Taylor thought that the next week would be quiet and relaxing as she got to grips with her increasing levels of magic, and learning how to exist in a more constrictive glamour. That, and get caught up with her extra curricular studies so that she could sit her college acceptance exams at Arcadia next year, rather than Winslow.
That and keeping up with PHO and her shows.
That all came crumbling down when the TV signal turned to snow in the middle of her mother's favourite romantic soap opera. Since then, she's been banished to her mothers domain, and only allowed to interact with the home using portals, that she creates. It doesn't help that it's an Indian show, so her mother couldn't just watch it online. What with Leviathan having damaged the main transatlantic internet links over the last 15 years.
On top of that, she also found out that the conversation she had with Scáthach where she agreed she was her apprentice, and would take up the domain someday? Yeah, that was a bigger thing than she thought given her mothers culture.
Taylor stares at the tiny tealight candle on the floor as though it's personally offended her. Tapping the staff on the floor sees a circle with ogham runes form around the candle. Then she channels the tiniest amount of magic she can into the circle as she chants, "
Tiny ember glowing bright, set this candle alight."
Instead of the small spark that would set the candle alight, there's a column of flame that almost reaches her eyebrows until it subsides a second later leaving the candle lit, but most of the wax burned off.
Being a Legacy Apprentice apparently means being drilled in the basics until you're absolutely perfect.
Taylor looks at the throne and deliberately clicks her fingers. As one of the other tealight candles catches light she says, "I already know how to light a candle. Why do I have to do this with the circle and chant? But it's easier to do it without either. I'm already using the least magic I can. What do you mean I used less than the previous attempt. So what if this was the first spell you ever designed? Oh, you had the magic of a two-year-old. That's, not a lot of magic. What do you mean that's what I need to work down to? Yes I know I could have done this when I was younger. Well, you had to teach me Pictish and Ogham. Yes, I was also more interested in weapons than magic, but you've met mom. Can you blame me?"
A portal opens up at the door, "Taylor, Charlotte's here to see you. And my soap's on, so don't fuzz the TV."
Taylor groans and starts to squeeze herself into her new, partially completed glamour. Partially complete because turning yourself into someone that looks exactly like you is a lot harder than turning yourself into a stranger or another animal.
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Taylor limps down the stairs as she got one of her legs slightly shorter than the other. Glancing into the front room she sighs in relief that there's only a little snow on the TV. Then she opens the front door.
Charlotte keeps nervously pacing in the front yard for a couple of paces before she whirls around and exclaims, "Taylor, you're alright."
Taylor chuckles, "I am, thanks to Panacea."
Charlotte shakes her head, "I don't believe you. Not after you healed me."
"What do you mean?"
Charlottes shoulders sag, and in a small voice she says, "Don't do that. Don't try to make me believe I'm making stuff up. It's what they did."
Taylor stands there at a loss for words. Shaking her head, she says, "Do you want to come in?"
Charlotte tentatively walks past Taylor into the hall as she closes the door behind her.
As Charlotte curiously looks into the front room at the foreign TV program. Taylor snorts, "Don't worry about mom, she speaks over a dozen languages fluently. Half of them are technically extinct."
Morgana calls back, "Icelandic is close enough to Norse that it makes no difference."
Taylor limps into the kitchen and starts to close the folding doors, "See? Um, would you like a drink? We've got 10 varieties of home-made beer, two of mead, loose leaf tea and some dried fruit and spices to flavour it, and there's always the tap water if you trust it."
Charlotte frowns, "Why wouldn't you trust the tap water?"
Taylor walks over to a filing cabinet that's wedged between the end of the kitchen worktop, the wall, and the fridge. Leaving just enough space to pull out the drawers, if you're not standing in front of it. After nearly a minute she says, "Ah-ha!" and pulls out a cardboard file and puts it on the table.
Charlotte looks at the file curiously, "What's this?"
"The official EPA report on the water in Brockton Bay for every year since 1997, along with the standards at the time. They're stapled together so you can just compare the numbers. Mom said she started requesting them after she noticed that the water occasionally tasted funny."
"What on Earth? What's this number?"
Taylor looks at what Charlotte's pointing at and opens the sliding door a bit, "Mom, what's TTHMs on the water reports?"
Morgana looks up, "Trihalomethanes, there should be a cheat sheet in the back of the folder."
Charlotte looks through the list with a dawning amount of horror on her face. Eventually she says, "How does your mom have all of this?"
Taylor laughs, "The other drawers are all full of her grant proposals, expedition reports, and annotated photocopies of parts of books she's used in her research."
