I'll Scream the Agony Just One More Time (Following the March 26 2014 Session)

Don't Let Me Fall Behind

I was very surprised to find Elliot seemingly emotionally stable several weeks ago. I knew he escaped the botched ritual back in 1998. Elliot’s large magical potential meant his presence stood out amongst the other members of the cult, like a beacon of sorts. Given how intertwined our existences were at that single moment in time, I would have sensed the second he died. It never came.

Existing physically doesn’t also mean existing mentally. However, Elliot seemed to have recovered from all of the mental and emotional trauma forced upon him by Malik Huntstone.

How long he was going to be able to handle us high schoolers was another story. 

“Elliot, can you teach me how to do proper magic?”

I popped the question as soon as I burst into his bookstore on a warm March afternoon. Elliot was the only soul in the store, reading through a parenting magazine at the cash for some reason. He didn’t look up, but his shoulders slumped with a slight tint of weariness. I’m not quite sure what he expected me to come rushing in asking, but it wasn’t that.

“What is wrong with you children?” Elliot asked, rubbing his forehead. “Can’t you be happy pretending to be normal humans and doing your homework or playing video games or whatever nonsense mortal kids are supposed to do?”

My gut reaction would have been to reach out to the edges of my own reality with my other form. Not unmake myself, but to pull across what could be best described as “the roar of civilization”. It was the sound that I had driven Mr White mad with, along with countless others; an inescapable, low din of static and white noise that buried deep inside a victim’s head.

That it was Elliot I was dealing with made me stop and consider my actions. Not only had Elliot had suffered enough tragedy over his life, but he was also one of the few people with enough raw power to scare me. His power was one of the reasons my original form was pulled over to this reality. He probably had enough power to shove my current form back to my home reality if he tried.

“I could go back to a normal life, but what happens to everyone else?” I asked. “My friend’s mother was murdered by a demon so he could enjoy the thrill of it. Then someone else covered up the murder. There’s a supernatural serial killer in my school who killed my English teacher and then brought her back to life. A wraith took over my body and then gave my boyfriend magical powers. Yeah, I can talk to people and make them do stuff, but all that does it make people act on something they already know to be true. I can’t change the truth, only make it undeniable.”

Elliot sighed and looked me in the eye. “Look, Messenger, how much do you actually know about mortal magic?”

I hesitated. “Not a lot. I know Tobias can do some rituals and stuff by chanting and waving his hand around.”

“There’s a few theories about mortal magic and how it works,” Elliot continued, as if he wasn’t paying attention to what I just said. “The theory I believe in claims that magic potential is controlled through two internal resources: your capability for magic and how well you can project it to the outside world. For example, Malik was okay at getting his magic out. He just had a very poor natural capability for it, and couldn’t do much on his own. Your young friend is an odd case. From what I can put together, he has always had an exceptional capability for magic, but lacked a stable connection between it and the rest of the world. It seems that the Malik’s wraith burst open those connections, perhaps trying to reshape them to match its original human form, and all of that latent power flooded out at once.”

“And you?” It occurred to me that while I knew Elliot was a mage, I had no idea how he fit in this context. 

“The Stevens family line is naturally exceptional in both sides of magic.”

“And me?”

“You are underwhelmingly average in every sense of the word.”

That revelation was not one that I wanted to hear. There was no way I could just be average! I was the product of an unholy ritual to bind an alien being from another reality to a mortal body! I needed to know more.   

“And here I was hoping that you would have revealed I was the daughter that Malik had you secretly father for his ritual and therefore inherited all of your magic power.”

“No, that.... that wasn’t my job.” Elliot faltered, his gaze suddenly distant. I thought he had let go and forgiven everything that happened with the cult, but thinking about my mortal form’s origin caused him to freeze up.

I immediately regretted the dig at him and mumbled that I was sorry for bringing it up.

