The Roaring Age (nWoD)

[The Laurent]

Page 17: The Prison of the Self, Part 2

Miriam was tired, and Miriam was hurting. Violence was not something a person just dealt with. It was something short and sharp and desperate, it was something that stained a person, made them worse for it. Jack killed, and she couldn't imagine it, couldn't picture it even though she'd watched him kill. And the short fight had left her exhausted, and more than that, it had left her aching.

Her arm ached from one blow, and her chest ached from another, and the blood that was flowing on her dark skin sickened her. She wasn't afraid of blood, not really, but her blood, that was something different; her hands trembled slightly as she stepped forward, her nose twitching with the smell of the smoke.

It was a fire, that was for sure, and while she was not able to tell where it was coming from, it certainly would reach the floor before it reached the ceiling, if she could guess. But at the same time, the only way out was down.

The hallways were still black and white, but now that there was smoke, grey though it was, there was something more alive about them. She hurried forward, trying to ignore the stinging pain as she moved. Every breath and every motion drew attention to the gashes, and she had to breathe shallowly just to keep on going, clutching the baseball bat tightly in a way that felt as if it were nothing more than a child's blanket.

Yet she knew how to use it, and the memories of the fight, the flash of violence and desperation, were both blurry and yet clear. She'd really done that. She'd hurt another being, even if the being deserved it.

It felt like a stain, one that her Mom and an army of washerwomen would never be able to get out. But, she didn't have time to worry and think about it, and so she raced down the stairs, moving so fast it almost felt like she was going outrun her own pain. And down below, what she saw was horrifying enough that she almost wished she'd stayed.

There was a great black thing that had torn its way out of the ground. It looked like a grub crossed with the edge of a knife, and parts of it were silvery and glittered, but only beneath the dark sheen of the rest of its body, pulsing and shifting with every moment. It had not just one mouth, but a dozen, and each of them was screaming a note as shrill as a whistle.

It trashed, trying to dodge a dark red flame that seemed to have vast tentacles like an octopus, grasping at the strange being, which smoked and writhed but did not die.

"Miriam!" Jack called out, "Are you alright?"

The truth would set her free, perhaps: "No," she said, coughing and looking around. Jack was standing near the entrance, next to Aerie.

Wat was down on the ground, she could suddenly see between smoke, shifting his arm and muttering. Shifting his arm because his other was simply a stump now, sliced clean away and then hastily bandaged. With each move of his hand, the fire-creature seemed to redouble its assault, and the strange knife-grub monster seemed to be winning, but slowly.

The fire, though, was spreading on its own. Each moment brought more and more color into what had once been a colorless hotel, but the colors were of ash and fire and smoke and death, and she stepped forward.

Aerie was at the doors, glancing back at something that Miriam couldn't see, and then stepping forward.

"Miriam! Hold on," Jack said, "Aerie! Fuck subtlety! She can't be any more ruined."

Aerie drew out what looked like a flute, playing a very few off-tune notes, and the thing reeled. Black blood sizzled as it hit the floor, the entire creature seeming to whine in agony, the sound headache-inducing, rearing back enough that Miriam could run.

And so she did. She panted and gasped, leaping over the growing fires and hurtling into her uncle's arms, swinging around as he pulled out a knife and slashed the air. The creature reeled as if it was hit, but without any contact. Jack was grunting, clearly not just slashing randomly, and he shoved her back.

The...the winged creature outside was tied down by ropes, Hone standing next to it as Civitas muttered and danced. The ropes were strong enough that it held it, and there were dozens and dozens of strange figures milling about. But not hostile ones. "What is that?" Miriam asked.

"That's what...what would have hurt you. Would have eaten everything that made you you. A person can live without a fate just like they can live without a soul," Jack yelled, "But...I wouldn't call it life. I've never heard of someone just...taking…"

His voice was cracking, and he seemed on the verge of tears as the thing reeled back. It was dying, and he stepped forward, each movement clinical, brutal. And she saw from the set of his back, from the way that his suit was charred and splattered with blood, that he was going to enjoy this moment. He was going to enjoy this.

And she couldn't see that. She turned away, and stumbled forward. And Aerie was there, casting only a single backward glance at Jack. "He has this handled," Aerie said, quietly, "But you…"

"I'm not okay, of course I'm not," Miriam said, quietly. It was the last thing she wanted to do, as she walked away from a slaughter. Walked away from...from something that might have killed her wholesale. Killed who she was, apparently.

"God has a plan for all of this though, right?" Aerie asked. His accent seemed upper-middle class, his voice ironic.

She turned to him and said, "Of course he did." The words had a bite, and then she felt the need to say more. The sky was light, and she felt...not at peace. She felt less at peace than she had in a long time. Or perhaps not long at all, perhaps only as recently as that night in the church, faced with the limits of her father and the world.

"Of course he did, but you think that's a cop out, don't you?" Miriam asked.

"I don't know what I think," Aerie said, with a shrug, "I just philosophize."

"Saying God has a plan doesn't mean you nod and stop asking question. It means you try to figure out what the plan is." Miriam nodded, "Or you try to do your best and hope that God's plan is the same as yours, because if it isn't, then you need to get right with Him. God has a plan just means that you know that if you act...because people have free will. They can mess it up. They can do evil. This is evil."

The word felt heavy in her mouth. There were many people she wouldn't call evil, just bad, or misguided, or foolish.

But evil existed for a reason. It existed to describe people who did this. To describe the kind of thinking that had to make this. And...and it was worse than that. Because this was magic. She didn't know what these heritages really were, these special ways of doing magic, but she did know that magic was special, maybe even sacred, and that someone must have spent a lot of time and energy doing this.

It was a profanation of everything that magic had seemed to promise to her and the world.

She was exhausted and bleeding and hurt, and yet just when she thought she'd found a bottom, there was further. "These evil people, what are you going to do to stop them? What is...the whole of Magedom going to do?"

"Well, we're going to contact the Guardians and Arrows and Mysterium. They've messed up, or at least gotten unlucky. I don't think this method was meant to stand up to Mages."

"That...that was luck," Miriam said, and then she looked up, "But this is a world where Fate is a type of magic, right? You control the fates and destinies of people, alter and influence them?"

"Yes," Aerie said.

"Then this...this was meant to happen. Me finding it," Miriam said with a shrug, as she stepped towards the curb. "It is a chance."

"Maybe, maybe it's a chance."

"People like this, they can't be allowed to do it," Miriam said, "They have to be stopped."

"Yes, I mean, I know that's true," Aerie said, "This is fascinating, but in the same way a car wreck is--"

"Fascinating?" Miriam asked, swallowing down vomit, her stomach churning, "I've been told that in the Great War, we perfected our ability to cause misery to human beings."

"No, that just barely scartched the surface," Aerie said. He wasn't grinning, but there was something about his attitude, as if he was watching from a distance.

"Can a person be called an innovator if this is all they do?" Miriam asked, "They...I can't do anything to stop them. Not now. But they need to be stopped."

"Coniunctio would agree with you. He's already left to contact people," Aerie said, "He views the battle in the mind as the battle for souls. The struggle to save the world, through psychic violence. And also genesis."

Miriam frowned, "I...don't want to be good at violence."

"And mankind has wished to be free from war for some time. The Lie strangles us, and ancient knowledge lives in a fallen world." Aerie put a hand on her shoulder and said, in an almost fatherly way, "You should go. Think about it. Sleep for real."

Miriam glanced over at Aerie, "I couldn't...do anything. Not really."

"No. It takes time," Aerie said, "I'm sure your Uncle is doing--"

Miriam tensed.

"Listen, just because I can do the simple act of looking with my eyes," Aerie said with a shrug. "So, think about what it means that these people exist. We'll be going after them. Maybe you can consider the implications."

Miriam frowned, looking at him, trying to tell what he meant. His tone had shifted, and he was walking rapidly now, hand outstretched.

"Think of memories, shared memories."

*****

What were memories if they were fake? Miriam, sitting at a desk, talking about baseball.

Sara nodded. It was a bobbing, thoughtful nod, and she smiled and--

The journey back was quiet. Aerie escorted her to her mind, and once she was there, back on home ground, she half-expected that she'd find her Daimon.

Instead she was left in peace to walk the road back to the world. The door was where it was, the world was as it was.

Everything was unmoving, frozen. Her body ached, and she was thinking the same thoughts, again and again. Running through it all, and seeing the truth. She had never truly known Sara, never truly known who she was in the same way she'd known her other friends.

It was disconcerting, it was sickening, it was strange. She 'woke' at night, kneeling in front of her bed.

No pain, now, except for her knees.

Miriam crawled into bed, muttering prayers all the while. "Oh holy father," she muttered.

It was a Friday.

Her summer had begun.

Oh brave new world, and all the people in it. Sleep overtook her, but it was not the sleep of long-passed days. It was not the sleep of the ignorant, who had not seen the true glory and nightmare that was Magic. These were dreams of someone who did not Sleep, someone who saw the world in the vibrant colors of the day. And saw its horror as well.

She had been blind, and because of it she had not seen that every moment of friendship was a moment of agony, a moment of pain and suffering that had been inflicted on Sara by someone who, if they had gotten what they wanted, would have inflicted just as bad on Miriam.

So she dreamed of every nightmare come to roost, every end. Jack dead, furious and driven to madness by his hate.

Her father, broken but unbowed, grief resting upon him like the weight of a thousand years of bondage, piled up against just a few years of freedom. Her father had been born poor, had lost all of his family except his brother, and...and. Would he have known what was lost?

She woke up the morning to find the world seemed dull, and yet charged. Odd, and yet familiar.