Taylor walks over to the basement door, "Come on, I've got something cool to show you. Oh, and have you decided what you want to drink?"
Charlotte looks down at the report, "Um, what do you drink?"
"Small beer."
"Your mom lets you drink beer?!"
"Small beer. It's what people used to traditionally drink when the local water supply was unsafe. It still technically a legal drink in this country, and it used to be mandatory for all younger school children to have a mug at school. It's not Beer, with a capital B, that people can get drunk on. Come on, grab a glass and I'll show you. Third cupboard on the left over there."
Charlotte grabs a glass and follows Taylor into the basement. On one end of the basement is a single massive barrel on its side with a metal tap in the bottom of the flat end. In the small amount of space beside it are two racks that are five barrels high. There's a couple of smaller barrels under a workbench. On the other side of the basement are racks of carved staves.
Taylor points at the big barrel, "That's the small beer. This batch is slightly less that 1% alcohol, just enough to kill any bugs that survived the UV sterilisation process the spring water company uses."
"How? Why?"
Taylor chuckles, "I think I was 9 or 10 when mom submitted a grant application to reproduce a period accurate beer. That was after she found the library behind you in a cave system in Ireland."
Charlotte turns around, "That's a library?"
"Yep. Though mom's still trying to get the museums and other archaeologists to accept that the Celtic people wrote down more than what's on the various stones. It's one of the good things about having a portal to Aleph, as they've been able to confirm that they've found the same staves. Though they lost half of them when someone set fire to the warehouse they were stored in. Mom thinks it's the Catholic church that did it, because they could contradict the commonly held belief that Christianity spread peacefully through Ireland."
"Wow, I guess she doesn't like Christianity then."
Taylor laughs, "Every archaeologist has their own pet hates. I know a couple of Egyptologists that hate the Romans. Of course, there's also some that hate the Ancient Egyptians for defacing the even more Ancient Egyptians artifacts."
As Charlotte shakes her head and starts to fill her glass, Taylor goes over to the staves and glances through them, sometimes feeling the tops with her fingers.
"Found it."
Charlotte turns around with a slightly cloudy glass of beer, and looks up, "Found what? And why's this cloudy?"
Taylor holds up a staff, "This, it's the beer recipe that we used for this batch of beer. The full strength beer is, um, the forth barrel up on the right hand column, even that's not very strong as traditional beer goes at around 3%. What was your other question? Ah, cloudy. It's because it's not filtered. So some of the sediment gets stirred up when you open the tap. When we're doing the Black Forest beer, the small beer comes out of the tap like porridge. At which point we generally drink it for breakfast."
Charlotte tentatively takes a sip of the beer and pauses, "It's, I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this. I thought beer was supposed to be bitter?"
Taylor nods and holds out the staff, "If you feel down here, this lists the herbs to be added to flavour the beer and offset the sweetness of the grain. At this point in time hops hadn't been bred, so they used a different recipe. Given that they fed this to sick children. Well, not the small beer, a watered down version of the full beer. Down here it says to mix in three parts water for every part of beer, and leave to stand for two days. Well, sort of two days, it actually says to start the recipe at dawn and leave it for two sunsets."
Charlotte shakes her head, "How can you read that?"
Taylor sighs, "I can speak it too. Mom taught me to speak and read it as she was writing her Ogham and Celtic lexicon. I can also read and speak Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian – both hieroglyphs and the common alphabet. Um, Farsi, Hindi, modern Irish, and I know enough to get by in Arabic and a couple of other languages."
"Wow, why are you at Winslow?"
Taylor snorts, "Tuition fees. Mom earns too much for me to get a grant assisted scholarship, and I don't score high enough in the relevant tests to get the full scholarship. But travelling the world to research dig sites isn't cheap, so she doesn't have the money to send me anyway."
"What? No way."
"Yep, I'm not so great at Math or Science, which are two of the major subjects that Arcadia looks for. My English also suffered, though I've brought that up."
Charlotte takes another drink of her beer before she takes a fortifying breath. "Taylor. Would I be able to see where you healed me please?"
"What?"
"The other day. When you pulled me out of the locker. I remember seeing two things spiralling around each other, a bit like DNA. Things were falling off them and falling down, and one of those things was falling towards me. Then it was like lightning was sparking through my brain and I couldn't think. And then I was soaking wet and lying on something, and you were talking to someone. But I could only hear your half of the conversation. At some point your mom turned up, and you called her Badb. That's not right, you said she was Morrigan and Badb. I want. No, I need to see it with my own eyes. To prove that I didn't imagine it."
