A Sailor Moon tale with very few Sailor Moon characters, this
story is part of the SM-Expanded shared universe, taking place in the
same world as Mark Latus' "Dark Kingdom Renegades", Frank Barr's
"Trenchcoat-Mask", and many another nifty 'fic.
It's been a while since I posted the prologue, so please bear
with me (or visit our site).
...And no, this is NOT a self-insert story. n.n;
--Sam Ashley
"He beat up ten ninjas with a loaf of french bread!"
.__ _ _
/ | | \ The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight (YEAH BABY!) / \
\ / | / Warrior Chef--Avatar of Virtue--The Muse of Deep Left Field _\_/_
.\ \/ / *Spem Successus Alit* Member, Institute for Yahtzee Theory |
..\ / Makoto--Ai--Yuuki - CoC OtE SA+RM L5R <*> - MARS NEEDS JADEITE! |
...\/ Sailor Moon Expanded: www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded/ |
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: Awqbc1.txt
Previous chapters of AWQBC, along with many other nifty tales, may be found
archived in the SME website at:
www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded/
LAST TIME, IN THE PROLOGUE: Hanyu Mimi, aka Mimete of the Witches 5,
woke from nightmare to find herself free of Pharaoh 90's influence...but
still trapped in Eudial's Electric Warp device. Said machine had been
retrieved from Mugen Academy and taken to California by an eccentric (to
say the least) wizard; this man, one Michael Maxwell, displayed a
surprisingly thorough knowledge of both the Death Busters' and Senshis'
activities. He claimed to be, or have been, the Warlock Wolf: a name
Mimi recognized as a semi-legendary figure who had been the bane of dark
mages for hundreds if not thousands of years, but who had not been
sighted since before the advent of the Sailor Senshi.
While grateful to her host, Mimi finally lost her temper: if Maxwell
had known about their activities all along, even before the Senshi caught
on, why hadn't the Warwolf intervened _before_ Professor Tomoe opened the
gate to Tau Ceti? What had he been doing while the Senshi fought the
forces of evil? Where, in short, had he _been_ the last few years? She
demanded the truth.
And so Mike's story begins: the tale of "...how, with nothing but
the best of intentions, I showed another ancient evil force the way to
invade Earth, wrecked a good portion of the Central Coast, found and lost
the only woman I could ever love...and killed sixty-eight innocent
people."
The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
in association with
The Sailor Moon Expanded Crew
presents:
AN AMERICAN WIZARD IN QUEEN BERYL'S COURT
by W. Samuel Ashley
Chapter 1: If I Knew Then...
"...And let him be cast forth, into the exterior darkness."
--Matthew 22:13
The whole story?
Yeah, I guess it'd save time if you get it all in one lump. And
maybe telling the tale will help me deal with it. Shared pain is
lessened, as a wise man once said...
I have to warn you, though, there are some things I know that aren't
my secrets to tell. So expect a few holes here and there.
...And I've been told I ramble a lot when I tell stories, so if you
think I'm going off on a tangent, feel free to hold up a stop sine.
The whole story. Where to start?
Might as well start with the day everything went horribly wrong, and
digress as necessary...
Santa Cruz, California
October 17, 1989
Some days you just shouldn't bother getting up in the morning.
Unfortunately, this never becomes clear until _very_ late in the
day.
Take this particular day. If I'd known I was headed straight for
the most horrible SNAFU of my career, I'd have pulled the covers over my
head, switched off the damn alarm clock, and hibernated for a few weeks.
...At least that's what I like to think...but the truth is, I'd probably
have rechecked my calculations, convinced myself nothing could possibly
go wrong, and forged ahead into oblivion like the fool I was.
I woke as usual to the dulcet tones of the Frantics' "Boot to the
Head"--there's nothing better to get you going on those foggy October
mornings. Not that I needed the stimulus on that particular day; I'd
been waiting for it almost a year. Like a kid on Christmas to the tenth
power: juiced up on excitement and anticipation until I could barely
sleep the night before. Only I wasn't the one getting the presents...I'd
be _giving_ them out, to everyone on Earth.
Today would be the fulfillment of over twelve thousand years of
struggle and pain, twelve millennia of holding on to a distant dream.
Today was the day I'd bring the magic back.
Some folks boast that they can trace their ancestry back for
centuries. Well, whether those guys came over on the Mayflower or were
waiting at Plymouth with a concession stand, I've got news for the
bluebloods: you're pikers. Latecomers on a cosmic scale. My family line
goes back four hundred and ninety-two generations, back before anyone
else picked up the pieces and started recording history again. Yes,
_again_...
* * *
"Ano...Maxwell-san?"
The tall mage broke off his recitation. "Is there a problem?"
Mimi smiled wanly. "Not really...but if this is going to take a
while, I could really do with something to drink. I don't think I _need_
to eat anything in here, but I still _feel_ thirsty..."
"Yeesh--I've been living alone for so long my manners have
atrophied," Maxwell muttered contritely. "Well, there's milk, apple
juice, whiskey, cof--well, not coffee exactly--"
"...Not _exactly_?"
"Um..." The wizard looked away, embarrassed. "I'm afraid there'll
be a slight problem with food. I'm, er..."
Mimi's heart sank. "Oh, Kami-sama, no...I didn't think there was
anyone outside of Japan who had..."
He nodded, grimly. "Kotobuki's Disorder. Whenever I try to cook
anything more complicated than a Cup-o-Noodles, I go completely insane."
"So if you try to make coffee..."
"Well, that's not so bad. I've managed to get a consistent result
there--not quite what you'd expect from coffee, but not inedible either."
He grinned. "Coffee-tea: half Kona Gold, half Lapsang Souchong, enough
caffeine to wake the dead."
"Actually, that sounds...interesting. What the heck, I'll try a
cup..."
"If you're sure, then. I'll be right back."
Maxwell walked offscreen, toward (Mimi presumed) the kitchen. Much
rattling and clanging ensued, along with an occasional steam-hiss and
at least one yelp of agony. _Was this really such a good idea...?_
Five minutes later, he returned to her field of view, wheeling a
small cart with a bowl of sugar cubes, a cream pitcher, a steaming cup
of...coffee?...and saucer thereon. His changeable T-shirt, now
slightly damp, had switched to Edvard Munch's "The Scream". "So," he
said, "I think the next step's up to you."
"I suppose this is as good a time as any to test out the Electric
Warp system," Mimi sighed. "You'd better get out of the way--we don't
want _both_ of us trapped in here."
Mike nodded and stepped back off camera. Now let's see, how was
this supposed to work from inside...?
Ah, yes. A thought called up a control panel; she carefully
extended the ghostmachine's digitizer-array dish, limited its field to
the cart, and intoned: "Witch--ack. Death Busters Electric Warp!"
The cart and its contents vanished from the monitor, and reappeared
in front of her, within the virtual realm. The dish retracted
automatically, and Michael's worried face poked into the camera.
"Everything all right?"
