The End of the World

There is no word for “death” in True Reality. The idea of finality doesn’t exist when you are dealing with things that always were and that always will be. The closest words we had for the concept of nonexistence were things like “synthesis” or “amalgamation”.

To give a very loose mental image of how this idea works, imagine a river. If it rains really hard, that river may overflow and cause a small stream to form outside of its original form. However, if the stream grows too large or too small, its existence will shift back into the river again. Either the steam will dry up as the waterflow stays only in the river or the stream will grow back into the river, expanding it out. No water is created or destroyed, its form just changes.

True Reality is like that river. Surges of energy cause shifts and changes and result in offshoots like this particular plain of existence. Eventually the offshoots lose their structure, merging back into the reality they came from.

That I need to use the word “had” earlier implies that this view is probably flawed. I always was in True Reality and now am not. Unless I break this mortal form, an idea that seems increasingly unlikely, there will be a time when I don’t exist.

This idea is frightening and so counter to everything I know that I was able to willingly reject it until recently. Even Huntstone existed after he “died”, after all. But, when the Wraith took over my body and was researching how to merge into Tobias’s body, I learned that the magic required ended the target’s existence. There was no way to come back from something like that.

Then Robin’s mom died. I don’t wish to write much more on the subject. I feel in part responsible for what happened, if only because I should have gotten the police involved with Vincent sooner and not tried to solve such supernatural problems myself. But would the police listen to my story that my best friend’s boyfriend was possessed by a demon and needed help? I could have used the Truth on them, but the Truth only works for so long when the mortal mind is so much happier accepting a falsehood.

On the other side of the discussion, there are people like my classmate Nate. Nate is a ghost, stuck in the misery of endless high school. But posing as a high school student is the closest he can be to being a full person. He hides the truth of being a ghost and goes crazy when others in the school use their supernatural powers freely. Nate should be free to pick whatever life he wants, but he worries about what could happen when people learn he’s a ghost.

In the middle, there’s me. Leanne has often asked me what is it that I am - an alien entity out of sync with this existence forced into a mortal body or a teenage girl with the powers of a being beyond human understanding?

I didn’t have a good reply until after Leanne nearly died - it shouldn’t be a question of what I am. She should have been asking me who I am, and that answer is now “I’m Chantel Conet. I’m the person who’s going to end this world.”  

Not an end of fire and destruction. I want a synthesis of the mortal world and the supernatural world.

I used to think it was my duty to protect the mortal world from the supernatural because no one else would. I felt that mortals needed to be protected or else they would be taken advantage of by things they couldn’t understand. Except, they can understand. Robin is proof of that to me. She’s managed to stand up to Vincent, despite their past.

And mortals aren’t blameless in this mess either. Nate hides that he’s a ghost to avoid telling mortals the truth.

I am a champion for the Truth, am I not? Then how can I stand by when the world is divided out of fear of the Truth?  

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.

OOC: Three Groups of Three Things

Three Things Chantel Wants 
1. To stop Israel’s darkest self from rampaging across Toronto (willing to make a deal with God for more help and information to do so) 
2. To pull Huntstone out of her head and destroy him properly (willing to make deals with people powerful enough to do so and cross moral boundaries to complete the task. For example, put Huntstone in the body of a baby and then kill the kid.)
3. To claim Toronto completely as her “territory” and use that power to forbid the abuse of mortals in supernatural and criminal matters. To steal a phrase from Dresden, to become a Freeholding Lord (willing to make deals, mindscrew people, gain power and murder other power holders who don’t agree with her in order to secure this power. See what Robin said about Chantel’s thoughts on getting rid of Samael. That wasn't an ideal thought) 

Three Obstacles in Chantel’s Life 
1. Malik Huntstone, who is in her head (Huntstone wishes to come back to life and is currently Chantel’s darkest self. Chantel will only stop short of killing herself to prevent him from getting out.) 
2. Her parents, who have gone back to their cultist ways (Chantel does care about them and their well being is stressing her out. Threats to them will cause her to change her course of action. She’s willing to make deals with anyone who can promise to help her “fix” them) 
3. The missing copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People (the book has sensitive information in it that Chanel doesn’t want released. She’s willing to bargain with Samael to regain the book, given she knows Vincent has it) 
  
Three Secrets that Chantel Wants to Hide From the Party
1. That in the past, she gave Huntstone power to rule parts of Toronto. Along with this, she wanted to cross over into this world to rule it in an age of madness and chaos (is willing to erase PC memories to hide this old shame).
2. The information in Huntstone’s book explains Chantel’s original nature (is willing to destroy the book to prevent this information, despite the complications this poses with the wraith) 
3. That the person who unnerves Chantel the most in the current supernatural landscape is Leanansidhe. Also, she isn’t sure if this is out of fear of Leanansidhe’s power or out of an physical attraction to Leanansidhe as an “equal” (is willing to break her stance on not lying to cover this up. Also, to prevent Leanansidhe from discussing any interactions, Chantel is willing to make promises).

