New Beginnings, page 17
part #2 of Barriers Series
She caught my darting eyes but didn’t follow them and alert the others. “I understand. In that case, I’ll stand back. Good luck.”
“Thank you…let’s see what happens.”
The mages finally realized how much power I was pulling and began backing up. Mom moved back maybe five feet, but then stayed put. Her magic coiled around her as she readied something or other. Maybe something to help me if things go wrong? We’ll see.
My cloud of magic grew and grew, eclipsing the sun from my viewpoint, and kept getting larger as I pushed it back behind me, creating a huge backdrop of power. Then I began focusing on what I envisioned. My attack is going to be three-fold. The first is the level of power. The second is the narrow focus of the attack. The third is a spread once the barrier is pierced. I’m envisioning a seed taking root in a stone. As the roots grow, the stone shatters from the inside.
That’s what I’m aiming for here.
My nerve endings began to fray and burn again as sweat broke out across my brow. My shirt was soaked with it. Well, my replacement shirt. My original was sort of messed up from the spells I was hit with. Be that as it may, it’s soaked now.
My power built more and more as I created a tiny, tiny point to it, hardening the tip. Then I tried to make it smaller. Thinner. Harder. Like a piece of straw driven before a hurricane, I wanted such a tiny cross-section of power that the barrier spells wouldn’t even know they’d been pierced.
Thin. Thinner. The line of power began to glow in my mind and it was a brutal fight not to let it be visible. I don’t want others to know how I’m trying to do this. That doesn’t seem like a great idea. If this works and it’s something new, I don’t want others to know about this and use it to get through my barriers. That’d be stupid as hell.
Unless I create something to guard against it? That’s something to think about.
My brain felt like it was baking from the heat coming off the line of power that’s so much thinner than a human hair. I can’t even measure it. If this were a physical thing, I’m not sure you’d notice it piercing you. Maybe if it went into your eye or something, but hundreds of them could fit into a hypodermic needle opening.
As the tip burned hotter and hotter, I readied myself, piling on the power as I took a deep breath, lifting my arms to chest height and holding them there for aching moments.
Then I rammed them forward as I screamed and shoved my power into the barrier in front of me.
The world exploded around me.
Or…no. No it didn’t. What the freaking hell?
Nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
Wait, no, not nothing at all. My spell went forward. It pierced the barrier spells. I can feel the tip of it on the other side of the spells. I can feel it there…and the spells didn’t react at all. They didn’t budge at the intrusion. I’m through it!
Holy freaking cow, man. While I thought it was a pretty good idea, I’m not sure I expected it to be successful. To be honest, I sort of thought I’d be blown onto my behind and have chunks of me missing as the spells tried to kill me.
Mom stepped closer, breaking my thoughts, “Daughter-mine? What…” She stopped talking.
“Umm…hold on a moment? I’m trying to figure this out.”
Okay, so now what? I’m through, but now what? If this were a needle and I stuck it into someone, I could inject them with a poison and kill them. Except I’m sort of sticking into nothing on the other side. A portion of the strand of magic extending from me is within the barrier of spells, but the tip’s on the other side. And spells can’t be poisoned…but you get the idea.
So, how to do this?
Umm…maybe the thinness is the key? I got it through, so could I do more? Maybe it’s like with knives? A dull knife hurts more? A sharper knife can cut, and you may not even realize it at first? What if…what if I created planes of magic from within the spot that I’m piercing? Hitting from the outside with a bunch might trigger it from the overall pressure, but what if I create tiny planes coming out of the strand of power in a circle? Like…like rays of the sun? Set them up, then drive them out, cutting through the barrier each step along the way? I’m not sure it’ll work, but it has to be easier to do. If you have a panel of stone, cutting across the entire surface has to be harder than cutting it from the edge. In this case, spells don’t really have a thickness, although the wall is thick with them, but I think this might work. Or…at least be better than the alternative of having the huge expanse of spells triggering and wiping me from the face of the Earth.
“Daughter-mine?”
“Hold on…” The image of the radiating rays of the sun went into my head, and I concentrate on the shaft of magic through the spells. The entire focus went into where it pierced the barrier.
That section of my spell got hotter as more power concentrated there, slowly turning white hot in my sight.
This time I kept the yell down as I triggered it, preparing for a backlash and pain.
Instead, hundreds of radiating lines shot out of the shaft of power, slicing through the spells and leaving me with a visual of this huge starburst of power…with slivers of destroyed spells in between the rays.
My magic quivered and collapsed, sucking back into me, while the various rays latched onto the neighboring spell pieces and pulled them along with them, filling my insides. It left me with a slight burning feeling that wasn’t about magical use, it was more about overpressure in magical storage.
And a confused look on my face.
The mages with us cursed and jumped back, “What the hell? We knew you weren’t lying, but…where the hell did that come from?” He pointed at the door we described earlier.
Everything looked exactly like it did when we walked up, but I guess the rest of the spells are gone? “Umm, this is what we saw. Don’t touch anything just yet. We have to make sure the spells are gone.”