"Looks like." She took the cup, smelled its rather odd but not
unappealing aroma. "It came through fine, at least if it's supposed to
smell like this..." Sip. "WHOOF! *gasp* _Damn_ this stuff is fierce!"
The tarry tea-flavor blended ...interestingly with the gourmet roast.
Or perhaps "synergistically" was more the word. Mimi dropped two sugar
cubes into the cup, then five more just to be safe. "It's...pretty good,
really. Arigato."
"De nada," her host replied offhandedly. "So, shall I get back to
the story...?"
She nodded.
* * *
Breakfast, as usual, was a brutally plain bowl of cereal. It must
look damn odd to outsiders, this huge fancy kitchen stocked entirely with
convenience foods, but I'd long since learned to accept my nature: the
only thing I can cook with any real chance of success is curry. Don't
ask me why, almost everyone with KD has the same odd exception. Trouble
is, I HATE curry. The last time I'd dared to _eat_ a dish of my own
creation I couldn't cast spells for a week.
The extreme secrecy in which my life was shrouded made hiring a
cook, or even a catering service, unfeasible...and made it _damn_ hard to
meet girls... so if I wanted to eat it was this or dine out all the time.
Well, by this time next month secrecy would no longer be a problem.
Heck, my face would be on the front page of every newspaper on Earth:
Michael Robert Maxwell, The Man who Saved the World! I'd be Time's Man
of the Year, the surefire winner of the Nobel Prize, and--let's not
forget--the World's Most Eligible Bachelor!
Of course, fundamentalists everywhere would be demanding that I be
burned at the stake. There's a little cloud in every silver lining...
Modern society isn't the first civilization to rise on this battered
world of ours. It isn't even the _second_...more like the sixth, if you
count a couple of nonhuman precursors.
First came the Ancients, so long ago that the last traces of their
presence were lost with our immediate predecessors. More recently, the
Sidhe and their faerie kindred, like the Ancients refugees from another
star. When they retreated to a pocket reality, the humans who'd unseated
them built an empire on their magicks, only to lose it when the alien
power faded.
Humanity fell back into savagery, only to rise again when a relic of
the Ancients granted them great knowledge--and the ability to travel
throughout all the worlds of Sol System, made habitable by the Ancients'
unfathomable powers. This Golden Imperium fell to alien invaders, but
centuries later their yoke was thrown off...and the Silver Millennium
began.
So: Once upon a time, there was a shining civilization built on the
power of magic; an age of wonder and beauty, when tall ships rode the
winds between the worlds; a...you get the idea by now. Unfortunately,
ages of wonder and beauty have a distressing tendency to end in spasms of
apocalyptic destruction. Odd that. The Silver Millennium met its end
around twelve thousand years ago--okay, twelve thousand, three hundred
and forty-three last February--at the hands of a seriously demented
sorceress named Beryl, queen of Arcadia. Spurned love and hunger for
power drove her to attempt takeover of the Earth; but to accomplish her
goals she ultimately released Metallia, the Mother of Demons and
incarnation of all human evil, from her prison in the Abyss. Metallia's
presence in the physical plane somehow warped whatever magical effects
kept the rest of the Solar System inhabitable and wiped out all life
therein. That and Metallia's subsequent banishment turned Earth's
continental drift up to "frappe'", severely rearranging the landscape in a
matter of years and causing no end of headaches for contemporary
geologists.
Somewhere along the way, Earth's mana wells--sources of all magical
energy for this planet--were capped off. That pretty much sealed the
fate of the era of magical civilization, and even the memory of the
Silver Millennium was distorted beyond recognition if not lost
outright...
...with one slight exception.
I made sure for the n-to-the-nth-power time that everything I might
need was stored in pocketspace. Not hard to do as one hundred and
twenty-eight generations before me had dumped anything they didn't have
room for, or which was too openly magical to leave lying around, into the
extradimensional warehouse. The control ring I wore, one of three, came
complete with a mental inventory program--sort of a precursor to the
database. Yes, it was all there, same as last night and the day before
that and every time I'd checked for the past week. Mental note: don't
drink coffee today, Mike, you're wired enough as is.
Among the last valiant defenders of Earth there was a man by the
name of Jerran Mazael: a court wizard of the Golden Kingdom of Mu, sworn
to defend the Emerald Throne and so forth and so on. Not of Muvian blood
himself, he was a second-generation immigrant--his father was half
Mercurian and half Belter, and his mom hailed from California.
(No, really--the modern state is named after the "legendary"
kingdom, one of my ancestors ghostwrote a fantasy novel loosely based on
it just as the Europeans were exploring North America so the name was
picked up again. It was a little tropical island kingdom, some way off
the west coast, so...)
Jerran, being a perceptive kinda guy, realized the probable
consequences of Beryl's war early on; unfortunately he couldn't get folks
to listen to him--no one wanted to believe Beryl would actually go so far
as to free the Demon Queen, destroying most of what she wanted to rule.
Preparing for the worst, he sent his wife and daughter into hiding in the
most geographically stable location he could find--somewhere in what's
now the Canadian Shield, I believe--and gave them a concise history of
the Silver Millennium, with instructions to keep it safe and the memory
of Mu alive until things had settled down enough to start rebuilding,
however many generations that might take.
In this, Jerran's foresight very nearly failed him.
All preparations made, I had just one stop before heading out: the
family shrine.
Built in the closest approximation of ancient Muvian architecture we
could manage, the shrine hall takes up most of the basement. A bit
untraditional but it'd be a lot harder to hide above ground level, and a
room half the size of a football field the walls of which were hung with
four hundred and ninety-two portraits and family groups--many of which
were done on deerskins so old as to invite carbon-dating--would be
considered odd even for this city. Then there was the flag on the far
wall, the ancient emblem of the Terran Confederation: on a blue field, a
golden sunburst with twenty-three points--one blackened and broken. One
point for each of the old Kingdoms of Earth, minus one for fallen
Arcadia.
I paid silent respects to 492-Times-Great-Grandfather Jerran, and
walked down the rows of distant ancestors until I reached familiar faces.
Nicholas and Sarah Maxwell: my parents, dead these three years. Lighting
an incense-cone, I knelt and addressed their portrait.
"Mom, Dad...this is the day. I cracked the last of the code months
ago, but the planetary influences weren't right 'til now... waiting all
that time nearly drove me nuts, but I managed.
"Today our oaths are going to be fulfilled, the dreams of twelve
thousand years realized. The seal's going down, and it's just the
beginning; with full power to work with, and magic on the _outside_ of
the Outer Seals, I won't need to wait another year. Uluru's next on my
list; then Giza, Angkor Wat, St. Louis...I figure on breaking the seals
on Tokyo in three months.
"By this time next year, magic will be a power in the world
again...and you can finally rest in peace. Mom, Dad...everyone...
"...I swear, I'll make you proud."