Tore Down the Canvas That Held Up the Sun (Feb 12 2014, Part 2)

No right-minded club would welcome six teenagers in their street clothes. We tried to dress the part; I wore a business suit and blouse combo that I used to wear to my parent’s dinner parties, back when I was invited to such things. Really, I think that Robin needs to invest in a suit like that. Slinky dresses grab people’s attention quickly, but don’t give the sense of power you need to control a room. 

Vincent mentioned his last name to the doorman. That was enough to get us a table and a bottle of wine without being carded. The club itself was a touch simplistic and dull, although the view was nice. It was also missing Mr. Scott among the club’s patrons.

Huntstone says I have no taste. It’s not 1986 anymore, he says, and it’s hard to get a physical space that allows a crowd to slip into the right mindset for anything beyond the most simple magic. Psychology has always factored into magic and maybe it was easier to sell that state of mind in the past. It was definitely easier in the distant past, certainly. 

In the centre of the main room was a spiral staircase that led up to the VIP lounge. Our best guess was Scott was upstairs, but... well... we had tracked a sick, powerful man to his stronghold. Vincent had explained that Scott was possessed by a wraith, a shade of a dead person who couldn’t let go of life and was connected to a physical object to maintain an existence in this world. This wraith was attached to an old book, but that's all we had to go on. We needed information on what he or the wraith was doing upstairs before we walked in.  

In the middle of tossing together the barest of strategies, we noticed that Robin was no longer sitting with us. She was walking, as if in a trace, across the dining room and up the staircase.   

The rest of us stormed up the stairs. There was a supernatural threshold waiting for us at the top of the stairs; it was a spell cast by the crowd of people in the lounge. Passing through it felt like my flesh was pierced by million tiny hooks that tried to rip me apart.   

Huntstone says he’s impressed that I lasted as long as I did. He attributes it to the time I spent watching him manipulate humanity. I must have learned how to reverse basic manipulations and renforce myself. There’s no way I could have learned it on my own.    

I staggered through the spell intact. My companions weren’t so fortunate; Israel, Caleb and Ardath succumbed to their true self. Israel and Ardath didn’t reveal anything I didn’t know (full blown angel and fae), but Caleb appeared to be a shifter. Vincent didn’t go all fire and brimstone, but looked shaken up from the spell. Robin, thankfully, seemed okay and didn’t hang around long. 

Leading the cult was Mr. Scott, flagged on both sides with my parents. That explained where they had been disappearing too. The heavy magical presence hanging in the air was undeniable - the wraith was part of Malik Huntstone. The cultist that I had allied with back when I was my full self. The man who I thought I killed sixteen years ago. 

Israel’s magic knocked out all the humans in the room, my parents included, leaving the wraith still up. Ardath called upon his fairy forces. Caleb suddenly turned away from the wraith and attacked Israel, causing Israel to toss him out of a nearby window. Vincent grabbed the book that served as the wraith’s object of power and ran out of the lounge.

According to Vincent’s earlier explanation, a wraith is released freely into the world if its host body and object are destroyed. With both Israel and Ardath attacking, Scott wouldn’t be long for this world. I didn't know what Vincent was going to do with that book. If I didn't do something about Huntstone, he'd be free again.

I did what I needed to do; I unmade myself, unfolding the constraints that made me human and took up the form of my other self. I wanted to remind that fragment of Huntstone about the fear and terror of his death as I drained his wraith into my existence. The transfer forcefully and painfully jolted me back into my human self again.

Huntstone is amused that I would consider this a good idea. It’s exactly what he wanted sixteen years ago - him and I existing in the same body, sharing the same power source. He might not be in control right now, but it’s only a matter of time before I fall and he’ll take over my body. 

Most of the battle was over by the time I became human again. Ardath killed what was left of Scott's human body. Israel threatened to transform the rest of the cult into salt. I begged him not to. My “parents” aren’t really my parents, but I’ve lived with them for 16 year and desperately wanted to know why they drifted back to their old habits. I wouldn’t be able to learn that and do something about it if they were piles of salt. 

Israel backed down. He told me that everyone in that room deserved to die for what they had gone, then he flew off into the night.   

I found myself alone, standing by the body of a dead man, surrounded by a room of sleeping cultists, the sound of police sirens growing closer. The will of my former partner-turned-rival was buried in my head and none of my friends were around to help me. Well, shit.  