An Apocalypse had occurred, and that meant nothing at all. Just another veil ripped from the eyes of someone who had once been blind. The world was clearer now, and that meant it was colder...but it didn't have to be.

She'd learn magic, Miriam thought, she'd learn magic and with it she'd make the world a better place, however she could. What use was magic otherwise.

The Devil strode through the land, and Christ followed him salving every wound and drying every tear.

All the oceans of the Great Flood, tears to scrape the very earth itself, to form canyons and shift the world, all of that grief came to nothing, had to come to nothing.

If not here, than in the afterlife. Heaven.

And in the here and now?

Miriam had work to do.

Plan A Week

Teachings (Choose 2+1 (Temporary Resolve boost))

[] The Ten Arcana and the Practices.
[] Mind magic.
[] How to use Space and the nature of Sympathy.
[] Magic pertaining to Life.
[] The Nature of Fate Magic, and how to do it.
[] A Metaphysical Primer on Abyss and the Supernal
[] Tools and Yantra.
[] Hallows, Mana, how to get it.
[] Legacies, what they are and the names and natures of a few.
[] The lesser magics of the world.

Meeting With People (Choose 1+1 (Temporary Resolve boost))

[] "Cleopatra is a powerful Mage of the Silver Ladder, and knows things that it is well worth knowing. She would no doubt be delighted to speak to you."
[] "Perhaps I need to confront Valkyrie directly. Maybe with you there, we could get to the bottom of this matter. That Guardian, if she interfered…"
[] "Storia is the newest member of the Mysterium, and before you arrived, the newest Mage known to the Consilium. Perhaps you might talk."
[] "You've met my Cabal, but you haven't really met them in the best circumstances."
[] "Mars is to war as the newest Hierarch is to peace. He will no doubt be interested in this latest act, being as it is likely perpetrated by those aligned with the Seers…"
[] "The Underground Library might have knowledge that you seek, it's true that I mentioned them, Miriam…"
[] "Gabriel Breda is the leader of The Uprising, as I have told you. He has not heard your name yet, but he will, soon."

During the Week (Choose 3)

[] (.8x) Explore back into her mind, and perhaps the minds of others.
-[] (.8x) Stay in her own mind.
-[] (.7x) Perhaps find a way into Virginia's mind some night, to see what's going on there.
[] Go to a baseball game, now that summer has begun. She should get out more, exercise some as well.
[] Read a book!
-[] The book of Life and Mind 'rotes' whatever that is.
-[] The psychological book of dreams Virginia found.
[] (1.1x) Visit Virginia, see how she is doing.
[] She hasn't spent time with Dickens lately, perhaps it'd be best to call him over, invite the poor boy for dinner.
[] Ronald can see magic, and so can is father. Let him in on the secret of her nature, and see what they have to say. Perhaps they even have advice?
[] Visit the church that she'd visited before, to talk more with one of the Folk.

*****

Spoiler: XP Gain

1/5th of an Arcane XP for visiting the Oneiros for the first time.

1/5th of an Arcane XP for visiting someone else's Oneiros for the first time.

1/5th of an XP for uncovering Sara's mystery.

1/5th of an XP for New Resolves and those Crits

1/5th XP for Keios' comments.

Spoiler: Roll-Play

The Tearing Sound: (Prime, Spirit)

Deals Potency Damage


+1 Reach: Damage is agg
+1 Reach: Instant
+1 Reach: Non-touch based

Rote: (2 total free reach)

+3 Rote Specialty (music)
+1 Yantra and Dedicated tool (-2 to Paradox roll)

Potency 5 (-8)

Roll=2 sux, it's good!

Now, first: counts as observed automatically. Second, 1 Overreach.

So, dice pool: 1 (Sleeper Witness automatically)-2 (Dedicated tool)+2 (1 Reach over)=1 dice=1 sux

He's going to try to contain it: 6 dice=3 sux, successfully contains the paradox.

Running: 4 (Effective Strength in this place)+2 (Bit of a…)=2 sux.

Preacher's Daughter+Presence=5 sux

Thinking: 4 (Int)+4 (Student)=5 sux

A/N: Alright, so, vote by plan. It's going to be a busy week, admittedly!

 

[The Laurent]

Page 18: The Cards On the Table

As one slept, the world moved. As one played, the world moved. Miriam woke to a different world in a different place. The world had continued to move around the sun, and in the darkness she knew that actions were being done that she couldn't participate in. That were not anything she wanted to do. She knew that there was war, and so she could picture how quickly and decisively they would act.

How many Mages were in Chicago? She didn't know, but she could know that this was something that any government in the world should work to prevent. Acts like this, done on innocents. Surely there were laws, even if Miriam didn't know what they were. Surely there were punishments, though Miriam didn't know whether there were trials.

There was much she didn't know, she thought as she got up, yawning, and hastily brushed her hair in front of a mirror. She looked tired, certainly, and more than that, she looked as if she needed to relax.

She frowned, touching her face for a moment, rubbing her eyes absently, as if searching for something. Some mark of what she'd done. She walked over, each step making the squeaky floor groan, and picked up a baseball bat and hefted it. She swung it down once, and then twice, and tried to imagine killing someone with it.

None of the memories came, none of the knowledge of how hard you had to swing in order to crack a skull, or how she should move it fast enough that the enemy couldn't grab it, or--

All the little details that had come naturally now were entirely gone, and instead what she knew how to do was swing it in another way. The sun was shining, which meant it was later than she thought, and so she quickly changed, deciding to go down and see the Giants. There was a game going on, or would be this afternoon, between them and a visiting team.

Just another game towards the ultimate end of getting back in it, after Kansas City had beaten them.

She dressed as simply as she could manage and made her way downstairs, lured by the smell of frying bacon.

"Mornin' sunshine," her mom said, "You slept like the dead."

She bustled and moved, full of energy that Miriam lacked, and she saw that her father was dressed and ready to go to church, sitting there eating toast and looking through The Defender.

"I guess I did," Miriam admitted, smiling a little and plopping down. She was definitely hungry.

"About last night," her father began, his voice quiet. He rubbed his chin, looking over at her, and then shook his head. "Actually, nevermind."

Miriam was more grateful than she could have said, and she smiled and said, "And what about you, Dad? Sleep well?"

"Like the living," her father said. "So, not as well as I would have liked." He stretched slightly in his seat, and then reached for the coffee, sipping it slowly. Coffee was something that Miriam understood, but didn't quite get, despite that, the appeal of. So she watched, allowing herself to just take in the moment, even as her thoughts were far off from that.

But still, she had a game to watch.

*******

"Quite a crowd, ain't it?" Abe said. They were sitting near the back of the stands, the better to see the whole field, and the Giants were taking it pretty steadily. Two on base, and the game seemed to be progressing as if they'd laid it out right then and there. Bottom of the third, two ahead, and they had a real slugger coming, but Miriam wasn't watching him, not really.

"Yeah," Miriam said, glancing over at the boy, who was working his way through a hotdog. She had peanuts, and she wasn't the only one, from the way her shoes crunched on shells when she stood up to cheer a score.

The stands were pretty close to full, a sea of dark-skinned humanity, dressed for a day at the ballpark. Kids running to and fro, because a Saturday was the day for this sort of thing.

"Look at him," MIriam said, pointing to the short, light-brown skinned man on second. "He's gonna steal."

"Really? Him? That pitcher'll get him then," Abe said.

But Miriam was watching his feet. And she'd been watching him, a little curiously, as he'd run the bases. He had legs on him. Short, but all legs, it seemed, if his running was any indication. And if that was his speed going around the bases, then at a fast start…

At a fast start, she thought. "No…watch him."

The pitcher was winding up for something nasty. You could tell, because she could see the catcher making signals like he was going mad. The pitcher spat on the ground and then--

The man on second base was already halfway to third before the pitcher even turned around, and he ran, a crazy blur, and Miriam fought her desire to get up on her feet and cheer as he slid into third, heartbeats ahead of the ball.

She needn't have restrained herself, because the cheering was loud enough to wake the very dead themselves as he stood up and dusted himself off, grinning at the pitcher and taking off his cap in mock salute.

"Man, that's some style," Abe said, "You think you could steal like that?"

"It's about speed and timing." Miriam frowned and thought about what her Daimon had said. She'd had a point, as far as baseball went, Miriam thought, as the bold base-stealer, Carl "Hot" Smith, according to one of the people next to her, chattering on. He was new, relatively speaking, though it was hard to keep a track of the roster with how much--against the best interests of the game--players just jumped shift left and right.

"But really, if we're gonna do anything, I need to work on my pitching," Miriam said.

"Oh? You pitch plenty fast."

"But do I pitch crooked enough?" she asked, glancing down at the game. Smith had gotten home, but the pitcher still knew his business, and he struck out the next person with a series of balls that were always at just the wrong place to be hit, but not so wrong that it was a ball. Perfect control, and the other team, the Detroit Stars, wasn't bad at all.

Of course, once Cristobal got up on the plate, the game started to break out, but then how could it not? Miriam knew there were stories that he drank too much, but true or not, and it shouldn't have been true (because what sport was improved by alcohol, what body was nurtured by booze, no sport and no body), that didn't change the fact that if he got up to bat, magic happened.

No home run this time, but a neat double that set up another score before the inning ended.

The sun was bright that spring day, and the mood was electric, and it was easy to forget that somewhere else other sorts of games were being played, that somewhere else there was misery and confusion and that somewhere else, far away from this park that Sara wouldn't come to in a thousand years.

There was no segregation here, in theory. She'd seen whites here before, and certainly there's no chance that they'd be barred. They just didn't' come all that often, except when one of the local teams face off against the Giants.