The devastation following Metallia's banishment exceeded Jerran's
wildest nightmares. On top of that, he hadn't foreseen that some callous
bastard would seal off the mana wells--no one ever found out just who did
it, but the general feeling in the family is that it was a last bit of
vengeance on Beryl's part. There was no safe place to hide. The seas
opened, swallowing Atlantis, Lemuria, and Mu; earthquakes and volcanoes
turned the surviving continents upside-down; anything left was pulverized
by glaciers advancing with unnatural speed. Widespread drought and
famine were the last straws; within five years, all traces of the
Kingdoms of Earth had vanished, and humanity was reduced to scattered
bands of desperate wanderers, trying to survive in a world that had
simply gone mad.
And yet, through all the chaos, through fire and darkness and the
breaking of the world...through the fall of civilization and a swift
descent into barbarism...
...somehow, Jerran Mazael's daughter held on to her father's dream.
And her son after her, and her granddaughter...on and on, in an
unbroken line...for twelve thousand years. They passed on the Ton-lo
Codex and the spoken and written language as best they could; they held
on to the memory of the Silver Millennium, while all around them the
world changed...
...and they held on to the magic.
I could have teleported over to the site, but even with pre-prepared
departure and arrival circles it'd take too much time and power.
Besides, I wanted to go by the scenic route: to take one last look at the
world before transforming it utterly. This might be my last free moment
for years; once the seals were down my _real_ work would begin. It'd
take years just to get magic accepted by western civilization, as a
benign force rather than the power of Satan or some such nonsense;
developing a new magic-based society could easily occupy the rest of my
life. It was all too easy to imagine myself in the role of D.D.
Harriman, from Heinlein's "The Man who Sold the Moon" and "Requiem":
achieving his dream, yet unable to take part in it himself...until his
death. 'Home is the sailor, home from sea...'
...Ancestors, I was getting morbid...
Anyway. I drove the Stingray down Empire Grade, heading through the
UCSC campus into Santa Cruz proper. The forested foothills and open
meadows of the University of California at Santa Cruz were a beautiful
sight as always; this place might be the only campus in the States where
deer and cougar would wander into the parking lots. It was certainly the
_weirdest_ university in the US, if not the world, but that's par for the
course in this fair city. (By way of example: back in '86 the student
body overwhelmingly rejected the official university mascot--a sea lion--
in favor of a critter they felt was more distinctive and symbolic of the
region: _Ariolomax dolichophalus_, a shockingly yellow mollusc known
commonly as the banana slug.) Down past Cowell College and the Bay Tree
Bookstore, swinging past the Festival Glen where some of the oddest
versions of Shakespeare known to man are performed each summer; at last I
turned onto Bay Street and the city.
H'mmm. I know you were working with some pretty advanced magic--all
those flamethrowers, jet packs, alchemically altered daimons--but how
much did you really know about the _theory_ behind it? I'm not sure how
much I need to explain here.
...Yeah, thought so. Nothing but amateurs these days...oh, sorry,
no offense meant.
Magic is part and parcel of the world, an infinitely renewed energy
that wells up from the molten core at certain spots and spreads across
the Earth. At least, that's the way it's supposed to work. With the mana
wells capped off, all the wonders that relied on that power failed and
died; skyships fell like stones, wizard-built castles crumbled, and
spellcasting became nearly impossible.
Nearly.
The seals consumed almost all the mana flowing into them, but a thin
trickle escaped into the world. Some of this in turn was confined to the
regions around the wells by an outer ring of wards, but a little--a bare
minimum--made it out. The mystic knowledge of the Silver Millennium was
predicated on the vast amounts of mana then available, and few or none of
those spells would function in the magic-starved world; but there was
_some_ magic left, and there were a scattered few who would not give up
on it. Gradually, over thousands of years, new forms of spellcasting
were discovered.
The Mazael clan now had a new goal; the restoration of civilization,
they felt, could not happen without the restoration of magic. In the
cataclysm's wake, however, a new attitude was spreading among the
survivors: magic, _they_ felt, was responsible for the destruction of the
world--so magic, and magicians of any stripe, were not to be trusted. At
best, shunned; at worst... well, let's not go there. Anyone even
suspected of wielding arcane forces was in serious trouble. This
perception wasn't universal, and most post-lapsarian cultures that did
subscribe to it eventually forgot, but by the time magic could have been
widely accepted again nearly every scrap of true sorcerous lore had been
lost. Fear of wizards, moreover, _would_ persist into historical times
in the culture that eventually produced three of the most influential
religions of the modern era.
_There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or
his daughter to pass through the fire, or that uses divination, or an
observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch; or a charmer, or a
consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer._
Or, to sum up:
_Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live._
Thus, the family went underground. The Mazaels became nomads,
wandering the world in search of any mystic knowledge or artifacts that
had survived the Fall, and of the mana wells themselves. Our oaths and
history were closely guarded secrets, passed on only along a single line
of descent; at no time would more than six living people know the full
truth. Husbands and wives adopted into the clan either swore oaths of
secrecy or were kept out of the loop...or, in extreme cases, subjected to
spells to insure their silence. The line came close to extinction time
and again, but we Mazaels are a tenacious breed...
On the surface, Santa Cruz is a nice, quiet little college town on
the north coast of Monterey Bay. On the surface. Dig a little deeper
and you'll find we fit in nicely with the general view of California as a
weird and silly place; dig deep enough and you'll realize that compared
to this town, the rest of the state is a model of sanity and boredom. We
don't generally have the open, in-your-face insanity that San Francisco
and Los Angeles are famous for; Santa Cruz is more _quietly_ weird, the
kind of weird that sneaks up behind you and reads strange poetry at you
while daubing clown makeup on your face. Tokyo might be a magnet for
supernatural creatures and magical phenomena, but SC is the place where
all the _non_supernatural weirdness will inevitably find itself.
You may well have seen SC without knowing it; "The Lost Boys" was
filmed here, as was "Killer Klowns from Outer Space." Mind you, we don't
really have vampires...we just have vampire poseurs, roaming downtown
after dark in small black-clad cliques and inspiring passersby to cry:
"Children of the night... shut up!"
The quirky locals were out in full force today. Driving down
Pacific Avenue, I noticed the Belligerent Poet accosting a hapless yuppie
couple. Further along, the Hurdy-Gurdy Man was cranking his odd-but-
delightful musical whatchamacallit and putting on a puppet show; just out
of his range, a couple of very good bagpipers separated the strong from
the weak. An elite squad of Krishnas, more Goths than I cared to think
about, and a small pack of neo-Nazi skinheads spouted their various
brands of philosophy or vitriol with the usual absolute lack of effect on
passersby; and a bunch of ninjas were assiduously failing to conceal
themselves in the shrubbery.
Probably a good sign. The Santa Cruz Weirdness Effect was cranked
all the way up; you _never_ see ninjas on Pacific. (Usually they hang
around Beach Flats, annoying the Boardwalk-goers.) Ought to make the
breaking easier.
At least, I heartily _hoped_ so.
Over thousands of years of exploration, the family discovered the
new locations of many mana wells. What little magic remained to the
world was concentrated in their vicinity, but even that was a pale shadow
of what had once been...most of the time.