And Do You Think We'd Realize Just What We'd Done (Feb 12 2014, Part 1)

The Stars

There’s a voice in the back of my head that wasn’t there the day before. I’m not sure if it's really there. I’m not sure if it’s separate from me or if it’s just me criticizing my actions and attributing them to another person. It sounds and talks like Huntstone, or at least how I remember him speaking, which implies that it’s probably not real. It’s not Huntstone in my head, but his abstract will to hang onto this plane of existence. It should have a drive, but not its own voice.  

This doesn’t make it any less unsettling.
 
Welcoming me back from spring break was a note stuffed under the radio station door. It was from Vincent and claimed that not only was Mr Scott, our science teacher from last semester, a pedophile, but also not even mortal. Vincent doubted his ability to handle the threat and probably guessed that I wouldn’t tolerate that much abuse of power at the school.

That voice in my head, the Huntstone that probably isn’t, says that I was foolish to not see this coming. It’s in my base nature to challenge anyone who would dare claim to have more power than me. That was why we got along so well in the past - I can’t refuse allying with someone who admits being weaker.

I never thought much of Mr Scott, but the only way to prove Vincent’s claims and then be able to do something about them was to find evidence. After consulting with Israel, Robin, and Ardath, Scott's cellphone and computer seemed like places to start.

We knew that Scott would be in the boys locker room before rugby practice. Robin and I marched right into the locker room while the team was changing and I announced that we were girls invading their private space and required the use of their cell phones for a very important reason. The team couldn’t say “No” to us. It provided enough of a distraction for Ardath to steal Scott's cellphone.

Huntstone seems amused that I didn’t walk in and order Scott and the students to present their cellphones to me as an offering. He points out that we used to do it all the time, although the phones were bigger and the content much more important than the drivel of high school students. I tried to explain that it was because I didn’t want Robin to think less of me; she was at my side the whole time and trusts me to be a decent person.

To which Huntstone replies “If you wanted her to be there, then she should have been following you from behind”.
 
The phones didn’t reveal a lot - the team’s phones had some uncomfortable text messages from Scott, but Scott was very careful about covering his tracks. I called up Tobias to help us recover the Scott’s deleted cell data - he has a good head for tech. Tobias managed to uncover some of the deleted files, uncovering part of the evidence that we needed. Robin and Vincent went to return the cell phones to the team.
 
What happened next I’ve been only able to piece together through secondhand reports. Scott attacked Israel and a boy named Caleb after practice, assuming the form of some sort of shadow monster. Shortly thereafter, the same monster would appear in the boys locker room, attacking Robin, Vincent and Dean, killing Dean. I didn’t even know something was up until emergency services showed up at the school.  
Dean’s murder brought the group of us, plus Caleb, together in one place. It was suggested that we get into Scott’s apartment as soon as possible and seize his computer to get the rest of the proof we needed to do something about him. However, no one could agree how to get into that apartment. During the argument, someone figured out that Scott wasn’t at the apartment at all, but instead at a club downtown for the evening.
 
All of us were hellbent on making Scott pay for what happened at the school. Looking back, chasing Scott to the club and confronting him was the stupidest idea we could decide on. But, at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do.     

“As it was intended to appear,” Huntstone says.

Another Time, Another Place

Days Gone By 

From what I have been able to piece together, the year everything began was 1977. Well, not everything, but 1977 is as comprehensible to many of my classmates as the beginning of all creation. For all purposes, they are the same abstract mental concept.

But back to 1977. 

The Self-Help Book of a Madman

On a late summer day in 1977, a man named Malik Huntstone wandered into a used bookstore. Malik was an unremarkable university student in nearly every way - boring, dull and uninspiring.

While digging through the store in search of used textbooks, Malik came across a battered copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People. What caught Malik’s eye while flipping through the book wasn’t Carnegie’s prose, but the partly incoherent ramblings scrawled in the gutters and margins. The owner of the bookstore, a man named Eliot Stevens, sold it to Malik for next to nothing. Eliot seemed surprised when Malik brought the book to the counter; he didn’t remember receiving the book, nor would he have considered stocking such a damaged book.

It took weeks for Malik to make sense of the notes. He theorized that the writings referred to powerful beings from outside of normal mortal understanding and how their wisdom was interconnected with Carnegie’s ideas. Knowledge from the fae, vampires, angels and demons could be used for profit in social practices and in business. One of the referenced figures was an entity known as the Messenger From Spaces Inbetween. “The Messenger doesn’t fear truth,” the writings explained. “The Messenger speaks a fuller Truth than can be created here and lays waste to any lie that stands in its path.” But the notes also mentioned that reaching the Messenger was near impossible - it existed beyond this reality. Malik took that as a challenge.