Mom moved up next to me, holding her hand out, “What did you do? How did you do this?” She whispered so, so low that I don’t think either of the mages could have heard her.
“I’ll tell you later. We need to hide it if it works for others.” She nodded at my whisper.
She stayed with me as we touched the wall, feeling with our magic as well. “I got nothing.”
“Nor I. Shall we? I believe you should have the honors.” She nodded at the closed door.
“Let’s see what we have here.”
Unexpectedly, the door isn’t locked. I have a feeling it had a spell on it to only open for my parents, but that’s just a guess since I can’t believe they’d leave it unlocked like this otherwise. Knowing what I’ve seen so far, I’m thinking it drank your soul or something like that. I’d have said it’s hard to hate someone more than I already did, but dang…it’s like they’re on a rocket sled of hate-building.
The door opened, revealing a decently large room. A light switch to the right worked, shockingly, and the room became visible to everyone. Mom and I could see what was in it before, but I figured the mages would like it.
What is there? What isn’t there. “What is all of this?” There are shelves lining the walls all the way around except for a door. There are two tables in the room, taking up a huge chunk of space. Nearly every inch of shelf space and most of the tables are taken up with things. Stuff. Stacks of money. Jewelry. Statues. What I think might be grimoires.
Mom moved through the room as I stood near the first pile of things, “I would say that this is part of your parents’ trove. There are any number of magical items here. You should take it all and sort it out later.”
“Umm, can I do that? I mean, the FBI controls the property?”
She snorted at my question, “Controls the property? Yes. But technically? Everything here belongs to your family. Meaning your parents and you. That means that you can take it unless it was used to commit a crime. I highly doubt that most of this would have ever been used to commit a crime.”
“Umm, guys? Are you okay if…?”
The closest mage shrugged, “I’m not seeing anything here that stands out. I say go for it.”
Mom smiled and held up a stack of cash, “I’m thinking taiscedeadan?”
“Yeah? Sure? Let’s see how long this takes.”
It took three days.
Actually, no, an hour, though. It took a solid hour of both of us putting things into my safe. It’s not even a difficult thing to do, you don’t need to place it, per se, it sort of goes in and you can think about whatever you want and it’s automatically in your hand. It’s just that there was so, so much to put in there that both of us working at high-speed had us muddling through an hour of effort.
And nearly every minute from about a half hour into it had me staring at the door we hadn’t even tried to open.
There’s just something about the door that’s not good to me. It doesn’t feel good. Right. It feels…it feels like horror.
Mom caught me staring as the last item went into my safe. “Daughter-mine? What do you see? Feel?”
She followed my gaze, “Fear. Terror. Horrors. I feel…I feel like I’m staring into the abyss and I’d be willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to not step foot into it. Or even look at it again.”
Her lips pursed, “You feel what I feel.”
Holy… “You feel it too?”
“I do. Agents? Do you feel it?”
The talkative mage nodded, making me realize he had sweat marks on his clothes something fierce. “It’s all I can do to stay in the room near the door. I’ve seen some things in my life and experienced a lot…but not what I’m feeling from that door.”
Moving closer, I held up my hand, “There’s no magic on it…what could be causing it?”
She cast her magic out, feeling around. “I don’t know. We need to check it out, though. Agents? You may want to wait here. I’m not sure what we’ll find once we open the door.”
They fell back to the door we came in through, “You got it. Just, umm, scream or something if you need us.”
Scream or something? I want to scream right now. I really, really do. Instead, I have to move forward and touch the door that makes me contemplate cutting off the finger I’m using for this. Surely I don’t need all ten? That’s a small price to pay to remove the taint from me. From my soul.
Too bad I have to walk through this in a second.
The door opened to the right, revealing nothing more than blackness. Not shadow, just a normal shadowy entranceway, showing us steps down. The light from the room didn’t pierce the shadows on the steps, though. That wouldn’t seem to be a good sign to me.
I don’t like being afraid. I don’t. At all. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time afraid since I was little. Always being afraid of being found out for doing something wrong. The punishments. Missing meals. Flogging. Being whipped. Punishments from our parents that would leave me scarred and disfigured.
I made it through. I made it through to now. Only to be faced with a stairwell from hell?
Sucking in a breath, I held it and calmed myself, jaw clenching. Enough of this bullshit. My parents are scary. Check. They’re evil. Check. What are they not, though? They’re not here. “Screw them.” Mom twitched at my voice, then twitched more as my power rolled out, wrapping me tight in a protective layer of power that I hardened. I should be able to take a rifle round to the face right now without any fear of it getting through.
“Let’s see what these bastards left for us down there.”
Light flared around me since I didn’t see a light switch, and I moved into the shadows. The shadows that tried to cling to me like leprous slime. My shielding kept it off as I moved down the steps, finding my light struggling to illuminate the stairwell around me. It did, but not nearly as much as it should be.
The feeling from the space got worse with each step, until I felt like I was slipping under water. Except it’s foul evil. Evil and despair and…years of torment and torture.
Where in the world did that come from? I know I feel it, but why do I feel it? That doesn’t make any sense at all!
