Interlude IV — Secrets
Cinza reverently removed the Scrap from the metal tube they'd stored it inside. She handed it over to Nikki, who took a few cautious steps into the center of the circle. The rest of the Greycloaks—the only family she had left—sat around her in a wide circle, watching intently. She felt every eye on her, the weight of anticipation in the air over what would happen, but she knew they were all there to support her no matter the outcome. Behind them at the edge of the treeline stood Josh Miller and Hailey Winscombe, the only two present not wearing the cloaks.
Nikki took a deep breath, then slowly started to unroll the ancient burnt piece of torn parchment. She'd been anticipating this moment for weeks, ever since the destruction of Rallsburg that had made them all ghosts. They'd put it off while Cinza recovered enough to walk around without constant support, but finally—it was time.
Nicole Winifred Parsons was about to awaken.
She looked down at the parchment and let her eyes drift over the first few words. No one had described what the feeling would be like. She'd resisted asking Josh or Hailey, because she wanted to go into it totally blind. She wanted to experience the revelation herself, unfiltered and unbiased, that which Cinza and Ruby talked of with such feverish passion. Nikki began to read it aloud, though she had no idea what she was speaking. She knew the words, as if whispered to her in a dream that she couldn't quite recall. It was emotion more than it was conscious thought.
"For the good of us all," she heard faintly, as if from behind a thick curtain and infinitely far away. Ruby had spoken the words, and a moment later the rest of her family echoed them.
Nikki held onto those words like a lifeline as her vision plunged away, color and detail draining out of the world as she fell into darkness. As the forest fell out of sight, Nikki felt her mind opening up. Her brain seemed like it was ten times its usual size. She could sense every tiny synapse, every burst of nerves and every connection as they grew and changed and formed new pathways. It was a beautiful, perpetually shifting and self-altering machine, and Nikki could feel every piece of it and how it all fit together.
At the same time, she felt something wholly different. It was a stranger feeling, like the sudden burst of inspiration upon solving a puzzle, but perpetual. It felt like she were solving a problem without knowing the situation, with the answers simply thrust upon her out of the black. It was exhilarating—until it suddenly snapped away, like a light flickering out.
She'd run out of words to speak. Her mouth kept moving and her throat kept trying to utter sounds, but nothing would spring forth. She was choking on her own breath. She was going to suffocate.
Nikki Parsons was about to die.
"No," she heard, a chiming bell in the void that pressed upon her ears. Like twin stars, a pair of silver-grey orbs appeared in the sky, slowly resolving into the eyes of their goddess. She started speaking the words to save Nikki's life, words Nikki echoed in perfect unison until she had stumbled her way back into the world of light.
Grey-eyes sat on her knees in front of her. Nikki had fallen back against the simple rest Cinza had prepared and set into the center. In sharp contrast to the grey robes worn by the circle, their goddess wore only a plain jacket and jeans, with a faded t-shirt for a band she'd never heard of. Nikki looked past her plain trappings to the immense power contained within the girl's striking eyes, and she felt afraid.
"Thank you," she whispered.
Grey-eyes nodded, looking as she always did—lonely and a little sad. Nikki wished she could do something for her, but it didn't matter. A moment later, Grey-eyes vanished, as she always did.
The moment she was gone, the circle converged on Nikki. Ruby was the first to reach her, grasping her hand with the warmest of smiles.
"Welcome," she said, and Nikki—who had felt for so long like an outsider despite Cinza's constant reassurance—finally rejoiced. She had joined them on the other side.
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After two weeks with magic in her hands, Nikki felt a bit underwhelmed. She could barely cast even the most basic spells, and her frustration was becoming obvious to the rest of the Greycloaks.
"It just takes practice," Yusuf explained with a twinge of embarrassment. He had no trouble summoning up a fireball out of the air, though thankfully he didn't flaunt it. "You have need to dig a bit more than we do, I think. You maybe don't have the right affinity for this magic."
"Did you guys just guess 'em?" Joe asked, sitting on a log nearby and picking away at a few sticks.