Beaten soundly, Miriam thought, feeling a wash of second-hand pride. The Negro Leagues were full of players that could have given Babe a run for his money, that was something that Miriam believed deep down in the marrow of her bones, and so she was in a good mood as she went to one of the backlot parts with Abe.

This one was overgrown a little with weeds, behind a series of old buildings that had been turned from individual houses to lots, cut up and blocked off, home to dozens of families now. But the ground had been smoothed enough, and a little dirt and mud to get over the fence wasn't anything to worry about.

Pitching was hard on an arm, but she kept at it. It was a two person lack-of-a-game. But Abe kept gamely at it.

"Who are you kidding? Your breaking ball is breaking me," Abe said, after she'd fastball and slowballed and...everything'd him to heck and back. her arm was aching a little, but he'd failed to get it a dozen times in a row.

"Not very funny," Miriam said, grinning. "Know if anyone around here's playing?"

"I could ask," Abe said, frowning with a shrug. The tall boy said, "Y'know how they are, though. Though don't want to be beat by a preacher's kid."

Or by a girl, but then didn't say that. She hit as hard as any of them, and ran as fast, and when the rest of them were panting and heaving, she was still fine. Though...it did mean that she got mud on her skirt, which would be troubling enough to explain, all things considered.

At least it wasn't her good skirt.

******

During the entire day, other than having her mage sight working, telling her the length and distance of the fields and the alleys, the places they ran and talked and played, there was nothing that reminded her of magic.

Nothing that reminded her, and really, that was good. At dinner she said, "Hey, Dad, can you check in with Jack?"

"Why?" he asked, and then shook his head, "I can. You really should know where he lives."

"Not like I can visit," Miriam pointed out, picking at her meatloaf.

"Uh-huh," her Mom, Eliza, said, tapping her spoon on the table as if adding a point.

"Maybe not. But…" Dad shrugged and said, "Comin' with me this Sunday?"

"Yes," Miriam said, "Might check out the other place next Sunday, I suppose." She shrugged, glancing over at her mother, who looked suspicious. She looked suspicious because she was suspicious.

There was reason to be. But he meant well, and so did Miriam.

******

Hymns could focus the mind wonderfully, and prayer could help her center herself, remember what mattered. God had his reasons, and she needed to think about that. Had she not been curious, Sara might never have been found out. Had she not acted, the world would be worse off for it.

Luck, perhaps, but it gave her perspective. She wasn't to blame for what had happened to Sara, and she could only pray that Sara was going to get better. People could heal from a lot, or they could listlessly watch the time run away. She'd seen veterans with one leg missing, hobbing along with hard eyes and a strong will, and she'd seen people broken by a single touch, who couldn't handle the stresses of situations half as dangerous.

People were unique, and one shouldn't presume to understand them so well. God had made them in His image, and so if it really was so easy to get to the bottom of them, the world would be a lot less fascinating. And so she prayed and sang amid hundreds of others, feeling their waking minds, if not reading their depths, the room filled by them, the church brought to life by their passion.

And that's what it was. Even here, where father tried to temper the emotion with reason, tried to thread the two together, knitting more skillfully than Miriam would have been able to manage either in metaphor or fact, tried to be all things to all people.

Her eyes traced the words in the bible, the message today on the book of Jeremiah, on the doom of a people. And on the promise of a new repentance. It was dense, head work, and she knew her father had to resist talking about the Hebrew, talking about the way versions and language came together, because it was a complex book, not that any in the bible were that simple. Dates and times and arguments, all of which were beyond the message.

And beyond its fact. Prophecy. There had been prophecy in the book, and if magic could do many things, if it could read that one person had a destiny to do great things, if it could steal that destiny, could a Mage see into the future? How did that work? Was the future fixed? God existed in all times and places all at once, everywhere and all-encompassing. God was not bound by the limits of human's point of view.

We chose freely, or so her father believed, and so she believed. Calvinism, and all belief that there was some elect failed to understand the power of grace, and the mission it gave. Choice was made, and yet God knew all and yet, one made a choice even if someone else knew its results. A choice stood alone, she knew, and yet she was...destined for something? Predestined, one might say, if one was looking to throw a brick at the window of her beliefs.

But if Christ had not died for everyone, then what did that do to the doctrine of…

Her thoughts and beliefs were something of a mire, but she knew she would see her way through the thicket, given time.

But not yet. All in its own time.

******

When she got back from church, ready to take off her fancy church clothes and dress in something a little less hot in this weather, which was sweltering as if it was already the height of summer, her uncle was there.

Again, she thought, frowning. But he wasn't unwelcome, even as he went in, sampled food as her mother glared at him, and made his way upstairs.

Carpet bag in hand.

******

Upstairs, Miriam had questions, but he raised his hand, allowing them to peter out before saying, "I'll answer, but first we must play a game. Gambling is a sin, or so I'm told, but...if one plays a card game for fun, there is no crime to it, no?"

"No," Miriam conceded, frowning thoughtfully. This had to be some sort of lesson, and indeed, the deck of cards he pulled from the pack was not normal. It was red backed, and he'd walk over to her desk and pull out her chair, gesturing for her to sit down as he began to lay cards on the table.

She looked at the cards, each of which was lovingly illustrated in an ornate style, portraying what looked like different people, doing different things. He laid out a row of ten at the top, and then below he created five rows. Three cards on the first, second, and third row, and two each on the last rows.

"The Arcana and the Practices," he said, pointing upward. The first picture was of a man in a blue robe, wearing a golden crown. He was standing before an ocean, which crashed against the rock upon which he stood. His hands gestured wildly, his pale, white face lined with age. "That, is Forces. All Arcana are either gross or subtle. The gross arcana control things in the world, such as, in this example, Forces, or Life--"

He gestured over towards a picture of a young boy sitting down next to a lion. Half-naked, but covered by leaves at the right places, he was stroking the lion's mane, as behind him a lamb capered, apparently safe.

"The subtle Arcana, on the other hand, control the unseen. Spirit communes with those creatures beyond, Death talks to ghosts--"

Orpheus walked through the underworld, haunted and attacked by shades, his skin olive, dressed in a sheepskin tunic. A girl stood in a vast court, one that reminded her of stories of early modern royalty, standing before a strange being made of golden light, holding up her hand, somewhere between supplication and warding.

She nodded, impressed by the artwork. She could see the emotion on her face, the determination that clashed horribly with the danger she felt from this place. From the decorations which seemed slightly off-kilter. Rich, and yet somehow inhuman.

"So, to start at the top, Forces controls the electricity, sound, light, heat...radio waves, even the weather at higher levels. It is not subtle if one is being too stupid about it, but it can be used in careful ways. Meanwhile, below, Prime--"

A monk was meditating on top of a pillar, eyes cast upwards towards the heaven, "Controls magic. Mana, which I haven't explained, Hollows, sensing whether something is magical or not, understanding something's magical nature or finding a way to undo even the strongest magic."

Miriam nodded as he pointed to the next in the chain. "Time, the Gross Arcana that Acanthus possess." It was a young girl and a grown woman and a mother and a crone and a grave. Each picture overlapped each other just a little bit, and if she squinted at it just right she'd see one of them but not the others. "It controls and can see into time, as the name implies. One can glimpse the future or the past, or speed up action."

He paused and said, "Think on that last one, when I tell you the news later. Then below it is Fate."

A Negro girl was dancing with a handsome, dark-skinned man in a crowded ballroom, but she was not looking at him, but instead at a noose in the window, which hung there as if telling her how it would end. Miriam, though she was not raised on the crop of melodramas, knew how it would end. Assignations against the advice of society, and death.

"It controls destiny, luck, odds...I could cheat my way into quite a bit of wealth if I were willing to abuse my own limited talents in Fate."

"And then there's Matter and Death, the gross and subtle of a Moros. Matter is the power of alchemy. Turn lead into gold, hone one thing into a stronger substance, it is a hallowed, careful art...that I know very little about. Death, on the other hand, is the magic of ghosts, decay, the dead, but it also controls a number of very dangerous workings with souls, at higher levels."

Matter showed an old man, with shriveled, yellow skin, poring over a tone with one hand while the other held out a strange herb, a withered and twisted root that seemed to fold in on itself.

"Next, there is Thyrsus," he said, gesturing to the two cards she'd seen, "Their subtle Arcana is the realm of the spirits, as you've seen, while their gross one allows them to control lives and bodies. They an abjure sleep or gain superhuman strength, morph into animals or control the bodies, but not the minds, of others. And finally...us."

The top card showed nothing at all. It was, in fact, a silvery mirror of some sort, and when she peered down into it she saw her own eyes staring back at her. Centered a little too much, dark and inquisitive.

And then below was a short, fat man who looked to be dancing upon a globe, his steps kicking up water as he did. "Mind, and Space. Mind controls minds, your own, others, the way you think, the way others think and feel...and Astral enetities. Space, now space is a long story, but all things have what is known as sympathy. In addition to teleportation and moving things, understanding volume, it can be used to work magic at a distance."

She frowned, "Like taking someone's hair and tying it to a doll?"

"That is one way. Sympathetic magic is what Space is most known for, and thus it is a type of magic that can make every other type of magic more effective," he said, "But now, look down below. Because here's where it gets complicated."

Miriam, who had been listening with increasing dismay, less for its complexities and more for the breadth and scope of magic, looked down at the cards.

"These are the practices. Each practice is associated with a level of mastery, from Initiate, to Apprentice, to Disciple, to Adept...to Master. As one strengthens one's skill with the Arcana, one learns how to do each of these in turn."