Seeing the expression on Taylors face, Charlotte hurries on with her explanation, "I know you tried to protect people from their physical bullying. But I think one of them was picking the lock on my locker, or something. Maybe they had a master key. I don't know. As sometimes I'd go to get my books and homework for a class, and it just wouldn't be there. A few times I was sure that my phone had been taken during sports, only to find it under my kit when I got home. Then at the end of the school day, it would be back. When I complained to the teachers, it was always back by the time the teacher got to my locker. I-I thought I was going insane. So I need to see it, so that I know I didn't make it up."
Taylor pauses and looks at Charlotte consideringly. After a while she carefully says, "I'm not going to deny your memory."
She walks over to a set of stacked bookcases and rolls two of them out of the way. Then pulls one of the ones she moved back, "Damn it mom, why do you keep moving your books around. Oh, Charlotte, I recommend you never read anything on the back wall. They're the shelves that mom keeps her top shelf romance novels."
As she moves another set of shelves, Taylor turns and marches halfway up the stairs, "Mom! Why did you move all my books?"
Taylor's back to searching through the bookcases when Morgana appears at the top of the stairs, "You never look at them, and I needed more space for my books."
Taylor snorts, "Books? Porn more like. Where's my Introduction to Ogham, and Celtic dictionaries?"
Morgana rolls her eyes, "You mean my Introduction to Ogham and dictionaries. Third stack, two in."
"No mom, they're mine. You even wrote a message inside them for me. Also, Charlotte wants to see that place. Apparently, the bitches made her start to question her own sanity by moving and returning stuff in her locker."
Morgana shakes her head, "I'm not the person you need to ask."
Taylor sighs as she moves the shelves around again, before grabbing the books she wanted. "Here we are. Mom wrote both of these and I was the guinea pig. It should be enough for you to start picking out letters on the staff at least. I'll be back in a few minutes."
Charlotte stares at the books that have just been handed to her with a confused expression on her face.
Morgana smiles and takes the books gently, "Come on, lets go to the lounge and you can enjoy your beer."
As Charlotte follows Morgana up the stairs, Morgana continues, "Please forgive Taylor, she was never the most social child. My constant travelling for work probably didn't help. In many ways Emma was her touch stone to reality, though Emma was never one for books. Whenever she came round the two of them would spend their time upstairs doing their hair and makeup and gossiping about whatever came to mind."
Charlotte sits down on the couch, "Dr Dannan."
"Call me Morgana, it's easier."
"Um, Morgana, why are you being so nice?"
"Would you rather I wasn't?"
"Well, no but."
"Charlotte, I love my daughter, but our family has secrets. Secrets that you've inadvertently got a glimpse of. Whether or not you are Taylors friend, I expect you to keep those secrets to the grave."
Charlotte nervously swallows and nods, as it feels like she's staring down the barrel of a shotgun, even though Morgana's apparently paying more attention to the TV than her.
As the TV goes to an ad break, Taylor appears in the kitchen and walks into the lounge.
"Charlotte, I've got some good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"
Charlotte looks up as a full body shiver passes through her, "Good news?"
"You can visit. The bad news is that you have to make your own way to the keep. I can take you to the start of the path, but you have to walk it."
Morgana turns her head to watch the two of them as Taylor continues, "I'm allowed to tell you anything that people that previously walked the path would have known. So the first thing is that this is a test. If you fail because of the path, I will make sure you're healthy before you head home. But this is a test of determination and willpower, so if you ever give up you can't ever try again. Otherwise, you can try once every quarter turn of the moon. That's about once a week. If you remember nothing else, remember that the only way you can fail this test is by giving up."
Charlotte looks at Taylor with wild eyes. Morgana nods approvingly as Charlotte says, "Um, can I think about it?"
Taylor smiles widely, "Sure, what do you want to do? And when do you need to be home?"
Charlotte looks down, "I, don't know. I haven't had a friend since middle school. And I need to be home by sunset, as it's the sabbath tomorrow."
Morgana glances up, "There's some old board games in the attic, or you could show her the armoury."
Taylor shrugs, "Up to you."
Charlotte looks at her glass, "Could I have another drink?"
Taylor laughs, "Sure."
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On Sunday, Taylor and Morgana both get to the old packing plant with a trunk full of spare equipment. The only indication that it's ever changed hands is a small emblem of the guild on a side door. Taylor hops out of the car and heads through the door.
She's barely got six paces in when she's almost bowled over by a girl with messy brown hair and eyes that sparkle with good humour, "Taylor, you're ok. When I saw you collapse in the street I thought the worst. Then you got shut in a locker, and it was worse. Have you lost weight?"