Mana wells vary greatly in strength; the four largest are at least
an order of magnitude more powerful than the rest. From most to least
mana output, the Big Four are located at Tokyo, Stonehenge, northern
Canada...and Santa Cruz. Of course, the Tokyo well--on the site of old
Arcadia's capital, as near as we can make out--pumps out more mana than
the other three put together.
There's a sort of pressure-release system built into the Seals; if
they simply bottled the mana up, increasing strain would eventually pop
them like a champagne cork...and that kind of uncontrolled unsealing
would be extraordinarily bad. Anything could happen. _Everything_ could
happen, and probably would, all at once. Instead, in addition to the
constant consumption of energy that keeps the seals themselves in place,
excess mana is vented through one of the Big Four seals into deep space.
The position rotates among the Four every few hundred years; it's been
Tokyo's turn since around 1432. The concentration of mana around the
Seals has..._peculiar_ effects on probability and the space-time
continuum; these are most pronounced around the current vent, but the
other wells all have their little...oddities.
As I turned off Pacific and headed down toward Soquel, I sent out a
quick mystic probe to the nearby Anomaly. Good, very good... the links
I'd set up to the St. George Hotel were all in place. The architect
couldn't have _known_ he was building it around a permanent spacewarp,
but nevertheless it's a five-dimensional structure and very easy to get
lost in. The St. George was one of the linchpins of the scheme, an
anchor to which I and my parents and grandparents before me had attached
dozens of delicate manastrings; they spread across the county, linked to
the borders of the Outer and Inner Seals and to the other Anomaly up in
the mountains. When the moment came, I'd begin tugging those strings,
and the Seals would distort and weaken; a few hours of that and the
currents of mana would stretch them beyond their limits, and magic would
be loose in the world again.
Working magic became a matter of conservation. Even extremely
simple, low-power spells like firelighting now required more time and
effort than rubbing two sticks of wood together; the challenge was to
either find some other source of energy, or reduce power requirements.
Most wizards, I'm sorry to say, went with the first option.
Necromancy is an ugly word. It's even uglier when put into
practice.
Most of the world frowns on killing people, or even animals, to
extract their psychic energy and convert it into mana. This did nothing
to improve magic's reputation, and somewhere along the line my ancestors
decided something had to be done before humanity was poisoned against
wizardry forever.
Thus began the Hunt.
The road led me down by the bay, past the Beach Boardwalk and the
yacht harbor. As the morning fog burned off, surfers could be seen
continuing the endless search for the perfect wave, as they had since the
day a century past when two Hawaiian princes introduced their national
sport to the bewildered locals; Jack O'Neill was out there himself today,
gray beard and eyepatch unmistakable, no doubt testing some new
refinement of the wetsuit.
It was a beautiful day. How much would change, I wondered, after
the unsealing? Surely not even the rise of magic could draw their
attention away from the sea. Jack'd probably come up with a water-
repellent/heating spell within the year.
The thought crossed my mind, as it had countless times the past few
years: could society cope? Would the chaos of returning magic save
humanity or plunge the world into another, far worse dark age?
As always, I squelched that traitorous impulse. Magic was needed,
urgently, desperately. The human species was on the road to self-
destruction anyway, and there was no other solution. I'd follow my
ancestors' dream to its end, no matter what karma I might accumulate in
the process...
...but for the sake of everyone in California, I'd best not repeat
the error of sixty years past.
Problem: how to maintain absolute secrecy and still hunt down
wizards who abused their power?
Solution: a foolproof disguise, and the creation of a legend.
Somewhere around the fifth millennium BCE, as primitive cities began
to rise, Ninhurga Mazael and her children created an artifact of power
beyond what most wizards of the day would have believed possible. They
took the skin and skull of a dire wolf, invoking the power of its body
and spirit, and made of it a fur cape in the classic barbarian-warrior
fashion, wolf's head acting as a rather outre' hat. Whoever wore the
Wolfsark could shift at will from normal human shape to an eight-foot-
tall beastman, gifted with immense strength, great speed, and the senses
and fighting spirit of the wolf.
Wherever rumors of dark sorcery spread, the Mazaels followed. If
there were indeed necromancers or daemonists at work, or the rare
Unseleigh Sidhe working to take back the world they lost so long ago,
their careers would soon be cut short by an unstoppable force: the beast
that could not be killed, for if one should die another of the family
would take his place; the Guardian of the Arts Arcane; the Wolf that
walked like a man.
"Warlock" is a very old word, and one that does not mean--as most
people think--"male witch"; the root is "waerloga", "oathbreaker." As my
ancestors saw it, any wizard who used the dark arts was betraying his
craft and his species; so the beastman became known as the warlock-
hunting wolf... or, eventually, the Warwolf. Though the legends have
been greatly distorted, nearly all tales of "werewolves" have their
genesis in sightings of Mazaels at work. The Wolfsark is still in our
possession--_my_ possession now, as the last of the line--preserved by
means of magic and just as efficacious now as it was when first created.
I'd had to use the 'sark myself a time or two, though mostly to
scare the living daylights out of people who've just discovered dark
magicks before they have a chance to get in too deep. There are, on
average, around three cases of supernatural crime (as the family defines
it) a year, worldwide... or at least there were before the Senshi showed
up, it's quieted down completely these last few years. In the process of
dealing with such problems, I've created new myths myself...to my eternal
regret. If I'd known there was a witness to that last case, who would
years later become a pretentious game designer who spells his name with a
dot, I'd never have put on that act about being the living avenger of
Gaea...
Driving through Live Oak, Capitola and Soquel, I turned north once
more, heading back up into the Santa Cruz Mountains and a rendesvous with
destiny. A quick check of the other Anomaly--the Mystery Spot, where
gravity operates at strange angles and water can flow uphill--completed
the grand tour: time to get to work.
At the forested foot of Loma Prieta, tallest mountain in the region,
I'd set up a shielded workspace in a grassy clearing. A powerful spell
of diversion, variously known as the "Who Me?" effect or an S.E.P. field,
ensured that no passing hikers would pay any attention to me.
Despite the emergence of other magical traditions over the
millennia, the Mazaels kept their secret even from wizards. No hint of
their true nature was ever allowed to leak out, for persecution of others
might have led back to us. A little too paranoid if you ask me, but we
_did_ survive where so many failed.
This is not to say that the family was _completely_ isolated. Here
and there, as they traveled across the world, my ancestors saw
opportunities to nudge reborn civilization forward; under various
aliases, they introduced non-magical knowledge into early societies.
Most of these efforts were kept quiet, but now and then legends arose in
their wake.
Many demi-deities and culture-heroes the world over have their
origins in my ancestors' intervention. Wayland, Maui, Quetzalcoatl,
Susa-no-O... in most cases, of course, the truth has been distorted
beyond recognition by local prejudices. It wasn't Prometheus but
_Pandora_ who taught the ancient Hellenic peoples metalworking, and it
was her idiot husband who unthinkingly set loose a horde of bound minor
demons left over from the Silver Millennium. So it goes...