She nodded, frowning at the first three cards. A man standing in front of a table, offering what looked to be a leg of turkey to a fat guardsman of some description, a man with a blindfold, who seemed to be walking forward assuredly, and an explorer, face rugged with whiskers, standing on top of a mountain looking down at a valley filled with strange lights.

"The first three practices are compelling, knowing, and unveiling. Compelling focuses on shifting that which is already there, by a degree. A compelling spell might make flames shift away from the user, but cannot create them, it could make a hungry man indulge in food that he was resisting, or at least push him to it, or it can make a human body fight off, say, a poison in their stomach. It cannot make something new, and it cannot introduce the new. Knowing involves, well, knowing something. For instance, you can read my mind, that is Knowing. You can look at someone's destiny, that is knowing, you can glance at a sword and know its composition, that is Knowing with Matter. And unveiling is to strip away something hidden. To be able to see ghosts, or spirits, or to be heighten your sense of smell. More examples will help, but those are the basic three."

Miriam nodded.

"So, let me say that I used a smell of...Time. I make it so that the man I am chasing will find that the taxi will show up a little late, that the elevator will close just before he gets on, what practice is that?"

"Compelling."

"And if I wanted to be able to see whether someone was stronger than me using Knowing, what would I use?"

"Life," Miriam said.

"Quite. Now, the next two sets--"

He pointed down. The first was of a woman, sitting at a table, holding a finger out in front of a gaunt man who knelt with hatred in his eyes. She was pretty, but her rosy skin seemed marked with signs of decay. The second in the first set was of a man standing in front of his family. He was a Negro, and he was staring down a mob, which was painted to look almost like demons. And last was a room. An empty room. It was someone's living room, but Miriam could not see anything out of place.

"Next is Ruling, Shielding, and Veiling. It is easier to undo than to do, and thus to unveil something, to expose it, is easier than to hide it. A veiling spell might make it so that nobody sees me, their minds skipping over my presence, or it could make someone lose track of time, their own internal sense blinded from them. It could also hide from specific entities, such as ghosts or spirits, with the relevent arcana. Shielding is protection. An Obrimos can walk through flames untouched with the right spell, and a Thyrsus can guard against illness, even while treating those dying of the plague. And Ruling? Ruling is control. Control of people, control of matter, making fire dance and leap. It cannot make something what it is not. Fire can dance, but it cannot put itself out, people can have their bodies controlled, but not made any stronger, their minds enslaved, but not be made any smarter."

He then gestured to the next set, "Fraying, Perfecting, and Weaving." They were all three versions of the same thing. A woman at a spinning wheel. In the first, she seemed to be feeding a robe into it, and out the other end came dross. In the second, she had pushed the wheel aside and was sewing the torn shirt back up, good as new. And in the third a woman was making, with simple thread, the very shirt that she had been destroying.

"Fraying is as it sounds. Wat can use his magic to tear and hurt living things, and I could attack a mind from afar, or weaken the barrier between the world of the spirit and the living. The Gauntlet I told you about. It can be strengthened and weakened. Perfecting means to take something as it is and make it more. I can make myself smarter, another Mage might fix a broken machine with a single touch, or enhance what is there. For instance, perfecting of the Mind can also take a skill and make it more. I might be a good card sharp, but am I world class? With magic, I can be."

Miriam blinked, startled. The more he said, the more she imagined how much could be done with magic. "I should write this...wait. No," she shook her head, "I shouldn't." She closed her eyes, thinking through each of the practices so far. "What's the next level?"

"Well, perhaps I'll share them all, then. Patterning." It showed a man pouring what looked like water from one bottle into another. But what sloshed in that bottle was clearly red, and Miriam understood the reference. Water to wine. "And...Unraveling."

A man was literally coming apart at the seams, not gorily but in a sort of carefully constructed censored version. Stuffing falling to the ground where guts would be.

"Patterning lets you entirely replace or change something. One memory is replaced by another, the 'you' that is standing in one place is teleported and replaced somewhere else, or make an unliving object act as if it is living for a time, able to obey orders. Meanwhile, Unraveling includes the destroying of a person by any number of means, the dispersal of gathered magic, the destruction of sympathetic links using Space magic."

"This is magic I will not be able to do for some time, correct?" Miriam asked, almost nervous.

"Yes. Patterning and and Unraveling are both very potent practices that take a long time to understand, even when you're skilled enough to use them, there's much that can be learned about them. And the last two…"

The first was brightness, white light radiating from seemingly everywhere, and the words, written in...High Speech, she realized, struggling to interpret the words, even though their meanings seemed obvious. 'And God said, 'let there be light.''

The second picture was of a dark void that looked like space. Black, pitiless, and empty.

"Making and Unmaking. With these two, you can create things. You can birth a spirit or give form to some fantastic creature of your imagination, you can utterly destroy Laviosier's law, creating and destroying matter from nothing. And all that can be made can be destroyed. Not frayed or unraveled, but made not to exist, sometimes forever, sometimes for a time. You can destroy spirits and ghosts, can tear magic apart at the foundation…" he shrugged, "It is beyond many Mages. I myself only recently gained the skills needed to do some of this with the Arcana of Mind."

He swept the cards away and handed her the deck of twenty-two cards. "Now I'm going to propose a type of magic, and then you tell me what Arcana and practice it is."

******

"Creating a unicorn," he said, half an hour later.

She laid out Life and Making.

"Not quite. But I'll explain why in a moment," Jack said. "Another question. I can create a book which holds a copy of my mind. What is it that I use to do that?"

"A copy, that would be Making, I think?" Miriam said, "But...of your mind, in a book?"

"Here's a secret. Some spells take more than one Arcana. To make a unicorn worth anything, it'd need a mind, or else it'd just lay there, drooling and producing nothing. And it takes skill with more than one Arcana to create a physical book that holds one's mind."

"Oh," Miriam said, her task now seeming a lot more complex. "Well…"

Her head was swimming with new ideas and thoughts. He'd suggested things with magic that never would have occurred to her. Sometimes he said it simply, 'doing x' and other times he quickly set up a scenario and described what someone did.

"Another question, then. Speeding yourself up enough that you can draw a gun and shoot yourself before anyone can stop you," Jack asked.

Miriam blinked. He'd been staying away from violence as a theme, more or less. "What?"

"What practice is that?"

"It's a Time spell that would be perfecting time, wouldn't it?" Miriam asked.

"You're correct. It was. You wanted to ask about what happened. Well, then I'll tell you. It was a group effort. You've been thinking about what the law involves? Well, this involved every possible aligned Order. I sent word to the Adamantine Arrow, whose prowess is known, and the Guardians, whose skill with secrecy is also known. The Mysterium got involved to quarantine Sara's mind after the Guardians led her parents away, early in the morning."

Miriam gasped. "Were they…?"

"They believed that God wanted them to use their daughter as part of some cult that had ties to another vessel for another Eater, a catholic priest who met people in his church, scouted them unknowingly to find potential."

Miriam looked sick, "How many people?"

"Five. Sara, the priest, a prominent businessman, a professor at the University of Chicago, and an underworld figure involved with the italian mob. We've found all of them, and traced that there were two people involved in the creation process. Or rather, two different sets of fingerprints. The professor and the underworld figure were by one person, less powerful...and Sara, the priest, and the businessman were all controlled by another." He shook his head, "We found one of them, but not the other. The Mysterium and the Folk are both going to work on trying to heal their minds, along with the Guardians, and The Uprising is involved in hunting down the underworld connections."

"One got away?" Miriam asked.

"Yes. We believe a female of great Mastery. There were a total of three members of the Legacy in Chicago. A master, a disciple, and a new initiate. We found the disciple, but he killed himself using the time spell you described, managing to resist any last second counterspells. They are going to see if they can find out information from his ghost, about the Master, but it is likely that she's cleaned up her tracks, because thus far it seems as if everything ends, just as suddenly, in a dead end. But we also found the initiate. She was a woman who had Awakened less than a year ago, snatched up and told a pack of lies. Her infant son has a great destiny, and she noticed it and feared for him. They told her…"

He paused, "That it was dangerous, that it would be better if it didn't exist." His voice was laden with emotion. None of the amused detachment. "She believed that taking her own son's Destiny would leave him otherwise unharmed. She was training to be able to do it, but...we don't know if she has scarred her soul. That's what a legacy does, alter the soul of the one who joins it. A little by a little, until they are changed, for good or ill. There will be a trial, and the Silver Ladder will have a Lictor, a judge, to oversee it."

Miriam was horrified. "Will she...she didn't hurt her son, did she?"

"No. Fortunately she did not," Jack said, quietly, "She's going to be told the truth, and how she reacts will decide much. She cannot be allowed to go free if she truly possesses the Legacy, but killing her if she has not done any act other than scarring her soul?"

"That wouldn't be done?" Miriam asked.

"Oh, no, it would, by some. But there'd be enough pushback, that if she was truly remorseful, there might be some magical binding. And retraining, teaching them never to use the Legacy or any powers related to it." Jack looked at Miriam, "It is too early to know how that will turn out, and Sara is being treated right now. It may take weeks, maybe even a month, or more. Coniunctio, as well as others, are going to work on that. He's...someone I trust to such a task. But the real improvements will take longer than just patching up memories and fixing damage. Because her parents betrayed her. They dragged her to meet the priest, and with the priest was…"

Jack sounded disgusted, "She'd covered her tracks so thoroughly that she's a blank in the memories. Even the fact that she met anyone who did anything is more by implication."

"And so she's free?"

"But fleeing," Jack said, "We're unraveling her network, and we think her control included more than them. But we do have clear indications that the disciple was a Seer, which meant so was she. And since they had their hooks in the Mob, and in the church…"

Jack looked troubled, "It means that there is rot that could have spread, and we didn't notice it. Your discovery might save dozens of lives."