"Cinza had someone with Knowledge magic to find out all of ours," Yusuf explained. "They tried to do Nikki when we found the chance, but it is you cannot find out anything from someone who is not awakened yet."
"Weird."
"Do you want to try again, Nikki?" Yusuf asked. "Just find the way the fire bursts, as I said. I know that does not really explain it, but it is the best way I can think of describing."
Nikki focused. She reached out her will, like she did for telekinesis. That was the breakthrough moment for her, when she'd first learned how to detach her mind from her brain. It was a process none of them understood, but most could do without thinking. Nikki found that initial basic step the most important of them all. She didn't care that much about actually making fire, except that it would give her more information about how that first step into the supernatural took place. Something had changed in them to allow such a strange disconnect, and Nikki was determined to figure out how it worked.
She imagined a candle flickering into life. Delving into what she could remember of chemistry, she thought about the reaction that had to take place for fire to exist in the real world. Did that reaction even matter? There clearly wasn't anything for the fire to burn from in the air, so did real physics just fly out the window entirely?
Not that her questions mattered if she couldn't produce even the tiniest drop of flame.
"Nikki, you okay?"
Her concentration snapped at Joe's words. She rounded on him, about to start shouting, but she managed to calm herself in time. She knew he was just concerned and trying to help. He cared about her. "I'm fine."
Joe nodded. "Well, keep trying then. You'll get it."
Something about his tone irked her, but she didn't want to bring it up. Yusuf saved her the difficulty of replying. "Hey Joe, do you mind to get us some dinner? I could use a bite to eat. I have been spending a lot of energy cutting firewood today."
Joe shrugged. "Sure. What do you want?"
"Whatever Rufus suggests. I am not picky."
As soon as Joe was out of earshot, Yusuf sat down next to Nikki. "Maybe a little better luck without the boyfriend in earshot?" he said conspiratorially.
Nikki shrugged. "He's not really the problem."
"Oh?" Yusuf looked surprised. "I believed he was being quite the irritant. But if you are saying he is fine, I won't try to keep him away for longer."
"Actually…" Nikki said. "I have an idea."
"An epiphany?"
"Huh?"
"Whenever Ruby was to come up with a great new idea for magic, Cinza would call it an epiphany. She was very specific about the term."
Nikki laughed. "I think they just like using big words."
"Yes, they do."
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She rolled up her sleeves and held out her hand. "In the gathering, I could feel your magic the most. What if I could use it as a jump-start? Like starting a stalled engine. Getting past this block keeping me from the other types of magic."
Yusuf looked at her doubtfully. "We have tried this with other diffinities. Rufus and his disability with Movement magic. It did not accomplish anything."
"Try it for me?" she asked.
He shrugged. "If you want." He took her hand gently and closed his eyes.
Nikki reached out again, trying to feel the magic coming from him. She couldn't feel anything, but that didn't mean it wasn't there. Cinza had speculated to Josh and Nikki one night that the connection was made through more pathways than simply magical power. She had drawn up a chart detailing affinities and perceived strength of each connection, as well as their emotional connections and any other characteristics that might relate two people physically. It certainly helped explain why her connection with Ruby was so strong. Two young adult girls, of similar build and ethnicity, madly in love and also sharing the same affinity—of course they would be able to share magic almost freely.
However, along those same lines, shouldn't Brittany and Matthew be able to share fairly easily? They were married and quite close, yet they struggled with it, even though both could share with Cinza. Additionally, Yusuf could give to almost everyone equally, and he shared neither a particularly strong emotional connection nor a race with a single other Greycloak. The inconsistency was obvious, and Cinza discarded the theory after a good deal of debate between the three of them. Nikki was the only one of the Greycloaks who enjoyed discussing the theory of magic in depth with Josh and Cinza, despite her own ineptitude with spellcasting.
Not that Josh seemed to enjoy their conversations. He contributed as much as either of them, but his voice was always cynical and defeatist. Nikki didn't mind, though. He helped keep them grounded.