At the bottom of the steps, a barrier came up without warning, feeling like a membrane across the bottom step. It’s strong enough that I bumped into it without piercing it.
“Hold on, there’s something here.”
Mom’s hand touched my shoulder from behind as I felt the barrier.
“There’s no magic here to keep us out. It’s…huh, I think it’s generating this feeling. Like a protective thing?”
“Can you push through it?”
“I think so? Let’s see…” The barrier that actually stopped me ends up not being too difficult to get through. As the feeling passes my face, creating a line of cold that makes me blink a few times, I realize I was right.
“Holy hell, the barrier is causing the feeling. It doesn’t feel nearly as evil down here. Still bad, but not like that.”
She slides through after me, shaking her arms and legs, “I haven’t felt anything like that in a long time. That’s one way of keeping people out of here.”
“You know it. Had I experienced that as a kid, I’m not sure I’d have gone anywhere near the barn at all. Never mind the door to this place.”
“Oddly enough? I feel the same way.” She looked over my shoulder, “Oh…my…”
Turning, I caught what she was looking at. It’s…I…
“What in the world?”
The space is bigger than the one up above, and appears to go pretty far under the barn, at least assuming I didn’t have my sense of direction get shot to hell through all of this. The walls have shelves in various places. All single shelves, all at varying heights around the place. They each have a single thing on it. A… “Are those skulls?”
She steps closer to the one right near us and hovers her hand over it, “It is. It’s a fetish. It’s supposed to store magic, but it’s empty.” She moved to the next in line, “Same with this one.”
I hit the other side and found the same, “Okay, no power, but what about this thing? What’s all of this?” I moved to the center where what I can only describe as an altar is in place. I feel oddly connected to it, although none of it makes sense.
Mom moved around it in a huge circle, then stepped up next to me, “I haven’t seen an altar like this in more than 2500 years. It’s…it’s an altar to Cerwon.”
“Ummmm…what now?”
She waved at it, “It’s an altar to her. To the goddess of death. It was a way for those most connected to her to reach her. She once told me that she can hear them better if they’re at an altar. See them better. I’m not sure if that’s true or not. I’ve never had anything like an altar. None of the others that I’ve met have had anything quite like this. We simply connect through what we are. Our domains.”
The altar in question appears to be a simple looking stone table with thick legs and a slightly thinner top. It’s about six feet long, but every inch of the stone is decorated in glyphs of one sort or another. “What does the writing say?”
She shrugged, “Nothing huge? It’s mainly entreaties to Cerwon in various languages.” She traced one line without touching it, “Cerwon, goddess of death, be with us.” She looked across other lines, “It’s mainly that being repeated, with only a bit of variation.”
“How very persistent. Now, what about the skulls?”
Yeah…I said a table, right? Well, it’s a stone table with candles in various places, the blood writing, and then skulls with various designs painted on them, things attached, and even a few other body parts.
“Other ways to get her attention. Like how you feel the connection to the dead? It’s like that. I feel a stronger connection if someone in battle reaches out to me. For you? You should be able to feel a stronger connection if someone is reaching out to you in conjunction with the dead somehow. I think that’s how you connected with Rachel as strongly as you did.”
A shaft of sadness shot through me, fought back by focusing on the weirdness in front of me. “Okay…can we test that?”
“How?”
“I don’t know, can you reach out to me without anything? Then do it again with a skull in your hand or something? Unless you don’t want to hold a skull?” I had to throw that in there.
She laughed hard, “Oh daughter-mine, this wouldn’t even be the first skull I’ve held this week.”
Oh…okay…I don’t even know what to say about that. Then again, wait, our fight in the between lands was this week. She held far more than a skull then.
“Can we test it?”
“We can.” Without another comment, I felt a ping from her that made me smile, Daughter-mine, goddess of death, I love you.
“Awww, thank you! I love you too!”
She picked up a small skull with geometric designs in a faded yellow all over it, “How about this?”
The same message came through, but this time it hit me hard, nearly driving me to my knees.
“Are you all right?” she put the skull down and helped me stand up straight again.
My muscles quivered as I fought not to tremble, “Okay…holy crap. Note to self? Someone holding a skull comes through crystal clear. It’s like you were in my head. I think you’re right, that’s why I connected with Rachel so strongly. None of the other connections were like this.” I shrugged, “Well, except for Mr. Reynolds. Speaking of, did I tell you that I gave him a crazy strong ring? It ramps up his vampire powers as well as pretty much everything else I can think of. Magical ability, too. I gave him a huge battery to play with. Oh, and he could probably have sex with a cinder block wall a dozen times and keep going.”
She smiled wide, “You threw it all against the wall?”
“I did. If he’s not the strongest vampire around, I’m not sure what it’d take to reach that point. I’m not sure I’d want to meet them.”
“I will stop by and test him to be sure. He knows not to go on a conquest spree, correct?”
“He does. I talked to him about that. He’s a follower and has been for thousands of years, so I think he’ll listen. He’s in nearly constant contact with me most of the time. Not all of the time, but hours a day so far.”