Miriam could not smile, not thinking about what happened to Sara, not thinking about a mother whose love had been abused. And she didn't feel as if she'd done anything, didn't feel as if it had mattered, and yet it had.

But it wasn't enough. She needed to be able to do more. She needed to be able to act and understand. "If I wanted to fly, what practice would that be?"

Jack blinked, slightly taken aback, "What?"

Miriam took a deep breath. "We still have studying to do, don't we?"

Jack smiled, and when he left, he left her a sheet listing a number of fantastic examples of magic, all written as if they were snippets from some strange story of weird mysticism. And the cards, for practice

When meeting with Virginia, what does Miriam do? (Choose 1)

[] Virginia wanted a test subject, she can have it. Go to her house and try on products or...whatever it was and hang out.
[] Virginia might want to go shopping. For clothes. Miriam could go along.
[] Virginia did express some interest in following Miriam's lead. Perhaps they could go to the library, and talk there.
-[] Or watch another ball game.
[] Come over for another dinner, with some time spent playing games or something like that.
[] Find a way to get Jack to meet her, to see if he sees anything.

*****

Spoiler: XP

Made progress towards being able to raise an Aspect (Tomboy).

Gain 1/5th of an Arcane XP.

Spoiler: Roll-Play

Watch It: 4 (Intelligence)+2 (Tomboy)/3 (Perception)+2 (Tomboy)=2/2 sux

Composure=3 sux

Strength of Pitching: 1 sux

2 (Dex)+2 (Bit of a Tomboy)=4 sux

4 (Int)+3 (Preacher's Daughter)=0 sux...huh, wow.

Willpower goes from 3/6 (sleeping from Sat to Sun got you up from 2/6) to 2/6, because the failure relates to Faith and that seems to fit.

Obvious question: 4 dice+3 (Obvious)=2 sux

Less Obvious questions: 4 dice=3 sux

Less Obvious Questions 2: 4 dice+1 (Think you got it)=2 sux

A/N: And so, I suppose, it continues. I hope it wasn't too boring, going through the practices. I thought the cards would be an interesting twist. I was thinking about how to make it interesting, and it seemed like cards would be one way to test someone's skill, and so it all sort of flowed from there.

As you might have noticed, those are real teams and ½ of the players mentioned in this update are in fact real people.

 

[The Laurent]

Page 19: Libraries and Sacrifices

"You seem down," Virginia said, quietly, as she rubbed the lotions and chemicals in her hair. They were in the bathroom at the moment, downstairs, and Miriam was already wondering just how long this was going to last.

Virginia was looming over her like an exceptionally fashionable angel of death, dressed up as if she was going out, but with an apron on and big rubber gloves, holding the bottles like they were toxic. And they were, really.

Chemicals, all sorts of chemicals. To do with a girl's hair what nature wouldn't.

Now, Miriam thought, she should have run away the moment she saw those gloves. "Oh?"

"Still havin' bad dreams?"

Miriam considered the question, and decided to tell the truth, "Yeah. I am."

Virginia said, quietly, "Now, don't breathe in too much, or it'll--"

"Why do all this, if it's just that toxic?" she asked, and she got a whiff of the chemicals. Smelled like bleach or something insane like that. Just, the most putrid chemical smell, though at least the lotions had floral scents to hide some of that.

"Why do anything, y'know?" Virginia asked, touching her hair. Straight. Not a single kink in it, stretching down beneath her neck. It looked good, Miriam supposed, but her own short, kinky hair, almost as short as a boy's, though not quite, always seemed like it was just fine. "It's always work a little sacrifice if what you get's worth it."

"Everyone does sacrifice," Miriam said, frowning, "Even when someone sacrificed for them."

"Or give up somethin', I guess," Virginia said, not seeming to realize that Miriam was thinking about Sara.

"Catholics, and Lent," she said, frowning, glancing up in the mirror at her face. Did she really want straight hair? Well, she'd try it. But as short as it was, even straightened it'd just fall against her neck, unless she did something with it. What was the use of short hair. "Give something up, but it's meant to be something…"

What kind of parents? That was the question. It was the question she knew Jack was asking, the question he was asking when he'd told her about the mother who had almost destroyed her child. What kind of parent? She knew he saw it, she knew that the fury there, the rage that she'd seen when he'd torn the Eater apart, that was real. He was angry, and he didn't need to scream and run and shout at people to show it.

If a person knew him long enough, there was no way they could miss it. There was no need to read minds, to use powers that could end in all sorts of bad ways. Paradox, whatever it was or whatever caused it--and she'd never seen it, wasn't sure about a lot of the basics of magic--was the least of all concerns here, compared to the paradox.

A mother who almost sacrificed a child, two parents who did sacrifice a child, who used them in some way. Who gave them up like it was cigars for lent, or...whatever a person decided on. It didn't sit right with Miriam, couldn't have sit right with any decent, god fearing human being on the face of the planet, but Jack...Jack had watched her. Watched her destiny and tried to protect her, tried to guide her.

He'd done his best, even knowing what he knew and doing what he'd done. He'd been an Uncle to her in every good meaning of the word.

But it had almost not been enough.

"What's that?" Virginia asked, frowning.

"Nothing," Miriam said, and realized as soon as she did that it wouldn't be enough.

"Really? Nothing? I'm the girl who has your hair hostage right now," Virginia said, her voice lowering a little, amused.

"Not much to hold hostage. Isn't really anything you can do with it, is there?"

"Isn't anything you can...isn't…" Virginia laughed, "Miriam, if we were just a little bolder, we could get bobs, you and I. Like Irene Castle, or Anna Wong. It's the in in fashion, you know. All this hair, it's really too much when you think about it, not pretty at all. But a nice bob, you'd look great in it."

"If we're doing that, then why not just get a boy's haircut?" Miriam asked, amused. She'd seen movies, and so she supposed she'd seen a bob, but it'd always seemed odd. Well, short hair itself wasn't bad, she was proof of it. And when a girl was working in a factory, like back during the war, it'd be stupid to wear anything else.

But...but she didn't know. It just seemed this odd combination of fashionable and short she wasn't used to. She was too used to considering short hair a matter of practicality, and not fashion. After all, she didn't care that much about fashion. She dressed in a way that was appropriate to her gender and station, even if she hated stockings and went through them way too fast with all the sliding around she'd done, way back when...but the idea of going out of her way?

"Hah. You. Boy's haircut. And maybe a suit?" Virginia asked, giggling. "Now, don't go trying to distract me."

"Sara's been acting a little odd. I think I figured out why, and I was just thinking," Miriam said.

"About…"

"Lent. Religion. Sacrifices. Parents?"

"What? Do you mean her parents are doin' something to her?" Virginia asked, her voice slipping farther into a southern accent, distress in her voice, "Or...how'd you even figure this out?"

"It doesn't matter. It's taken care of. Forget I said it."

"Fine, fine...now hold still. Don't want to burn your scalp."

******

It was a near enough thing, and now Miriam was standing, hair damp, in Virginia's room, looking into a mirror as Virginia fiddled with bottles. She looked...odd. Her hair was completely straight, like advertized, hanging limp like a white girl's hair. Well, some white girl's hair. That's what it was about, she knew, or at least, that's what it'd been about traditionally, though it was hard to see the betrayal. Still, she'd liked her hair just fine, and it wasn't as if this would last too long. "How long will this last?"

"Three days, four?" Virginia said, "About that."

"So you keep on doing this?" Miriam asked, impressed in a strange way.

"Yep. You do what you do for beauty. Now, hold out a cheek."

She rubbed some cream on it.

"Other cheek."

Miriam oblidged, and then Virginia rubbed them in carefully and then looked in the mirror. "Which side looks lighter, then?"

"Oh, all that. You know it doesn't matter," Miriam said.

"Maybe to you. Maybe to you, but look at my skin. I need all the leg up I can get. Someone put a paper bag next to my face, then what?" Virginia asked. It was true she had dark skin. The kind of dark that made Miriam think of the color black, rather than just brown. It didn't bother Miriam any, and she thought that it was too much a symptom of too many bad mindsets.

"Maybe, maybe. Anyways, I think the left side?"

"Ah, good. I paid more for that. I mean, it has less to do with your skin."

Miriam's skin was not the lightest brown she'd seen, that'd be her mother or a few other women she'd seen, the ones from the nice backgrounds, but it was certainly brown and not black, lighter than her father's...which was still lighter than Virginia's, it must be admitted. She frowned, touching her cheek. Skin color had nothing to do with magic, she told herself, feeling a brief flicker of, not doubt, but awareness.

She'd felt it before, but by this point she'd met multiple white men and a white woman and not a one of them had at least openly seemed to give off the vibes she was used to. You saw it when you sat on the streetcar next to a white person. They didn't say anything, but Miriam could feel the discomfort, she'd always been at least willing to pay attention to how people felt. They weren't going to say anything, because this was the city and making a scene--

Except then again, they'd rioted, hadn't they?

They'd rioted and it'd been a cover for the kinds of people who did what they'd done to Sara. The person behind it had been a Seer of the Throne, whoever that was and whatever they believed. Whatever it was, it was evil.

Evil and she had to stop it. Stop them. But then, what was she supposed to do?

"You're tense."

"Thinking," Miriam said, "Want to try putting me in makeup? Make me look better."

"You look just fine," Virginia said, "And you'd smudge it all. But sure. Why don't we try that?"

Virginia smiled down at her and began to try it on.