Magic does not obey the laws of conventional physics, of what you
might call the electrogravitic spectrum. Magical energy, in effect, has
_seniority_ over electrogravitic physics, and can alter or negate any and
all of its laws as directed.
_How_ magic works--well, that's a mystery. My family has been
studying the nature of magic for twelve thousand years and change, and
while we know more than anyone else about _what_ magic does, _why_ still
eludes us.
The "what" isn't exactly simple. I could take four or five years
and give you a basic understanding of thaumaturgical theory, but neither
of us has that kind of time. Here's the least inaccurate summation I can
manage:
The fundamental units of electrogravitic energy manifest themselves
as particles or waves, or "wavicles", or whatever quantum buzzword is
currently popular. The fundamental units of magical energy are none of
the above, but more closely resemble _threads_.
There are two basic types of spellcasting found in any mystic
tradition. Many wizards are limited to drawing mana from their own
bodies; living things generate mana in much the same fashion as worlds,
though in far smaller quantities. As few humans have any great mana
reserves, these Low Magicians were severely restricted even before the
Fall. High Magic involves tapping the mana currents of the outside
world; this grants much more potential power, but involves far more
complicated ritual to access, and in the new mana-starved world it was
very nearly useless. Those lucky few who happen to have very large
natural storage capacities can still fuel their own spells--this also
being classified as High Magic--but even so, outside the mana wells
their powers are replenished very very _slowly_. A High Wizard in the
barrens might be able to cast one or two major spells a year.
My family rejected both paths, and found one far more effective.
As there are ninety or so naturally occuring chemical elements, so
there are _millions_ of varieties of manathread. Each has its own unique
frequency; each is attracted to a particular configuration of matter
and/or energy, and can most easily affect it. These "configurations"
cover a range from the simplicity of, say, a water molecule or a single
photon, all the way up to such "macro" phenomena as trailer parks,
giraffes, or random thoughts about Quentin Tarantino movies.
Combinations of manathreads, like atoms into molecules, increase the
potential complexity even further. (Trailer park mana has a magnetic
attraction to tornado mana, just for example.)
Normally, however, they don't do much. Unguided mana just sits
there, altering probability in various subtle ways, but nothing more;
each of Earth's mana wells has its own particular tricks. The Tokyo well
attracts supernatural entities and other forms of extreme weirdness, the
Santa Cruz well scooping up any leftovers; Wiltshire causes crop circles.
The three small mana wells surrounding the Bermuda Triangle do _not_
cause ships and planes to disappear--they _make people believe_ that
ships and planes disappear. Similar effects keep sasquatches and yeti
away from anyone with a really good camera, cause religious images to
appear in rice pudding, and convince otherwise sane and rational people
that Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe are dead. (They're happily married
and my next-door neighbours.)
In order to truly warp reality, mana must be motivated--ironically,
by the very same sapient life-forms its probability-shifting helps bring
about. True magic requires, above all else, a vivid imagination and a
deliberate act of will.
A picnic blanket, precisely eight feet square, red and white
striped: check. Arrange corners at the four compass points, weigh down.
Check.
1/50 scale model Volkswagen Bug, red, placed on north point. Check.
Green glass vase holding three carnations and a plastic chopstick,
placed on east point. Check.
A road map of Outer Mongolia, folded into an origami swan; cloth
napkin with the Declaration of Independence scribbled on it in gold
crayon; eleven chocolate Pocky sticks arranged in the form of the kanji
"ki"; all on west point. Check.
The 1973 Tolkien Calendar, missing December; a statue of Bettie Page
carved from a nickel-iron meteorite; both on south point. Check.
CD player on northwest side with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony playing
on infinite repeat: check.
CD player on southeast side with Warren Zevon's "Roland the Headless
Thompson Gunner" playing on infinite repeat, _backwards_: check.
Around all this, the Septagram of Infinite Recursion and the
Enneagram of Unbinding laid out in police-line tape and Christmas-tree
lights: check, double-check, and _triple_-check (can't be too careful
with magic circles).
It's at times like this that you truly _appreciate_ S.E.P. fields...
Wizards' work is more peculiar than most wizards realize.
All that chanting and gesturing, sigils and incense, eye of newt and
hair of dog--it's all meant to draw in the right sorts of mana, linking
and shaping the threads into a construct which is then energized by the
will of the caster. Get it just right and reality changes in the way you
desire. Get it completely wrong and your will has nothing to do with the
pattern you've made, so nothing happens and the construct dissipates
harmlessly. Get it just a _little bit_ wrong--but you don't want to know
about that. Really.
The more alike two objects are, the more nearly identical their
mana-signatures will be...and the more easily they can be used to affect
one another: like calls to like, the Law of Similarity.
Two objects that were once attached likewise retain a mana-link:
once together always together, the Law of Contagion.
The basis of the most primitive magicks, right there.
From there, though, the principles get odder and harder to
understand, even if they can be worked with. Why should a _symbol_ have
the same mana signature as the thing it represents? I couldn't tell you,
nor could any of my ancestors back to the Silver Millennium and beyond,
but it does...
Thing is, most wizards in the modern world aren't really aware of
the process on any significant level. Nine out of ten spellcasters
haven't even developed their mystic senses properly, and are basically
working blind. (I should point out here that as far as I can tell, the
ability to sense magic is present in every sapient being--possibly in
every soul, from the life-force of bacteria on up--but most humans will
never get more than the occasional chill down their spines. This sense
_can_, however, be refined and heightened with practice.) Furthermore,
of that ten percent who can perceive arcane forces with some degree of
clarity, the vast majority see only flowing rivers of energy--and must
work those rivers clumsily, with great effort. To shift the metaphor,
think of their spells as thick rope tied into crude knots.
And now we come at last to that tiny minority, those who have
learned to refine their mage-sight to the point that they can sense--and
_manipulate_--the individual manathreads, peeling string off the rope and
playing cats'-cradle, weaving powerful and subtle magicks that no mere
sorcerer can possibly match, while using a bare minimum of energy; who
can work great wizardries even outside the wells.
That is a very tiny minority indeed. To wit:
Me.
I am not a wizard.
I am a Spellweaver.
One thing left to check. In a spell of this magnitude and
precision, any intrusion could be disastrous--that's any intrusion in the
entire _county_. If anyone else out there was working reasonably powerful
magic, particularly the darker varieties, the Unsealing might be warped
out of control. A lesson we'd learned at far too high a cost.
The Santa Cruz area was liberally salted with intangible, invisible
sensor matrices--my own invention, so delicately crafted as to be utterly
undetectable by any normal wizard. The "ghosteyes" relayed information
on local magical conditions to a central processor of sorts: really just
a bunch of hand mirrors glued to a clipboard, but it worked well enough.
All the mirror monitors came up normal--no trace of demonic or
necromantic energy anywhere in the Zone, just the usual slight background
noise from the few local psychics and white witches with a bit of real
power and no clear idea what to do with it beyond a vague urge to visit
Japan.