Still, the theory Cinza had established appealed to her to some degree. It was romantic—and despite everything, Nikki was still the starry-eyed teenager who'd run away from home dreaming of a more exciting life, and found it in the care of the cult who'd taken up in her town. Every other part of her life had broken the illusion, so she held onto that last vestige as tight as she could.
"Hey Yusuf?" she asked.
His eyes popped open. "Yes, Nikki?"
"I was curious. Why did you join Cinza?"
He looked at her in surprise. "That is an odd question to ask right now."
"I'm so sorry!" Nikki blurted. "I didn't mean to pry."
Yusuf smiled. "It's fine. I do not mind telling you my story."
His hand hadn't left hers the whole time, and she liked the warmth he gave off. Yusuf was a middle aged man with black hair he kept quite short, with very tan skin and friendly brown eyes. Every impression he gave was that of a large, friendly, slightly short bear—up to and including the rage he could exhibit when threatened. Nikki had seen him up against a mob, fighting to protect them all, and she knew what he was really capable of with his back to the wall.
"Would it shock you to believe this is not my first cult?" he said with a smile.
"What?"
"It is truth!" He laughed. "I was a foolish young soul. I was raised by my father to be a devout man, but I knew better! In my arrogant youth, I declared that his beliefs were nothing old fire stories from the ancient days. I would find my own path. So I traveled to America, and there I met Sally Santiago."
Nikki giggled. "Sally Santiago? Really?"
"Ah, she was the most beautiful woman you had ever imagined!" Yusuf waved a hand through the air like a cheap magician, but as he did, a sparkle of light flickered around his fingers. He'd generated sparks of flame to heighten the effect. "Beautiful, and so proud. She was fierce. I loved that about her. She was a truly free spirit. My father would have hated her, so of course I loved her with all my heart." He shrugged. "I was not a very good son."
Nikki shook her head. "Sounds like he wasn't a very good dad."
"Maybe you will meet him one day and you can tell me for certain."
"Maybe." She tapped his palm with her finger. "What happened to Sally?"
"Six months after I met her, she became Sally al-Fayed!" He smiled even wider. "Two love birds making their nest. We did joined forces against the world. Sally was going to university to become a doctor, and I was repairing houses and helping her pay for her schooling. We made quite a team."
"Hang on, you said this was about a cult."
"Patience, child! What kind of bad storyteller am I, if I skip act one and two?"
"I'm sorry." She squeezed his hand. "Please, keep going. I'm listening."
He grinned. "This is where we reach the happy part of my story."
"Happier than Sally Santiago?" Nikki deadpanned.
"Sally al-Fayed!" he corrected. "Yes, because we have new characters who join us! Two beautiful, perfect characters named Nadia and Amelia al-Fayed! Alhamduli'iilaaha!" Yusuf shouted the final word, startling her.
"...Your daughters?" she guessed, once he'd calmed down a little.
"Yes. My two daughters, blessed be them forever." A tear formed in the corner of his eye, which he dabbed away with a corner from the hood of his robe. "However, you are right, this is a story of a cult and not of my two blessings. There was a small gathering in our home town in Pennsylvania. A group of people with a devotion that they would follow utterly. They believed they were promised for a better place than this. Their devotion drove them to commit horrible acts to themselves."
Nikki clapped a hand to her mouth. "Oh my god. They didn't—"
"They did," he replied. "I am afraid to say I was not at home. I had read some of their literature and I dismissed it as strange, but I believed my wife knew what she was doing. I do not know if she found salvation, but I know that I most certainly did not."
"Yusuf, I'm so sorry."
"I thank you." He patted her on the shoulder. "But I tell you this not because I seek comfort, though I thank you again. My Nadia and my Amelia were taken by 'iilhat alramadi and I will see them when it is my time." He shook his head. "No, I keep this story in my memory to remind myself of the danger rigid belief can make. Do you know our leader is the wisest I have ever known?"
"Cinza?" Nikki asked doubtfully. She believed Cinza was smart, sure, and that she had a worldliness about her that spoke of a dense and storied past, but Yusuf seemed to be hinting at something more specific.