Makeup, now that was a sore topic. A little makeup, that was right and proper, but there was a reason Jeremiah preached against making the eyes larger with paint, against...against all sorts of things, but at the same time, one had to interpret the words, one had to understand their context. And yet, all of that said, there was the fact that it was interesting watching the subtle shifts in the mirror. Watching the way her face changed.

It didn't shift, it wasn't magic, and she wondered if magic could do something like that, shift someone's face. Life, then. Weaving, probably?

Different makeup styles, and even lipstick, for all that Miriam was hesitant on that. And despite the occasional thoughts--what would it take to turn off the lights, magic wise, what would it take to learn how to do all of these complicated, impressive things on her own from scratch with magic--she had fun. Virginia talked about her week and her uncle and clothes she'd seen and wanted to buy but couldn't (and money, money was always a concern, and maybe magic didn't have a skin color, but she wondered how someone poor managed to have the time and space to do magic, without getting run down), and Miriam had nodded along.

"And you know, if you're really having bad dreams, it's probably an enemy, pulling some root work on you."

"I know it isn't," Miriam said, more sharply than she thought she would. The words, they just rubbed her the wrong way. It wasn't an enemy, it was all just her. Her own thoughts. It seemed more important now, more worthy of comment, when she knew that it was possible for an enemy to do something like that.

But if they'd done it to her, Jack would have noticed.

"How do you know?" Virginia asked.

"Because I'd know," Miriam said. She had no idea how strict the rules were. Jack had mentioned the way one could pretend in certain ways, with magic. Or ways one could hint at certain things. But to her? "Just...it's a thing you'd know about."

"Sure, sure," Virginia said, and she knew that Virginia just thought she was in denial.

But that was enough. Just keep it from her for the moment and figure out what to do later.

*****

"What violates the rules against telling sleepers?" Miriam asked Jack on Tuesday.

"Plenty. Quite a bit, really. But then again, if nobody notices or cares, then it doesn't get anything. And there are all sorts of cults, all sorts of ways you can hide your light. If merely making people think that magic existed violated the Precept--"

"Precept?"

"The Precept of Secrecy. I'm going to have to teach you the laws and the hierarchy one day, aren't I?" Jack asked, leaning against her bad as she sat at the desk.

She felt the cards beneath her hands as she shuffled them and continued to lay them down, almost distractedly. But they fell with reason. She was making combinations. Trying to imagine magic as it had to be. It was holding together thoughts and knowledge and a feeling of what to do in your head so strong the world almost had to let it happen. Or...something like that. She needed to know a lot more before she was comfortable with it.

"Maybe," she said, frowning.

"But if that was all, we'd be doomed, since it used to be, pretty much all of the world believed in magic. They didn't even dream of what it really was, didn't dream of the Supernal reality, but how could they?"

"How couldn't they?" Miriam asked, "Why don't more people know about it?"

"Quiescence." He frowned and added, "It is the Lie made manifest. I am not going to tell you everything, or at least there are parts of the cosmology that are probably subjective, but in each sleeping heart, in each sleeping soul, rests a little bit of the Abyss. And when a Sleeper notices the magic, it can sometimes lash out. Sometimes not, but even if they don't lash out, it hurts the minds of those who witness it who cannot understand it. When faced with the impossible, people forget."

Miriam frowned, "And it hurts them how bad?"

"Not as bad as Sara was hurt, but Quiescence was part of it. Magic cast on her that she had no way to fight off. Helpless…" Jack shook his head, "It hurt her sanity rather badly. Magic can drive witnesses mad, and so even if they didn't also make it more likely for the magic to go wrong, it'd still be rather dubious to perform it in front of someone who can witness it."

"Then, don't do magic in front of anyone?" Miriam asked.

"No. Only if they know it's magic do they act. If you're using a spell to make yourself smarter, how would a Sleeper know about it? But a Sleeper's gaze can unravel even a powerful spell. They look upon an impossible creature made by magic, and that creature dissolves, the Lie--"

"Explain the lie to me," Miriam asked.

"The lie is that magic isn't real. The lie is this world, I suppose. The chains that it puts on us. Anyone who sees magic forgets and reinterprets it. It wasn't someone shooting fire at another man, instead one of them was throwing a torch. It wasn't a human turning into an animal to run away, instead he ran away normally, so swiftly that for a moment she got confused." Jack stepped towards her, "The human mind is very adaptive."

"I wouldn't want to hurt someone like that. Is that why the Folk used that trick with the magic?"

"Exactly. I told you it then, and now it matters even more, because tricking the Abyss is the only way you can help most people."

"But why does the Abyss exist?"

"There are many explanations, but, the basic one is that it lies between us and the Supernal. Think of it as layers, or imagine it as if heaven was divided from earth by outer space. Except of course, the Abyss is far worse than that. The five Supernal Realms are the Aether, Arcadia, The Primal Wild, Pandamonium, and Stygia. Obrimos, Acanthus, Thyrsus, Mastigos, Moros. Each path of Mage visits one in their dreams, or finds that it briefly overlays with his soul, so that he can go on a spiritual journey in the world. It is a world of metaphors and symbols, personally carved out briefly to allow a human being to touch the Watchtower…"

"Watchtower?"

"It's a metaphysical phrase, since it's only sometimes an actual tower. But the act of choosing to embrace magic is called 'signing the tower' even if it's not physical. You threw the ball, and I confronted someone...and told them off to their face. They beat me, and I knew then that I'd do it again. And again. That I was better than them, that I could be smarter than them." He bit his lip and said, "So, that one visit you had? It's the only one a Mage ever gets. You can draw beings from the Supernal Realms, but you cannot go back with them."

Miriam felt the pain of those words. The doubt, the indecision. Was once really enough. "So, I can summon a being from the Aether?"

"No, only from your Path. With a few exceptions. There are legacies that allow you to warp your soul in a way that lets you summon under supernal beings. But it's rare. More importantly, what comes from Pandamonium is...impressive, and dangerous. It lashes you, it tests you. But I don't think you've ever failed a test, have you?"

"No." Miriam whispered it and said, "I...would want to see one of these beings. How hard is it to summon them?"

"Rather difficult, but not impossible. But, it may take a long time, even years, before you are truly ready. It is something that you learn, magic. So, between the earth and the Supernal is the Abyss, and that is what Mages do. We call down something special and powerful across a divide which tries to pervert and destroy everything. That is one thing almost all those who can do magic agree on. Magic is wonderful. It feels good to do it, it feels empowering, and doing magic is not itself wrong. What you do with it, that's where it gets tricky. The Seers, they use it for their own gain, almost universally. They rape and murder for fun, if that's what they want to do, and they consider themselves the hidden masters of the world. Or perhaps merely the hidden slaves."

Miriam tilted her head, peering at him. "Nevermind. Masters or slaves, it doesn't really matter all that much, compared to the fact that you shouldn't show off any magic to someone you know is a sleeper, and you should be very careful around even those who are half-awake. Your friend, the one who can see magic--"

"Ronald."

"He might be able to be let in, if he's already involved with the Folk. But for the rest of your friends, you need to keep it from them. It can be tough, I understand. That's why we don't go it alone. Orders bring power and structure and protection...but they also, just like cabals, bring friends and peers and even rivals. Imagine, Miriam, if you didn't go to school and instead simply read the information you needed to learn?"

Miriam nodded, feeling oddly alone. "What about Virginia? There's something odd about her."

"Don't tell her yet, until you can be sure about it. You're young and new, and so making a mistake wouldn't necessarily mean that they throw the book at you, but they're going to judge you. They're going to watch you."

"I haven't done much magic lately, if any," Miriam admitted. She could have used the ability to see in all directions if she'd played a game, but as it was, there was very little that she had wanted to do with her powers. She could have learned more about her mother's thoughts, or perhaps understood Virginia a little better, but at what risk?

"It is true that early magic is somewhat limited. It's a skill to work on just like anything else, which is why I suppose you want to see this Underground Library?"

"Yes. Do you know when we can go?" Miriam asked.

"Now, in fact. We're probably going to be late."

"What?!"

******

It was a nice library, the sort that one didn't have in the southside, that was for sure. A little forbidding, really, but there were no laws keeping Negroes from going here, not like in the south. Rows and rows of books, far more than at a smaller library, made the whole place feel oddly cramped, in a way she hadn't expected.

It was dull, grey, and yet also filled with life and movement. Little white kids with their parents picking out books, an old man who looked like he might be a scholar glancing at a shelf in the section that Miriam, who knew the Dewey system quite well, was likely history.

The air smelled almost dusty, and people turned to look at her uncle, and then at her. Wondering about them, most likely. She hovered close to her uncle as he walked confidently back, deep into the stacks of the library, and then at the back, there was a man in his late twenties.

White, wearing thick glasses, with curly red hair. He was thin, almost skeletal, but not all that tall, and dressed in a red and green sweater and a pair of slacks, with oxfords peeking beneath the somewhat baggy slacks. "Hey," he said, and his voice was high and reedy, "Greetings, Shadow. And this is...temporarily named Ruth?"

"Yeah. Ruth, this is Oxford, a member of the Underground Library."

Miriam watched him carefully, but could see no obvious hints of magic. He held out a hand and she shook it firmly, looking at his dark green eyes as they took her in. She wondered what he was seeing, but whatever it was, it was enough.

"Impressive, really. I think you're worthy, as much as that matters. If you'll just swear the right oath, we can lend you a book or two. I assume you don't want to purchase any?"

"No," Miriam said, "How does this work?"

"I use my magic to make the oath you swear to return the books within a month binding. If you don't, well, then there's late fees. How about, say, being struck blind?" he suggested, waving his arm in the air as if that was nothing at all. And maybe it wasn't?