Time passed. Malik got a banking job downtown and slowly worked his way up the corporate ladder. His drive to contact the Messenger lead to him studying very basic magic. He had mastered some elemental magic, almost strictly all earth-based, but not much more. The Huntstones a minor natural affinity for magic, it seemed, but the family line lacked any real power. Shattering the barriers of this plane of reality would take more than they were capable of.

The Illuminated Brotherhood 

The answer to Malik’s problem came in the spring of 1982, if my understanding of mortal time is correct. While working late at his office one night, Malik was visited by the man who sold him the book five years earlier - Eliot Stevens. Eliot revealed that he was a magic user himself, one from a much more established family than the Huntstones. Malik was growing dangerously in power and, in Eliot's mind, needed to be put down before he destroyed the whole city.

Eliot should have succeeded in destroying Malik. The only reason he didn’t was due to freak luck on Malik's part. Malik used his weaker magic to redirect Eliot’s intended killing blow down to the earth, wrapping the spell in a plea for Messenger to answer back. The increased power of the spell was finally enough to finally reach the Messenger, making Eliot and Malik the beginnings of a cult that would become known as the Illuminated Brotherhood.

Oh, the Messenger let Eliot live. While Malik swore loyalty to the being, he lacked enough magic skill to open up the stable connection between himself and the Messenger. Eliot’s power was required for that; he was a magic battery supply, to compare it to something in this reality. Not that Eliot was really a threat anymore. When the Messenger spoke his Truth through Malik, Eliot lost any will to rebel.

Malik retitled himself Hunterstone the Excavator. He vowed to rebuild the Messenger’s broken cult and restore it in Toronto in exchange for small tastes of the Messenger’s power. .

The decade or so that followed was a haze of drugs and excess. The Illuminated Brotherhood was formed mostly of office workers and bankers and, at the risk of sounding trite, people with such money know how to throw a good party. It was a series of banquets that would make even the Gods jealous.  

Huntstone was content to be the cult’s leader, calling the members together into secret rooms and hidden spaces normal people wouldn’t dare speak of. The Truth that the Messenger whispered to Huntstone allowed him to become a powerful businessman, one feared even outside of supernatural circles. And among the supernatural? Those that remained downtown reported directly to Huntstone. Times were good.
 
And Eliot. He was there for all of it. Sort of.

The Fall of the Brotherhood

Eventually, Huntstone realised that the power given by the Messenger would only go so far. It was the late 90s by mortal time then and Huntstone had grown listless. He wasn’t free to contact the Messenger himself - he needed Eliot for that - and the Messenger was the one who controlled if the Truth could be spoken. Huntstone was a mouthpiece, nothing more. That angered him.

Huntstone knew that Eliot's family had collected magic knowledge over generations. They had amassed a giant magical library, hidden deep within the used bookstore. It was Eliot's job to protect that library, but it wasn't like he had any freedom to stop Huntstone.
 
Digging through the library’s books, Huntstone discovered a ritual that could reforge two souls into a new being. While the ritual was intended to combine mortal souls, Huntstone speculated that the soul of something more than mortal could be fused to a mortal soul with enough raw power. The ritual involved a human sacrifice and willpower to amplify the energy from that sacrifice. The cult could provide the willpower, Huntstone decided. The sacrifice, that could be obtained easily enough.   

When the Messenger contacted Huntstone next, the cult leader explained that he had finally found a ritual to rip apart the barrier that protected this reality. The Messenger could finally have the freedom to reign Earth in its full form. The Messenger greedily agreed to go along with the plan, not questioning Huntstone’s loyalty or intentions.

Part way through the ritual, however, the Messenger realised something was terribly wrong. The ritual was meant to bind it, not let it roam free. It lashed out at the cultists, slaughtering Huntstone and countless others in a single violent blow. Unwittingly, this attack completed the sacrifice needed for the ritual - the Messenger was doomed to become mortal.

The Messenger’s existence fused to the nearest living body - an infant human intended to be the ritual's sacrifice. The two beings fused into one existence. Me? I? Us? We? They? It’s been 16 years and I still don’t have a good answer to that.

My parents were two hapless cultists who lived through the initial attack. The Messenger must have realized how impossible it was for a parentless infant to survive. Or maybe the infant, stealing some of the Messenger's power, decided it was going to make its own parents. I don’t remember who decided what needed to happen. I do know, in either case, they now believe we were a family who had been kidnapped and nearly killed by madmen.      

Not all of the cultists were swiped out. Some managed to escape. I believe Eliot lived. I don’t remember seeing his body in the aftermath. On the other hand, I haven’t seen him since. Huntstone is long dead and accounted for in the city's records. The dead cultists are long forgotten. I’m pretty sure the media wrote it all off as a mass suicide. 

This reality has such trouble coping with the Truth.