Taylor laughs, "Hello Marianne, I've missed you too. Sorry I wasn't here Wednesday, but you know, brain injuries. And what's this about seeing me collapse?"
Marianne disengages long enough to pull out her phone, and Taylor takes the opportunity to trot over to a ground level loading bay. As she's pulling the chain to open the shutter, Marianne holds her phone in front of her face with a video playing.
"Here, it was all anyone was talking about at school last week. At first it was videos of you walking to the news stand, taking a flower and putting it on that girls chest just before you collapsed. Then the next day there was this whole sequence of videos showing a couple of bitches filling a locker with, something. Then you wading in like a hero, only to be clobbered with a cheap shot, and shoved into a locker. Then someone found some security footage of you just appearing on the wharf, as though the mist spat you out. Then Uber and Leet spliced the whole thing together and added dramatic music, and you have this video."
As Morgana drives in, Taylor takes the phone and watches the video with morbid curiosity.
Once she's put the shutter down, Marianne looks over Taylors arm to watch the video with her.
As the video passes the point where Taylor was hit in the back of the head, Taylor says, "That looked vicious. I didn't think it was that bad when it happened."
"Uh huh, now there's a bit of a montage of people banging on the lockers, then it gets to the good bit."
Before they can get to that point, Sévon walks over with Charlotte, "Taylor, Marianne, we've got a couple of newbies today. Taylor your mom's looking after Charlottes dad, could you and Marianne show her the ropes?"
Taylor pauses the video and nods, "Sure, though I'm supposed to keep my noggin free from knocks for another few days after Tuesday."
Sévon nods, "That's why I paired you with Marianne, as she's never done an introduction."
Marianne nods, "Sure. Hey Charlotte, you look familiar."
Taylor chuckles and turns the phone round, "Meet the other victim."
"Ah, shit. Sorry about that. It looked rough."
Charlotte cocks her head, "Oh? I don't have a new phone yet, and I'm not allowed to use PHO on mom and dad's computer."
Taylor laughs, "Similar, I dropped my phone in the locker and nobody's given it back yet. That and I just haven't had time to boot up my own computer."
Marianne pokes Taylor in the ribs, "Tell the truth, it's a new book isn't it?"
Taylor rolls her eyes, "It's not always a new book Marianne."
Charlotte looks at the phone, "So we're famous?"
Marianne shrugs, "Not really. The mods have been ban happy at anyone that's even suggesting finding out your names."
Taylor sighs, "You know that's pretty worthless as things go. The whole city's so damn corrupt that everyone who matters probably had our attendance records, and police records, before the news finished airing the first video."
"I swear you're almost as bad as your mom."
Taylor smiles, "Do you drink the tap water?"
"Only in downtown."
Charlotte frowns, "What?"
Taylor gestures over to a section of the packing plant that has a number of large boxes haphazardly piled up, "Come on, let's get Charlotte started while we talk. So, technically, we're currently in old Brockton Bay. This is going back to when logging was a bigger thing than mining in the area. It's why none of our roads are on a grid pattern. The south east side of the logging river used to be the ship and lumber yards. Then they started building ships out of steel, and that industry died a quiet death. But we still had a lot of ore rich mountains nearby. So they started smelting ore and shipping out the refined stuff.
"But they needed to be closer to the deep water channel for that, so the other side of the river was left to rot until the first world war. Then the need for smelted ore skyrocketed, and most of what is now known as The Docks was built out with workers.
"After the second world war, the fact that this is the eastern most port in the USA meant we started to attract new businesses. So, some enterprising individuals decided to build the airport south of here, at the same time they built new infrastructure, including a new water treatment plant."
Marianne unclips the top of one of the boxes to reveal some face masks, gloves, and slightly battered protective jackets, "While Taylor's giving us a history lesson, I'm going to start fitting you for your safety gear. If you start coming regularly, we'll expect you to buy your own facemask and gloves at a minimum. This is because they can get a bit manky inside, so rather than sharing everyone-else's sweat, it's better to have your own, properly fitted mask and gloves. There's a sports shop that does fencing supplies near Arcadia, they'll be your best bet. The first thing to do is find your face mask, it should be on the tight side of snug. But not so tight you can't open your mouth, or you're getting a headache after a few minutes."
Taylor gently clips Marianne around the back of the head, "Charlotte, the reason why you need to buy your own mask and gloves that fit properly, is so that the mask and gloves won't slip while you're using them. Marianne, grab your own mask."
Marianne sighs and runs off to an area that seems to be the dumping ground for bags.
"While we're waiting, do you know what sort of weapon you'd like to start with?"