It took Elliot a minute or so to speak again. “Back when I dealt with rogue magic users as a hunter, the best way to handle them wasn’t to kill them. Killing them doesn’t always keep them dead, as you may have noticed. Either I would destroy their magic source or sever their magic connection instead. The second one was always much easier. When Malik made me work for him, I had a theory about reversing the severing idea to increase magical talent in certain people. In fact, I might still... could you watch the store for a moment?”

“Sure. Why?” Before I could finish asking the question, Elliot was already gone. It was impossible to trace his path through the stacks of books. I could hear him walk down some stairs and then out of earshot, leaving me alone.

I had never considered where the mortal half of Chantel came from. It wasn’t my “parents”. I didn’t look quite right for a girl that belonged to them. When pressed about it by others, “mom” and “dad” claimed I was adopted from a close relative who died tragically shortly after my birth. I had assumed that Malik commanded Elliot to “create” a child for the ritual, since Elliot would be a reasonable source of magic power and would have produced a child that would have made for an extra powerful sacrifice. But Elliot had just implied that wasn’t the case. Plus, my mortal half wasn’t that remarkable in a magical sense, apparently.     

So, why did Malik choose me? Why was I special? Damn it, why did I pass the wraith over to Tobias without asking?  

“Give me your left arm.”

The voice made me jump. I didn’t realize how much time had passed, nor heard Elliot come back. For some reason he had in his hands something that looked like a bracer crafted out of silver twisted wire and flat, round stones, with sharp looking pins and spikes that pointed... inwards?!

“NO WAY! That’s going to rip my arm apart!” I cried out. The sight of it made something deep in the back of my mind rear back in horror. Not just the fear that putting it on would cut up my arm. No, it would do more than that. It was meant to seal me away forever.  

Then, the part of me buried deep in the back of my mind got angry.
  
My other self torn away the boundaries between this cheap, fragile excuse for reality and real existence. The bookshelves shook with the increasing loud roar of sound-that-was-never-meant-to-be-heard. Tomes collapsed in on themselves, filling the air with pulp dust and paper scraps.

I unfolded and expanded, filling out the bookstore with my true form. Elliot stood firm in front of me, still holding onto his device even as my body wrapped around him and twisted around his limbs. I lifted the mage in front of what could be best described as my face, although it looked nothing like the human concept of one.

“My left arm? Try taking it once I rip off both of yours!” The sound of my voice came from everywhere, shaking the foundations of the store. I pulled tighter on Elliot, but the man’s intense expression didn’t flinch. I couldn’t figure out the truth of what he was thinking. It was buried too deep inside of him.  

“I should have killed you when I had the chance!” I ranted, spraying goo-that-shouldn’t-be onto Elliot. “Taken out the city’s so-called protector and allowed someone better to move in. They would have prevented everything terrible that’s happened. WHY. DIDN’T. YOU. STOP. IT.”  

Elliot’s eyes grew wide as I screamed into the void. And then, he yelled my name back. Not Chantel Conet, the name that I had given myself after being forced to this form. Not the Messenger From Spaces Inbetween, the title humans addressed me by. My real, nigh unpronounceable name.

He was right. The Stevens family line is exceptionally talented.

---

The night of battle at Stop 33.

Huntstone’s wraith was buried in my head. I could feel it watching, criticizing my every choice. 

My parents were in jail, but it’s not like they cared much about me anyway. I had just found out that their business parties were actually them spending time with a cult. I could find new parents, I guess. 

My friends were scattered across the city. Israel was off doing something terrible, without questioning why Heaven would ask him to strip people of their free will. My best friend was sleeping with a guy who hated me and let a would-be murderer destroy my radio room. I wanted to be supportive, but the only way I could think of to fix her boyfriend involved murdering an innocent. Ardath had disappeared into the night and wouldn’t reappear for a week. 

Leanne “helped” me get that book back, but also wanted me to stay with her as she watched my best friend having sex. Then she “helped” me deal with the wraith, expecting me to sacrifice someone on an alter in order to destroy what was left of Huntstone. 