"And if I...break the oath, it will happen?" Miriam asked, "I would assume that that's...Fate…"

Weaving? No. No, it was more like Perfecting. Because an oath was something sworn, and one had the words. One could say, 'If I do not do this, I will be struck blind' but what the magic did was take this declaration and blow it up. Make it true. "Perfecting?"

Oxford began to clap, "Very good, actually. Yes. It is a spell that perfects Fate. I assume he's been teaching you. You can ask for any kind of book, and if we have it, we'll give you it soon. This is just a setup for a second meeting. That way, if you intend anything bad, you'll find that…" he shrugs, "I have nothing on me that could help you discover the location of the library. And in the second meeting, the person will bring only the books that you requested. We keep secrecy, and we spread knowledge, for the day when all of humanity will wield the Truth above the Supernal."

Miriam blinked, "Above the Supernal?"

"Yes. Above it. Beyond it, and yet it encompasses it. Suffuses it." Oxford's voice went quiet, and a little deeper than before. "The world and the Supernal are only separate because people fail to see their ties, their bonds. The Abyss, we would say, is only the dissonance between that. It is a mindset, but one granted power by the soul of the world. Locking away knowledge to protect it protects nobody."

He shrugged, "But I am not here to convince people of the truth. Each person claims they know it, and the Silver Ladder especially so."

He looked at Jack, his gaze almost challenging, but Jack shrugged with a grin on his face, not even backing down so much as rejecting the idea that there was any real conflict. As if there was no way he could be wrong. Certainly, Jack had always been confident of whatever proposition he stood for at that very moment.

But what were his deeper beliefs? And what did she want to know.

She had many questions. She wanted to know about the nature of the universe, she wanted to know about God, or...what Mages thought about God, or God about Mages, or…

And she wanted to know about these Thread-Shearers, and the Seers, and this Silver Ladder, and the Underground Library and, while she was at it, she needed to learn more about her own magic. About what she could do. And then, there was the Astral?

And, was there a way that she could figure out why Virginia seemed to have two natures at the same time? Was it dangerous, was it something she should be worrying about right now?

She reached out and touched her straightened hair. Jack hadn't even asked about that, and her parents...they'd seen, but she hadn't had the talk she knew she was going to have.

Miriam considered what she wanted, she considered what she'd be willing to give up, because she knew that knowledge could include darkness, could include knowing new things that might only make you shift and toss in your sleep.

And then she spoke.

What things did she ask for (Specify in the vote whether she asks for one or two things. Obviously, more things means less time and you do already have a book backlog, after all. But more things also means more things.)

[] "I've been curious about my religion and magic. Are there any books looking into that sort of topic?" she asked, trying to keep her voice careful, as if this wasn't as important as it was.
[] "Are there any books addressing the nature of the Supernal Realms, especially Pandamonium?"
[] "I'd like to read about the Seers of the Throne. They've done a lot, and I've heard a lot about them without figuring out what they're about."
[] "The Thread-Shearers, have you heard of them?" "Oh...oh yes I have" Oxford said. "Do you have a book on them?" "Oh, do we. We got it in less than two years ago, it's a doozy."
[] "What is the Silver Ladder?" Miriam asked. "I'd tell you eventually," Jack said, but Oxford cut him off, "Well, there are books on it...though do you want a positive view, or a skeptical one? Both could teach you quite a bit."
-[] Positive. Basically by a Ladder member about 'what we believe' or at least what they'd be willing to share with the general magical public.
-[] Skeptical. Well, what do you think?
[] "I'd like to learn more about Mind magic, if possible."
[] "Maybe I'd be able to know more about Space if I had a book about it to read? I know you're busy uncle, and there's so much to cover."
[] "The Astral Realms, just...what all is in there?"
[] "I have a question, though, I'm not sure that it'll be relevant. I was wondering, if you were reading someone's nature using Mind magic, and you found something a little odd…"

*****

Spoiler: Roll-Play

With Virginia: 2 (Presence)+4 (Best Friends)+1 (Merit)=4 sux

Willpower up to 4/6 (sleeping once, talking to Virginia)
Understanding: 4 (Int)=2 sux
Type: 4 (Int)+1 (Knowledge)=1 sux

A/N: And so here we go!

 

[The Laurent]

Page 20: Required Reading

Miriam looked at Oxford, and then at her uncle, aware that she was being put on the spot to some extent. What did she want to know? Everything was a simple answer, but she knew that she had to choose. It was part of learning, knowing how to narrow it down. And ultimately, there was something that mattered more than anything else. "I've been curious about my religion and magic. Are there any books looking into that sort of topic?"

She didn't bite her lip, or touch her hair, feeling as if she was giving an answer in an interview, almost.

Oxford looked at her for a moment, tilting his head as if examining the question from another angle and said, "Yeah, I think there's something that would fit that. And anything else?"

"I was wondering, and I'm not sure how it'll be able to be answered, but I was reading someone's nature using Mind magic--"

"A very simple spell, truly, if you want a rote for it, I could hook you up for very little," Oxford said, cutting her off. She didn't know what a rote was, precisely, but then again there were a lot of things she didn't know yet.

Jack coughed, and he blushed, "Sorry, just trying to sell. But what did you have to say?"

"And I noted that someone seemed to have two natures. I felt one at first, and then I felt other traits. I thought they were a...Sleeper or something like that, and then my senses told me something different, and then they told me they were a sleeper."

"Inconstant like that? I can think of two or three things that might do it, but in order to fully nail it down, you're going to have to come in for a consultation. How it'll work's simple, really." He gave a shrug, "We send in someone to give you a few possible answers to look into, and while you're meeting, they'll give you the book you request. We will set up the meeting through Dancing Shadow, and if you don't arrive we'll leave at the designated time." He sounded bored as he rattled it off, "For safety reasons any envoy brings no more or fewer books, information, or artifacts than have been requested for lease or purchase, and thus acting against an envoy gets one nothing except our enmity. Do you intend to obey and follow the rules of the loan, to the best of our ability?"

He was staring at her, suddenly intense, "I do."

"Alright, then," Oxford said, his face suddenly growing slack and distracted as he began to rifle around in his pockets, before pulling out what looked like a small volume. He thumbed it open while moving his leg upwards, until he was balanced on one foot. And then he held out his hand to Miriam. She hesitated for a second, and then took it. "So," he said, hopping forward slightly, flourishing the small book, "Do you swear to return the book you shall get within a month, or be struck blind, and do you swear that you shall honor the peace that the Envoy will grant in order to provide the information?"

"I do," Miriam said, feeling remarkably silly. His hand was very warm, a little sweaty in fact, and she felt something then. It was hard to define, but she did smell shoe leather and hear the flapping of books for a moment. It felt as if it was the sign of the spell, though she was just guessing as she removed her hand.

"Well, that was pretty easy. The next meeting will be, say, tomorrow. I'll give Shadow the time and place," Oxford said, giving a soft smile, "Enjoy your reading once you get it."

Miriam nodded, "I will, and thank you."

******

"Miriam, what is with your hair?" her Mom asked, hands on her hip, that night.

"Was just trying something out. I'm not going to keep it like this. It's just fine the way it is." She touched it, face a little flushed. It was not wrong, or at least it didn't have to be wrong. But she didn't like her hair like this. Or rather, she knew she wasn't supposed to, and being merely 'okay' with it didn't count as liking. She'd never been a girl who had to fight against the sins of vanity, though her mother had told her stories of her own youthful vanity, long passed.

Miriam never really got the urge to dress up, unless forced by an outside force, a newtonian impulse that her uncle had always encouraged, despite his own obvious taste for fashion.

Some of it was that she really didn't see the point. Was she trying to impress someone? Who, exactly, who would not be impressed by merely dressing neatly and well, and acting in a polite and helpful manner? It always baffled her, at least when she bothered to think about it.

"Ah, that Virginia," Mom said, but with rather more fondness than when she talked about, say, Uncle. "Looks strange on you, girl."

"Don't I know it," Miriam admitted, frowning, "What's for dinner, Mom? Can I help?"

"Oh, of course you can," her mother said, tapping a wooden spoon thoughtfully, "Stir the stew while I work on the sides."

******

Summer was a time of relaxation, normally at least, but in this case there was far more study than she might have expected. Still, the hot nights and the even warmer days, the way the city seemed to have loosened a few belts, like it always did in the summer? It was nice. There was no such thing as a time when Chicago wasn't busy. Big shoulders and a big appetite. Always busy, one way or another.

She ran through the tarot, time and again, trying to think of new ideas of what to do with her magic. She knew that with the few practices she could do now, it was limited, but she imagined, for instance, using Space as a telescope. If higher levels could warp space itself or allow her to scry someone from halfway across the city, then it should be within her capabilities to, say, enhance her ability to see things at a distance.

That and other ideas flitted through her head, though she didn't want to try them out, not just yet. Right now she still had so much more to learn. And she also had an awareness that she didn't have a point to her magic yet. It was amazing to do, or at least, it felt right, and the awakening had felt even more certain, but she didn't have a goal. A purpose.

She was still working on that.

******

A back alley wasn't where she expected to be, and a man wearing a flat steel mask that seemed to have strange runes etched on it wasn't who she was expecting, either. The runes seemed familiar, but she couldn't quite place them. Maybe they were high speech, but if so, they were subtly different, or perhaps she was not any good at reading them. He wore grey robes that covered almost all of his body, and his hands were tucked into the robes. He was taller than her, but her uncle behind her didn't seem all that worried.

"Hey, envoy," Jack said, holding up his hands, "We're here, as promised."

"Very well," the envoy said, their voice a rumble that was clearly masculine, but also seemed oddly bland, and too deep. "First, you may ask your question."

