in as much detail as we could manage. We'd compare them later, looking for any discrepancies.
"You will, of course," Chase said as we packed up our things, "provide copies of those sketches in your reports."
I nodded. "Of course. Do you think we can wait a few days before submitting them, though? I'd like to have enough time to at least be able to point out any elements of the ritual that would be blatantly dangerous."
Chase nodded. "Of course. You work out of London, right? You can give your reports at Scotland Yard, and they'll forward them up to us for our records." He sighed and looked at the remains in the center of the circle. "I have a feeling this is going to be bigger than our local department is equipped to handle anyway."
"Do you think that," Athena gestured to the bloody mess in the center of the circle, which I was still trying not to look at (or smell), "is...are...the remains of Mina Rein?"
Chase sighed. "I'm afraid so, lass. The behavior of Mage Kinnear's tracking spell is certainly indicative. The forensics team will tell us for certain. I'll be sure to let you know...and I'll handle things with Mrs. Rein."
"Thank you," I said, a little relieved that I wouldn't have to face the woman again. Even in the face of her grievous loss, I'm not sure I could've kept my tongue civil a second time.
"I'll have someone give you a lift into town once our backup arrives," Chase said. "You can give initial reports at the station, then catch your train back to London."
I hesitated. I didn't want to leave this work unfinished. I wanted to know if Mina Rein was really dead. But that was no longer work for a consultant...now it was a police matter, end of story. And it would probably take a couple of days for them to identify the remains anyway.
"All right," I said finally. "Thank you."
Chase looked at me, then offered me his hand. "No, Mage Kinnear, thank you. If it weren't for you and your familiars, I doubt Meyers and I would've survived finding this mess."
I shook his hand, and was pleased when he shook Athena's hand as well. "You're welcome, Sergeant. Any time you need our sort of specialized help, feel free to call on us."
"I'll do that."
On the train home, Athena and I pulled down our compartment's little table and compared our sketches of the ritual circle.
"I think we got everything we could," I said finally, examining the two sketches side-by side. "What we both drew matches up, at least."
Athena was sitting with a copy of Gallow's Spectral Almanac open on her lap, and a reference-style copy of the Galdrabók open in front of her. She had a pocket copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon in her left hand, and a hand-bound edition of the Pseudo Monarchia Daemonum open on the window bench beside us.
The first was a general collection of Hermetic spellcasting information related to the position of the Moon, planets and stars, the tides, and other less mundane tidbits. It was published annually and was an invaluable tool for setting up rituals of all kinds.
The Galdrabók was a basic grimoire of Norden rune magic. I suspected she was using it to try to identify some of the runes in the circle. Likewise, the Lesser Key of Solomon was the primer for all Hermetic and the vast majority of Abrahamic religious summoning magic. It was a good place to start when trying to identify any ritual circle.
The last book, the Pseudo Monarchia Daemonum, was little more than an indexed and heavily referenced list of known demons. My Athena was in full research mode.
Artemis was, as had become her habit on trains, stretched out across the doorway. Since the door opened inward, any unexpected visitor would have to move 85 pounds of snow leopard to get in. No easy feat, especially if she was angry.
"Mmhm," Athena agreed absently, flipping a page in the Lesser Key of Solomon, then leaning over to compare it with something in the Galdrabók.
"Find anything?"
She sighed and shook her head. "Not really. You'll want to look at this, of course, but so far it's not making any kind of sense to me. The thing we fought doesn't really fit the demonic classifications, the runes don't seem to be of Norden origin, and the circle itself is..." She laid the Lesser Key down on top of the Galbrabók and shook her head again. "It seems pretty nonsensical to me. It doesn't add up to anything I'm familiar with."
"Which is most of what I'm familiar with," I said, "but I'll go over it with you. Let me have the Lesser Key and I'll get started."
We traded books - I gave her back her notebook in exchange for the Lesser Key of Solomon - and went back to work.
Two hours later, with several more learned tomes extracted from our bottomless bag to be spread out on table and benches, I sat back and made a frustrated sound. "You're right, this thing is nonsense. I don't know what the person who made it was going for, but it doesn't seem to add up to anything."
"Then the elements of it have to be symbolic, right?" Athena turned the Lesser Key toward her and flipped pages, finally tapping one. "Here, there's a section about building a symbolic circle rather than a traditional one."
"I'm sure they are," I agreed ruefully, "but that's going to make it even harder to figure out what it was meant to do. And we don't even have the whole thing. What about the symbol we thought might be a sigil?"
She shook her head. "It's not in the registry. Of course, neither is yours...we really need to get an updated copy."
I waved a dismissive hand. "It's almost not worth it. There's plenty of spellcasters who create one but never register it. The registry is just a...a way of being polite to the community."
Athena sat back in her seat and sighed. "Well, we haven't made much progress then, have we?"
"No, but it's early days yet." I pulled out a pad of lined paper and tapped my pen on a clean page. "Let me write everything up that we've got, so I can send it off to them as soon as we get in to London. An initial report, with detailed drawings of the circle and notes covering what we do know about it will have to suffice for now. Considering the condition of the circle when we got there, it may be all they ever get."
<
I exchanged a look with Athena, and sensed her emotions as clearly as my own…we were both upset about not finding the girl in time to save her. Artemis had just moved through the stages of emotion faster than we had, and focused on the more pragmatic part of it.
"I know, and I agree," I considered the blank page, then started re-drawing what we had of the circle. "But that part is their job, and we were told - very politely and respectfully, I might add - to get out of it."
<
I couldn't argue. I didn't like it either. But I figured we’d better get used to it. It was probably going to be a frequent occurrence if we were going to work with the police a lot.
“I suppose the important thing is that we kept those policemen alive,” Athena said, putting books away. “They’d’ve found their way out there eventually, and if we hadn’t been there, that…that thing, whatever it was, would’ve killed them.”
I smiled. “That’s true, sister. I suppose this means another trip to the mnemonotranscription department at the Central Library.”
“Time to learn some of Dr. Absolom’s tricks?” Athena smiled.
I nodded. “Definitely. Who knows, maybe he can even help us fill in more of the circle from our memories.”