I was alone.

I took a sleeping bag from home, packed some clothes in my backpack and broke into the school. Sleeping in the radio room seemed like my only option. I thought I would be safe there. It was my sanctuary, after all. Then the wraith woke up while I was sleeping. It walked my subconscious through my memories of the ritual in 1998.

There was something this time I noticed that I don’t think the wraith picked up on. Most of the actual magic involved the ritual had to pass through Elliot since Malik was incompetent at such things. Malik assumed that Elliot’s free will was completely broken and that the man would never go against Malik’s wishes.

But if that were truth, Elliot should have gone insane as soon as I killed Malik. Instead, he had managed to recover and put his life back together.

Further proof of what was actually going on was the spell meant to bind me to Malik. As my memory of me and the wraith listening to that spell played through, I finally noticed something I had overlooked 16 years ago. Elliot had woven in a short extra line. My real name from the reality beyond this one would bind my other form, causing it to freeze up and be unable to act. I could no longer be praised by the name that should have given me power. Malik, being Malik, never noticed that little clause. If the ritual had completed as intended, with Malik assuming all of my powers, Elliot still had a chance to defeat him and end his reign of terror. 

Then again, Malik’s wraith didn’t notice when I suggested that it shed Tobias’s semen on the alter instead of Tobias’s blood. The ritual should have involved, well, it’s too heartbreaking to consider what the wraith should have done to Tobias.

Malik always was an idiot.  

--- 

The bookstore looked like a tornado had plowed through it. Shelves were knocked over. Books were shattered everywhere. Lighting fixtures were holding onto the ceiling with one or two wires. It would take days, at least, to make the store presentable again.

I glanced at my left arm. On my wrist was that strange bracer that Elliot showed me. The stones glowed faintly, if you caught the light from the right angle. The pins dug into my skin, but I couldn’t feel any of them. From a distance, you couldn’t even see that it was physically attached to my wrist. The bracer flexed as I moved my wrist and didn’t hinder any movement.  

“You talk a lot in your sleep, Messenger.”

Rolling over, I found Elliot sitting on the floor next to me. He looked shaken up, but otherwise intact. I thanked myself mentally that I didn’t kill him in my blind rage. 

I lifted my left arm, waving the bracer around feebly. “You could have explained what the hell this is.”

“It’s a device I made years ago for someone else. Who it was doesn’t matter. What it does is cycle your magic connection through you twice, once through your mortal form and once through the Messenger’s form. It doesn’t increase your magic capability permanently, but it allows you to use what you have much more efficiently. You can do more with less. That should be enough to let you do very basic magic with a decent degree of success.”

Groaning, I pressed my right hand up against my face. “You could have said that earlier. Part of me thought you were going to lock away my other form forever or something.”

“Oh, it’s sealed away.” I didn’t need to look at him to know his expression. I could hear the smug grin in Elliot’s voice. “Locked might be a poor choice of words. You know how electronics have warning stickers about opening them when the device is turned on? As long as you’re wearing that bracer, don’t shift into the Messenger’s form. The bracer is continually feeding high levels of magic energy through that other body. Shifting into the Messenger would be like touching a live wire. You might be able to do it once. You probably wouldn’t live to try a second time.”

I glared at the mage. “Fuck you.”

Elliot shrugged. “I think being forced to be mostly mortal might do you some good. There’s already been a huge shift in you. The Messenger I first met wouldn’t have blamed itself for the current status quo in this city.”

“I say a lot of things,” I growled.

“The Messenger speaks a fuller Truth than can be created here and lays waste to any lie that stands in its path. I can understand that you don’t want to talk about it right now. Given that it’s not your natural tendency to lie...” Elliot paused. “I wish you luck. I never cared much for Malik, but I also don’t care much for the people who replaced him.”

“What people?”