This time, nothing could possibly go wrong.
The key proved to be a spell meant to give nonwizards mage-sight--
more properly, to temporarily enhance that faculty in those who had never
developed it. Around 6230 BCE, great-etc.-granddaddy Jubal found that
spell could be used as a sort of training method; once you'd seen magic,
you knew what to look for and could concentrate more effectively on
developing the power within yourself. A few generations down the line,
someone thought of applying it to an infant--and _that_ was the
breakthrough we'd been searching for.
If one had this spell applied repeatedly from a _very_ young age,
cranking the sensitivity up a bit every time, mage-sight rapidly
developed to the limits the spell was capable of--said limits being a
little beyond those of the magics then practiced by the family. The
children grew up able to work spells with just that much more attention
to detail--and that included the Spell of Sight. _Their_ children, under
the slightly advanced version, could in turn use magic with even greater
ease, and needing significantly less power. The tradeoff was time: it
took much longer to form a spell matrix of such precision than a
conventional wizard would have needed.
After a few generations, this cycle hit a wall: there was so much
mana within the wells that the spell could be refined no further, for at
this level the power began to obscure the increasing clarity of Sight.
Any further improvements would have to be made outside, in the near-total
absence of mystic forces--but by this time, the nascent spellweavers
could work their magics reasonably well in the barrens. So it went,
generation after generation refining their Sight and their powers,
learning to manipulate mana on a level no wizard of the Silver Millennium
had ever even imagined...
...except that it soon became obvious that someone _had_.
The Great Seals could not be perceived with conventional mage-sight;
all one could do was _deduce_ their existence from local effects. As the
family grew in skill and subtlety, that changed: the eightieth generation
since Jubal could just make out the Seals' structure--and what they saw
was no conventional magic but something very much like their own
weavings.
Only far, far, FAR more complex and subtle. They couldn't even
begin to understand the Seals, let alone dispel them.
We never have worked out just how _that_ happened. Ever since,
though, we've been mapping the Seals, in ever-increasing detail as the
Sight became clearer. The apparent limit was reached five hundred years
ago, and it's taken us most of that time just to fully chart all the
near-fractal details of each well...but now, after so long, we were
ready.
_I_ was ready.
Where my great-great-grandfather had failed, sixty years ago, I was
going to succeed. There was no chance of error. The New Age of Magic
was about to unfold, and I'd be leading the way...
12:30 PM. The setup was as ready as it'd ever be. Time for the
initial bindings. Sitting crosslegged at the blanket's center, I
extended my senses into the realm of the invisible.
All around me, energies ebbed and flowed, currents of force in
colors no nonwizard knows drawn toward the absurd yet powerful collection
of artifacts on the blanket. The silvery pattern of the Great Seal
overlaid it all, threads converging here at an inner corner of the vast
pentagram they defined; my own strings of arcane power and those spun by
my parents, and theirs before them, were woven through that impossibly
complex web, warp to its woof. With a thought, the loose ends drifted
toward me, ready for the first stage.
A Mazael with a goal will never turn away from it, never give up as
long as the faintest possibility of success might exist. It would no
doubt be proverbial, if absolute secrecy weren't one of our goals.
For twelve millennia we pursued the golden dream of magic without
flag or fail, hanging on to the past with an unbreakable grip while
pursuing the future in an unstoppable charge. A thousand times we came
close to failure, to losing the path and the dream, but always my
ancestors found the will and the means to carry on. Much knowledge has
been lost despite all our efforts; the family's understanding of the
Codex has fluctuated quite a bit over the ages, and I strongly suspect
that the translation spell now used to convert it to English tends to
present the information in rather more mythic form than Jerran's original
intent.
But still I grew up learning to see things no one else could, and to
work with that unseen world to accomplish miracles. I was raised on a
diet of fantastic stories: tales of the Warrior Angels who protected the
Nine Worlds, of the StarHunters who embodied the powers of the
constellations, of the great wars that created the Silver Millennium and
the dark uprising that ended it; of the Hunter Orion and his doomed love
for the Angel of Winter; and--best of all--the adventures of the Iron
Captain, last of the Stone Guardians of Earth. As a child I wanted to
_be_ the Captain, or at least to be a crewman on his skyship, the
_Nemesis_; to hunt the pirates of the Asteroids, foil the schemes of the
Usurpers of the Tenth Planet, battle the dark armies of Arcadia--
--well, perhaps I'd have a chance to forge my own legends.
The last knot slid into place; the labor of millennia was very
nearly complete. There remained only a final charging, and then the
Unsealing would at long last begin.
Worlds generate mana. I know, we've been over that one before.
What I didn't tell you then is that each of the planets of the Solar
System creates mana with slightly different characteristics; a skilled
sorcerer, such as myself, can call down trickles of aspected power from
the other worlds to lend strength to certain types of spell. We don't
really know _why_ this should be, aside from a few vague references in
the Codex to the Ancient artifacts that maintained the worlds and in some
way reflected--or perhaps _caused_--the planetary aspects. All I can
tell you is that it's often considerably harder to sort out the right
varieties of mana from our scant supply than it is to draw a bit of the
pre-refined stuff from the other worlds, lifeless but still magic-rich.
The amounts involved are meaningless in terms of raw power, but very
useful in precision work.
You've probably already guessed what some of these aspects are, but
here's the full list:
To strengthen spells of ice, cold, mathematical calculations, or
heightened senses, invoke the power of Mercury.
For power over light, metal, or divining the true nature of things,
call upon Venus.
If teleportation or the creation of psychoplasmic, "false matter"
artifacts is your desire, Earth itself holds the key.
Luna, our sister world and inappropriately-termed "Moon", can aid in
spiritual healing.
Fire and foresight fall under the purview of Mars.
The four major asteroids have power over alchemy and refining of any
kind, be it the forging of metals or the advancement of the soul.
For lightning or botany, invoke Jupiter.
Saturn guards the primal forces: Life and Death, Creation and
Obliteration, Existence and Oblivion...the Song and the Silence. The
highest Sephiroth and lowest Qliphoth, in perfect balance. If you must
call upon the ringed world's power, to heal or harm, do so very very
carefully...
Uranus's magic strengthens the element of earth, and the creation of
true matter from nothing.
Look to Neptune in matters of the sea, or of clairvoyance.
If you want to cast a spell involving alterations in the flow of
Time, do _not_ invoke Pluto, because to do so is to insure your spell
will fail utterly. Do, however, call on that remote world for sonic
effects.
Finally, for spells of storms, winds and sheer destruction, Nemesis
--the tenth planet, unknown to modern astronomers and all but the few
_real_ astrologers--is your best bet.
"{Spirits of space, powers of the worlds,}" I chanted in the best
approximation of ancient Muvian the family could manage, "{hear my need,
lend me your strength!}" This wasn't really a request--there was nothing
sapient out there to hear it--but it helped to focus the spell.