Charlotte shakes her head, "Sorry, I don't. I feel like I should say sword, but…"
"Hey, it's fine. You'll end up trying everything eventually if you keep coming back. If you start with a hunting spear, quarter staff, or a shorter sword, then I'll be the one teaching you the basics. Marianne favours a sword and shield, but she's also good with a longer spear like the ones you see in movies with knights. We've even got a couple of pikes on the wall over there. But you can see from the dust how much people like them. Matt and Paul over in the corner there are using arming swords. That's the 'traditional' knights sword. If Brian turns up, he likes to use a mace and warhammer."
Marianne jogs back with her mask and gloves, "Hey, I've got it."
Taylor grabs a random mask from the box and chucks it at Marianne, "Put that on."
"Yes bitch."
Taylor mock growls, "What was that?"
"Yes boss."
Once Marianne's put on the random mask, Taylor pushes the top of the mask, "Can you see how the mesh of the mask is now touching her nose? If that was someone stabbing you, then they'd probably break your nose." She starts to turn the mask from side to side, "And can you see how there's some give before Marianne's head starts to move? That means that the mask could slip and come off. Same as if I lift it from the chin. Change into your mask now."
A bit later, Charlotte's fitted out with some adequately fitting gear, and Taylor leads them over to a section with foam wrapped weapons, "So, as you're a beginner, the first thing we need to do is help you overcome your startle response. Sometimes called fight or flight. As you don't have a preference in weapons, I think we'll start with a hunting spear."
She grabs a couple of weapons that have a foam point on the end and hands one to Marianne, "Marianne's going to show you the basic grips for the spear. Once you've got that right, you'll be having a spar with Marianne. To start with, you'll be aiming to just hit Marianne so that you get a feel for the weapon in your hands. Once you're getting the hang on that, we'll start you on blocking. This is where most people have trouble to start with, as our instinct is to duck away or run."
At the end of the evening, Charlotte is red faced and grinning like a cheshire cat as Taylor walks over to her mom's car.
Marianne holds out her fist and says, "Fist bump. Did you have fun?"
Charlotte nods, "Oh yes."
"Well, it's not over yet. Dr Dannan and Taylor normally put on a show for newbies, or when they don't feel like they've had a proper workout. Back when I started coming, it was Sévon and, um old Bill. But Bill stepped aside after he got trounced by Dr Dannan ten weeks in a row. Sévon doesn't do too much better either. But then most of us ain't brave enough to use bare steel without any padding. Look, can you see the red tip on Taylors spear? That's an ink pad that they use because they can't legally use sharp points. They still fucking hurt, as I tried it once."
Charlotte watches gobsmacked as the two of them carry wooden shields in one hand, and a spear in the other to the centre of the warehouse. Then they promptly strip off their tops, revealing the sports bras they're both wearing.
Marianne nudges Charlotte and says, "When they look like that, I bet it makes you wonder if you should go gay."
Charlotte's jaw snaps shut and she glares at Marianne for a moment. Then they start to dance. It's the only way Charlotte can describe it. It starts slow, with each of them trying to find a way past their opponents shield. But it quickly speeds up, as the jabs become shorter and faster, and their feet are constantly moving around as they duck and weave, occasionally aiming at the opponents feet, and then their head. The loud thunk of metal on wood leaving no doubt that these aren't gentle taps. The increasing amount of red spots the only way she can tell who's hit who most of the time.
Taylor's the first to discard her shield as she brings the butt of the spear around Morgana's spear to strike at her head. Morgana quickly discards her shield too, and the fight turns into a vicious close quarters fight, interspersed with lightning fast jabs with the spear point.
Charlotte gasps as she notices a red line suddenly appear on Taylors thigh, a line that's quickly joined by others in places that look like they should have taken her out of the fight.
Marianne nudges Charlotte, "Don't worry, see how thin those lines are? That means that they'd be painful, but not debilitating injuries. They'll keep going until one of them hits something vital or gets a solid circle on them.
Eventually, Taylor jumps backwards with a yelp. Slap bang in the middle of her chest is a bright red circle. Then she starts to laugh and walks forward to embrace her mother, "I needed that. And I managed to tag you once."
Morgana looks down at her hip, and the red line there, "So you did. Well done."
Charlotte looks down at her watch, and is surprised to see that not even a minute has passed since they started fighting. Nudging Marianne, she asks, "Will I be able to do that?"
Marianne shakes her head, "Na, not likely. But we can dream right?"
Charlotte nods, "This was great fun, I hope dad lets me come again."
"Better than school huh?"
Charlotte looks a bit confused, "Huh?"
"You can't hit a bitch when they're being a pain at school, but you can here, and it's expected."
"True."