“You’ll figure it out,” Once again, Elliot dismissed my question. “Now, let’s talk about how basic hexes work. Typically, you need a connection to the person you want to affect, either by visually locking eyes or by stealing an object of some emotional importance...”

Trapped in the Land of Fairy

So, the fairy lands. I have decided that I don’t like the fairy lands much.

As I have said before, I don’t understand the fae. They claim to live outside of human reasoning and logic, but everything in their home world reflects the human realm. And while I struggle with human “concepts” of reality as well, at least humans take the world they’re given and embrace it. Some reshape it to their vision of Truth. Others search for the Truth without changing their surroundings.

The fairy lands are twisted mockeries of the human world; a world patterned after the human one where the laws of nature are discarded on whims. I wonder what the fairy lands look like without the influences of humanity. What they were in a time before humans. That is, if the fairy lands existed before humans did, which I strongly doubt.

The moon here can’t decide what phase it wants to remain in. I suppose that’s good for Caleb - shifters seem to be obsessed with lunar cycles for some reason - but it feels like the fae copying something they saw in the human world without understanding the reasons why it exists. Even I can tell you lunar cycles are based on the positions of the sun, earth and moon and not because of magic or some other nonsense.

And yet, despite my mind telling me that nothing here is real, I’ve found myself trapped here with Caleb and Robin. The prison is real, even if I doubt the decorations. Malik’s book is still with me and, after quickly flipping through the notes on the fae, I’ve discovered that leaving this realm requires us to “challenge” Leanansidhe. I was hoping that just remaking myself as my other form would destabilize the world enough to allow us to escape. No such luck.

“Challenge” is a vague word and the fae love such things. I think they want outsiders to believe that it’s a challenge by combat. Instead, I want to make the challenge something very different - one-on-one fights don’t end well for me. My plan is to challenge Leanne Truth or Dare and ask her why she’s so interested in us. If we leave this realm without Leanne explaining herself fully, she’ll just come after us again and again. I don’t want to imagine where she places her “toys” that rebel.

I don’t think my challenge will play out as simple as I want. There’s some strange presence in the air here. It’s like the presence I felt when we stormed in on the cult’s ritual. It wants me to unmake myself, to embrace my other form, to reject the notion of passing for human. It doesn’t feel like the cult spell, which tried to rip apart my human form. Instead, it’s quietly and firmly telling me that I shouldn’t remain human here. I think it has valid points.

Huntstone agrees with those points. 

Yeah, Huntstone is still in my head, although he’s been more subdued since we crossed over. I don’t think he’s faded away. I want to think he’s faded after being exposed to the fae realm, but I doubt I’m that lucky.

Huntstone reminds me that Israel said that he could sense another presence inside of me. And why would a fool like Israel ever lie to me? 

But, there’s also my dreams. They were uncomfortably vivid last night. I slept in the broadcasting room at school last night. Even being in such a secure place didn’t help chase away the wraith. I dreamed of the ritual that sealed me in this mortal body, walking through all the pain and terror step by step, analyzing why the planned ritual backfired and killed Huntstone instead of fusing my existence with his.

Huntstone calls me an idiot for failing to put this all together.

He’s planning. Planning and observing. I’m fairly sure that Huntstone only knew of the fae realm through secondhand accounts. He never crossed over to their realm while I knew him. There must be something he wants here. Probably to separate him from me or take this body over. I’m... scared about either of those happening.

Robin is traveling with me, so I could talk to her. But I don’t want to show Robin my other side. She treats me like a friend - really the first person who ever has - but she’s a young human girl. Human minds can be surprisingly robust, but I don’t want to risk destroying her’s to make me feel better.

There’s this magic dust Robin has, though. She used it on Vincent and Caleb and it took away some of their supernatural abilities. I need to ask her to use some of it on me. I can play Truth or Dare without accessing all of myself. I can’t rebuild Robin’s mind if I’m forced to reveal my other self.

And if Huntstone did something to her... well, I’d never be able to forgive myself if that happened.