"Absolutely. Cinza is the leader who questions. The leader who doubts and fears and cares more that her people are safe than following her belief so strictly." He smiled. "This is why I would follow her when I have every reason to be frightened. Why, if my Amelia and my Nadia were alive today, Cinza would be the only person in the world I could trust to care for them if I were taken away."
"Huh." Nikki still wasn't quite sure she agreed with him—particularly about the whole child-rearing thing—but she did start to examine Cinza in a new light. Maybe there was more to her than just the romantic side. After all, Cinza had insisted on combat training, on readiness drills, on all sorts of other activity that simply didn't line up with what Nikki expected.
Of course… she'd been right, in the end.
"Now, Nikki, we were to try again at helping you create fire. Can you feel magic yet through my hand?"
Nikki tried again. She reached out to the space between them, a space so small she couldn't ever see it, but had to believe it existed. There she found it—a whirling disk of energy that spun like a top on the tips of Yusuf's fingers, waiting for her to pluck it from his balance and take it for herself.
She grabbed it and pulled the energy inside her mind, ready to fling it out into a ball of flame as powerful as she could manage. She wanted to show Yusuf that his effort hadn't been for nothing.
Her mind found a different path. When she reached for the churning element she recognized as fire, her thoughts wandered away. It was an idea that barged into her stream of consciousness, dominating her imagination and demanding her full attention. She gave in and followed the path of least resistance, curious where this was taking her. There was something totally different about this magic, a sensation she'd never felt or even heard described to her by the other Greycloaks.
It felt right. Nikki shivered with excitement. This was from her affinity. She was sure of it.
Suddenly, she ran into a massive wall of resistance blocking her path. It wasn't like the immense strain of effort when she tried to cast spells from other affinities though. This was more like an intricate web, with layers upon layers of different strands entwined and circling around and through themselves in impossible knots. She felt like she were blind and trying to figure out the object just from feeling a tiny portion of its true shape. It was impossibly huge and labyrinthine, and all she could do was to pluck out a single thread and begin to follow it.
She did so, tracing it back, like the first step in untangling a mess of cords. The cord continued to branch off in deeper and deeper pathways, and Nikki could only guess what might lay inside. Her vision blurred, and she was vaguely aware of Yusuf watching her with a concerned expression, but he seemed to be moving in slow motion. Nikki could feel her mind speeding up as she plumbed the depths of the maze of threads. She forced herself to slow down, trying to feel the specific threads and what each one might mean.
One of them felt vaguely familiar. It felt warm and joyful, but also full of muted regret. A thread overcome with thick human emotion. Nikki followed it, and as she delved down she watched the branches split out again, into even more of the infinite possibilities.
She cursed under her breath, prompting a worried squeeze of her hand from Yusuf. Nikki shook her head, praying he wouldn't speak. Her mind was struggling to contain the labyrinth, and she was only focused on the single path she'd taken so far. If he interrupted, she might lose the thread entirely.
Nikki kept going, following it where the path felt most immediately familiar. She tried to speed up, suddenly worried that anything might interrupt and break the spell. Yusuf's hand shook slightly, distracting her for a moment, but she managed to hang on.
Her mind shifted. Suddenly she wasn't following a path through a maze, but riding a cart through mine shafts at a breakneck pace. She had to hold on for dear life as she plunged through the depths, with inky blackness below her and quickly shifting rails that threatened to derail her at every intersection.
She hung on. She kept following the thread.
A tunnel of light ahead. Nikki felt her mind slowly beginning to clear as she plunged forward, ready for whatever lay at the end. Her vision went totally white.
"The Twenty First Circle," she said aloud.
The world fell back into place, visibly crashing into view as her eyes snapped open.
"Holy shit," she whispered. Nikki felt like she'd just run a mile and a half, but she felt exhilarated. Yusuf looked similarly dazed, though his was simply from giving up energy for her spellcasting.
At her words, his eyes widened. "How did you know their name?"
"Huh?"
Yusuf looked puzzled. "The cult. I had not shared their name in my story. How did you know it?"
Nikki blinked a few times, still catching her breath.
"...I think we just figured out my affinity."