"{Mercury, thrice-mighty messenger, bring me your gift of cold,
clear thought that I may not fail!
"{Jupiter, lord of the lightning, bend your energies to this task!
"{Nemesis, bringer of righteous wrath, help me to destroy the seals
that bind my world!}"
And so on, for the better part of an hour, gathering power from
above and channeling it into the spell of unbinding. This day would
severely tax the capabilities of my anti-laryngitis amulet. At last, the
second stage complete, I broke for a late lunch: warmed-over Chinese
takeout, garlic shrimp and lemon chicken...
...and, ancestors save me from my own foolishness, fortune cookies.
Magic, as I've pointed out, warps probability.
Thing is, this doesn't just apply to _places_. People who practice
the arcane arts sometimes find that the arts are practicing them right
back, and they have acquired..."quirks", you might say. Little things,
like constantly getting other people's mail, or never (and I mean
_never_) being able to find an unoccupied parking space within half a
mile of one's destination. Life's little annoyances, elevated to the
level of running gags. You'd better watch out for that.
Whenever I open a fortune cookie, and read the pithy saying
within... it is always, _always_, one hundred per cent accurate. And I
don't just get the standard proverbs or vague well-wishes, either; once
in a while something undeniably prophetic pops up. "Your car will be
struck by lightning tomorrow," say, or "There is an 1834 silver dollar
stuck to the heel of your sneaker."
...And let's not even discuss the time I got "Help! I'm being held
prisoner in a fortune cookie factory!" Took me nearly a month to track
the poor guy down.
Given that, cracking the cookie could be described as a bad move.
Whatever it had to say, I'd be stuck with it--once foreseen, the future
was fixed, at least beyond my power to change. And normally I avoid
prophecy like the plague; on the whole, I think knowing the future is
something to be avoided at all costs. Certain foreknowledge destroys
hope...
...but the siren call of the crunchy sesame cookies and their little
pink slips of paper has seduced me more often than I care to think about.
For one thing, when most of your friends love Chinese food it's hard to
avoid the damn things. And how much prophecy can you pack into one of
those things, anyway?
So, half-afraid and half-expectant, I unfurled the fortune and read:
"By the end of the day you are going to wish you had stayed in bed."
Disturbing. But so damn vague that it could mean anything; maybe I
was going to get rained on, or the anti-laryngitis charm would give
out...
Okay, let's try another.
"You will soon be going on a very strange journey."
Wonderful, the fortune writers were Pratchett fans. Could point to
success; hopping round the world breaking the seals, or something
similar.
Throwing caution to the winds, I picked another cookie out of the
bag. Just time for one more before zero hour...
"Continue your current course of action and you will meet your one
true love within three months. Turn aside now and lose her forever."
_Well_ now! If that wasn't a good omen, someone had redefined the
term while my back was turned. I'd always (if somewhat reluctantly) held
the fate of the world to be more important than my love life--or lack
thereof--but if the two were actually intertwined that tightly, I wasn't
about to complain!
And when a Mazael talks about "one true love", he _means_ it...
there's never been more than one chance for any of us. One of the
reasons why the family's stayed so small. Our destiny was foretold ages
ago, in the Fire of Mars and the Mirror of Venus: _No Mazael shall ever
love more than once. But no Mazael shall ever love falsely._ I was the
last, and could by no means afford to ignore a message like that.
But there wasn't time to consider this further. 2:43 PM: time for
the main event. Once more gathering the strands about me, sending
awareness out through the entire network, I began the Unsealing.
Ever so delicately, exert pressure on the northwest-central node at
the first level: so. There, it's already fighting back--but the anchors
have long been in place, and my threads bind it securely, forcing the
node more than fifty feet out of position. That wakens the others, but
they will shortly have their own problems. Loop an aleph-hitch around
the conduit to the northeast-central node, watch as its defenses shore
up--then mount a sudden assault on the southwestern point of the
pentagram, out in the Bay. Weren't expecting that, eh? Two nodes of the
ten are out of balance now, and things are getting just a bit hairy.
The first great defense kicks in, as the Seals begin to vibrate on a
destructive frequency. My own network automatically counters with
damping oscillations; a brief duel of vibratory shifts ensues before the
Seals concede the round, and while they've been busy I have taken two
more nodes and begun the war for the second, middle-band level. Forty-
five minutes have passed, and the strain is incredible--but I _will_ not
let go!
Move and countermove, attack and defense. The Seals assail my mind
with fears and phantoms, but my mental screens are more than sufficient
to hold them at bay. The air about me threatens to catch fire or freeze
solid, to no avail. Six nodes are distorted now, on all three levels.
It is past four o'clock, and still the battle continues, but every
defense, every power the Seals possess has been analyzed for generations
and I know their every weakness; they cannot stand against me. Great-
great-grandfather's failure will not be repeated today--
--what--?
The next defense _should_ be a power surge, but that's not
happening. Something new is taking shape, woven through the three Seals--
--Jerran's Bones, _it's another Seal!_ _TWO of them!_
This can't be happening, there was no sign, no trace--but there they
are, already throwing my weaves off balance. Three of the nodes are
nearly back into position, my hold on the rest threatened. I should back
off, shut the network down and revise the whole scheme to incorporate
this development--
--no. I've come so far today, I was so close--and these two Seals,
I see now, are just variants on the first three; I can still win!
The battle is truly joined now, as I improvise new strategies with
increasing haste. Gravity is beginning to fail around me, but the
artifacts are no longer necessary and as long as I can hold myself down
it doesn't matter if all that junk drifts off. I see now: the Seals are
using the power of the Mystery Spot against me, redirecting the gravitic
Anomaly my way. Clever, but not nearly enough! Five nodes back where I
want them, halfway there and it's just past five o'clock, I'll be done
before nightfall--
--and then, a sixth and seventh Seal materialize, and I belatedly
realize just how much of an egomaniacal fool I've been--
--but by then it's far too late, as the seven Seals channel all the
power of the Saint George Anomaly directly at me, and the fabric of
spacetime gives up and stops trying--
--and I have just enough time left in this world to see the mountain
begin to shake, and to know that I've made a terrible mistake.
You've probably read a dozen descriptions of bizarre
interdimensional rips and the hallucinogenic effects they have on those
caught up in them, so I'll spare you all that junk about synesthesia and
the taste of paisley, and just say that they're pretty damn accurate. I
fell through a myriad dimensions in an instant that stretched to an
eter--wait, you've probaby heard that too. Never mind. I'll try to
stick to the high points.
You see some pretty weird things on a trip like this. I especially
liked the marble city floating on a pink cloud, and the infinite wall
studded with vast, petrified gods; but I could _really_ have done without
the vision of a mist-shrouded black lake and a terrible city whose towers
rose behind the moon. Hastur was a planet in our universe, yes, but
stopping there would have been a bad idea and even passing through might
attract unwanted attention. Lost Carcosa mercifully vanished, to be
replaced by less comprehensible visions which melted at last into some
semblance of reality...
...Reality was a white room--no, a white _space_, of uncertain
dimensions. Two things occupied the void: an ornate oaken desk without
visible support, and, sitting behind it, a tall, olive-skinned, serenely
beautiful woman. Her features were vaguely Grecian, though you rarely
see that dark green hair among those of Hellenic ancestry. She wore a
flowing silk gown several shades darker than her hair.
She was staring at me, as if...as if she had never before in her
life been surprised, or even believed that surprise was possible, until
that very moment. If Phileas Fogg, sitting in his study, had suddenly
been visited by the angel Gabriel, he would have looked very much like
this person did now.
I would have said something witty to break the tension, but I was
completely paralyzed.
"You're five years _early_," she nonsequitured. Well, there wasn't
a whole lot I could say to that, was there? Come on, larynx, work with
me! She doesn't look happy, and I can't exactly defend myself if I can't
_move_, for Jerran's sake...
Mystery Woman got up from the desk, looking more pissed by the
moment. As she swept toward me, a baroque metal staff appeared in her
hand...or was it, as it appeared, really a giant key? I wondered what it
might open, and worried that it might turn out to be me.
And then, quite suddenly, there were two of her. The new one--an
exact duplicate of the first, except for the giant garnet atop her
staff/key--held her double back, saying: "This is necessary."
MW1 didn't look too happy about that, but she calmed down almost
instantly. Well, if you can't trust yourself, who can you trust? "How
so?"
"There are...complications. Other players are entering the field,
and the warriors must be ready for them." MW2 nodded toward me. "He is
the key." No, actually, I wanted to gibber, that thing you're holding is
the key, I'm just Mike, and could you please tell me what in Thomas
Paine's name is going on here?!
MW1 sighed. "Then he must proceed. Despite the consequences."
They stepped up to me and touched their staves to my temples, two pairs
of crimson eyes boring into mine. Those eyes...it was easy to tell them
apart, now. The first was certainly no older than she looked, maybe a
bit younger than me. The second...she might appear to be in her early
twenties, but her eyes were _ancient_. The weight of eons was in them,
and pain beyond measure: but a spark of hope still remained, was in fact
growing brighter...
"I would spare you what is to come, if I could," #1 whispered. "If
you had waited...but that would doom us all.
"In the days ahead, you may not believe this...but I truly wish
there could have been another way. I am sorry."
And with that the keys/staves/whatevers flared neon-bright, and
reality went on vacation again...
When my senses finally rebooted, I was lying flat on my back in two
inches of mud and the sky above me was an absolute, lightless, flat
black.
I should have stayed in bed...
--End Chapter One
IN OUR NEXT THRILLING EPISODE (always assuming you found _this_ one
thrilling):
It's a classic tale of Nature versus Man as our hard-luck hero finds
himself lost on an amazingly hostile world. And if he makes it out of
the jungle and into civilization, Mike'll be in even _worse_ trouble...
because the world in question is Shaizaar, exile-realm of Queen Beryl and
the Dark Kingdom of Arcadia. Be with us next time for "The Angry Gray
Planet"!
(Yes, that _is_ usually phrased "Man versus Nature." But in this
case the reverse is so much more appropriate...)
Notes from Deep Left Field:
Mike's story begins around two and a half years before Tsukino Usagi
first becomes Sailor Moon (in spring 1992 according to the SME timeline).
The framework narration with Mike and Mimi is around February 1995,
a few weeks after the destruction of Mugen Academy and shortly before the
advent of Nephrenia and the Dead Moon Circus.
"Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased" is Callahan's Law,
set down by Spider Robinson in "Callahan's Crosstime Saloon". Read it.
I've never had the nerve to test Mike's coffee-tea formula for
myself, so I can't attest to Mimi's judgement on it. Be warned.
The Warwolf's M.O. owes a great deal to Lee Falk's "Phantom."
Orion and the Iron Captain: see Ben Harrison's "Hunter's Moon" and
Frank Barr's "Trenchcoat-Mask" for the truth behind Mike's slightly
distorted ideas. (Oh yes, and family history has gotten the date of the
Fall slightly wrong.) Check the SME archives for these and other nifty
tales.
Kotobuki's Disorder: While to the best of my knowledge the
psychiatric community has never addressed this, I have encountered at
least two people in real life who honestly seem to have some kind of
deeply-rooted neurotic compulsion to warp even the most straightforward
recipes into unearthly things that pigs wouldn't touch (and in one case,
this was in fact _tested_)... One of my favorite authors, Diane Duane, is
said to suffer from this; her cooking can scare away mountain lions. n.n;
The ghosteye network was loosely inspired by the "sensor-ghost"
critters in Fred Perry's "Gold Digger" (Lich-King arc).
Nearly all those folks mentioned above really _can_ be found
wandering the streets around here. I haven't even scratched the surface.
@.@ Mind you, I've never actually _seen_ ninjas in town, but it wouldn't
surprise me a bit...
And the St. George Hotel (which is really an apartment building, but
who cares) is quite real, or was up 'til it was destroyed in the quake of
'89. I and a few friends are willing to swear in a court of law that the
hotel could not possibly have existed in three-dimensional space. (You
could be on the second floor and look out through a sixth-story window--
in a three-story building!--or onto the _roof_. And none of the interior
angles were remotely Euclidean.) The dimensional warp seems to have been
nullified by the quake, as the new St. George is resolutely 3D. *sigh*
The Mystery Spot, while it does exist in real life, is (so far as I
know, never been there myself) just a bunch of cleverly-constructed
optical illusions. A tourist trap, nothing more.
Jack O'Neill is a local icon, inventor of both the wetsuit and the
fiberglass surfboard, and founder of O'Neill's Surf Shop. Without him,
surfing would not be what it is today, and Santa Cruz wouldn't be Surf
City (tho' we'd still have the best waves on this side of North America).
The hapless yuppie couple were played by Margot and Brendan Yale
from Disney's _Gargoyles_. :)
The S.E.P. effect is of course Douglas Adams's Somebody Else's
Problem field (see "Life, the Universe, and Everything").
"You will soon be going on a very strange journey" is part of
Rincewind's horoscope in "The Light Fantastic".
The city on a cloud was Serranian, in H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands;
the god-studded wall was the Source Wall at the edge of the DC Universe,
created by Jack Kirby (the Wall, not the DCU). Carcosa and the Lake of
Hali were created by Robert W. Chambers and later adopted into
Lovecraft's Mythos.
--Sam
"May Evil beware! ...And may Good dress warmly and eat plenty of
fresh vegetables."
__ _ _
/ | | \ The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight (YEAH BABY!) / \
\ / | / Warrior Chef--Avatar of Virtue--The Muse of Deep Left Field _\_/_
\ \/ / *Spem Successus Alit* Member, Institute for Yahtzee Theory |
\ / Makoto--Ai--Yuuki - CoC OtE SA+RM L5R <*> - MARS NEEDS JADEITE! |
\/ Sailor Moon Expanded: www.tuxedomask.com/SailorMoonExpanded/ |