"I met someone who seemed to have two shifting natures, and two shifting states to their mind," Miriam said, "I am curious what could have caused it."

"There are several things. First, a number of entities can possess someone. A spirit or astral being can do so, and if the possession was not so strong, it could flicker in and out, at least in the eyes of a novice who lacks certain skills of interpretation."

Miriam nodded, not offended in the least.

"Second," he said, holding up a finger, "There are a number of ways that a human can temporarily turn into an animal, even those who are not Mages. Sometimes this can echo in someone's mind."

Miriam considered this. If Virginia really could turn into a bird or a dog, she would have showed it off by now, and as for the first matter? She'd known Virginia long enough that she'd like to think she'd know if possession was going on. At the same time, she didn't want to be arrogant about her knowledge of her friend. So, it was certainly possible. So she nodded.

"Third, what do you know about demons?"

"Which kind?" Jack asked, and she didn't have to look to know that her uncle had a grin on his face, "Goetia are called demons, and so are abyssal creatures, and spirits, and ghosts if they're scary enough, so what sort of demon are we talking."

"Astral Demons."

Miriam remembered that her uncle had mentioned demons of this sort before, right before they'd entered her friend's mind. They were beings of the Temeros, the collective minds of the world, though she knew nothing more than that, and even that was offhand.

"One of them might be possessing her?" Jack asked, frowning.

"It is said that 'Many know small secrets, but few know great secrets'," the envoy said, his voice a smug boom, "Have you heard of demon-spawn, or the children of perdition, or...they have many names, and few of them are known to the unwary mage."

"I've heard of them...perhaps," Jack said, frowning, "Yes. Yes." She could smell the cigarette smoke, one sign of Jack's magic. "So that is a possibility?"

"What is a...child of perdition?"

"Sometimes demons make deals with people. To mark them, or to mate with them, or to curse their descendants through a thousand generations. Or at least that's the rumor, right?"

"Yes. Those descended of such beings have the chance of power, within the world of the astral. Sometimes. Study of them is as study of the vampires, or other strange beings. Rare and hard to prove with any certainty. But the flickering certainty would fit. For it is only in their dreams that such a child, if they have not realized their power, is aware of magic. So in their waking world they are as anyone, but there is a dream self, a demon that is their own fears...waiting for them to take the first step. It is a power that many never grasp."

"Ah. Is there a spell to be able to tell if someone is a demon-spawn?" Jack asked.

Miriam was uncertain, now. Was...what did demons do? If Virginia was the child, or grandchild, or her parents had been cursed by or...well, the origins seemed quite broad. Certainly, it'd be more reassuring than if she was possessed, and Miriam hadn't noticed.

"Yes, actually. Are you willing to pay the cost to be taught? It is not expensive, because it is a small enough trick, a matter of knowing which signs to look for using magic that you yourself could do easily enough," the envoy said, "In exchange, can you merely tell us what happened last saturday? A perspective would be valuable."

Jack looked over at her for a moment, and then nodded. "And her book?"

The envoy's hand appeared, and she found that, oddly, she could not make out any details. Small or large, thin or skeletal, what he was wearing, it was a sort of blank. She just knew that a hand was reaching out, and that in it was a rich green volume, rather thick, with the title, written in gold, 'Up From Eden'.

"Thank you," Miriam said, with a curtsy.

"Keep to the deal, and may knowledge always be your guide."

******

The book opened with a section called apologies, which seemed to be followed by a chapter called 'What is the apple?'

"I begin with apologies to God, who exists in all times, and knows the fates of all men. From the moment I was born You knew I would write this, and yet You also knew that it would be inadequate. That I have spent many years learning nothing, and that I write nothing that others have not known just as well, for just as long. And that You will see many flaws, and know that many will be misled by its flaws, and so I must apologize to You, in the understanding that," it read, the words in cursive, "the world might get better. Those who are the seekers of knowledge, like a man awakened from a long nap, are perhaps closest, but one blade of grass may be closer to the sun than another, without being able to call itself exalted upon high.

I am the blade of grass that, while not the tallest, might have some understand, but then I must also apologize to many young men and women who read it. You know the answers already, and your confidence that I have little to teach you is valid. For if you are brave and wise and humble and your ability to understand the universe with your abilities is without bounds, if you have never stumbled but that it didn't save your life, then I have little to teach you. You are perfectly right, and my fallible and limited understanding is nothing more than an impediment.

If you claim that God is dead and that man might take his place, I will nod and say that you are far more likely to be right than me. And if you say as well that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated, and that with a little more knowledge, all can be solved? Then I would be a fool to deny your vision. But then again, I am a fool.

If, on the other hand, you are old, and worn down, until your mind is like a child's, and you stumble drunk through the world trying to make sense of it, or you are younger still, so young that you look with baffled eyes on the world, then perhaps I have some little knowledge to teach you. Merely the most basic of understandings of the universe, and our place in it, as I have essayed to figure out.

Many decades of work have gotten only the first few seeds of truth, and yet, the young men and women whose righteousness cannot be denied might yet plant them into rich soil, and even if they do not, the eyes of the blind can gaze upon the seeds and see their potential, judge it as worthy or not, even if it never finds root in any rich soul.

Eden is where a story begins, or where a thought on the story begins, with the question of what it is that man can now, as might have once been impossible, do great things."

There was a break, and on the next page it said, simply, 'Anexes, 1895.'

She flipped forward to the first chapter, where he began by talking, in moderate detail, about the origin of the myth of the garden of eden, and the myth of the flood, including some story she had never heard, about other origin myths. It read to her as an academic tome might, except it occasionally made careful reference to what seemed to be a description of the way history and stories were made.

She frowned, her head already aching a little bit. She couldn't read parts of it, because they were in greek, though a translation was carefully preserved in the margins. Other parts seemed to have been written merely to confound, and yet on the fifth page it said something interesting 'If God knew the snake would tempt, the snake on legs, the dragon as some might say, then He meant for mankind to be tempted, as regrettable as it was. Why?'

She didn't have much time to read it, when she started, because she had dinner to get down to, but he seemed to be proposing that symbolically, the first Mage was related to Adam and Eve, and that this was significant and important.

The thought filled her with uncertainty, for if that was it, then wasn't it a sin that cast humanity down? Or was there more? She struggled with the text, less because she was not smart enough but because she hadn't expected it to be like this. Once she got a feel for it, on the other hand, it seemed surprisingly readable, if cryptic at points. What could the well be, in the desert?

Or…

She closed the book, placing a mark in it, and resolved to continue when she could.

******

The next day, her uncle came to visit her once more. He walked up the stairs carefully, and when he opened the door, she was still reading the book. It was talking about how there was a tie between the history in the bible and a parallel symbolic reading of...that part she wasn't sure. The arcana, perhaps, and the place of Mages in the world? Either way, it focused on the way that Israel had been God's chosen kingdom, and how such a thing had only existed because man had fallen in the first place.

So, was the first Awakening meant to be a historical event, or merely a symbolic reading of--

Either way, she'd read enough to know that this was certainly not orthodox Protestantism in any form, but also enough to be oddly fascinated by it.

"Is it a good read?"

"Interesting," she said, which was the best word for it.

"So, I was wondering if you'd like to go with me, to visit our cabal. It will be a bit of a trip, but I think it'd benefit your learning."

Miriam nodded, "I would."

"Before we go, though, I must explain a few things. First off, mana. It's something that I've hesitated to long on explaining. All mages have access to a source of power, and when doing a spell outside of their two strongest arcana, they have to spend mana to force it. Mana feels like a sort of warmth to some, or like a shimmering in your being, but either way, you likely have some mana in you right now, drawn from the supernal realms, just sitting in your pattern, in, essentially, you."

Miriam frowned, "So, it's a fuel for magic? Then how is it gained?"

"There are several ways to gain it, and many ways to use it. Mana can be gained via what we call pattern scouring. Now, this is going to be complicated to explain, and it's going to hurt." He walked over towards her, and held her hand. "Close your eyes, and focus on your body."

She did, imagining herself, trying to focus like she had before.

"Now, imagine a tear. Imagine that you're unraveling yourself a little. Picture it."

She felt something now, something that, rather than warm, was instead startlingly cool. Cool like an ice-filled drink on the hottest summer day. Refreshing, oddly. She felt it deep in her, and she realized that that had to be mana, that feeling, that sensation. She'd not realized it was there the whole time, and it was subtle, weak compared to what it might become.

"Can you feel your mana now?" he asked.

"Yes," she said.

"No picture tearing a chunk out of yourself, and then picture it flowing into you. There are several forms of scouring, but right now I'm going to teach you the one that will be least likely to mess things up for you. But it will hurt quite a bit. And it won't stop hurting. And it can't be healed with magic. It will be days before you're entirely better if you do this. There are other options, but they might impair you for today."

"What other options?"

"You're scouring your body of something. In one case hurting yourself, though the scars are rarely visible. In another case, you're making yourself weaker, or less able to forge on. If you focus, instead, for instance, on your lungs, on your breathing, perhaps a slight dip would be less, and then focus on your form, its strength its--and then tear."

It took three minutes, and then she felt it. It was horrible. Not pain, so much as a sort of shrinking, diminishing feeling. She felt dizzy for a moment, and then when she opened her eyes she feel the cool, strange energy as it flowed into her. She couldn't see it, but she knew it was there.

She stood up, frowning, "Odd." That was the least possible word she could say for it. She felt less, in some way she couldn't quite define.

"Yes. I'd advise you don't run around too much, you'll probably get worn out faster, and don't scrape your knee, it'll hurt more than you think. It lasts a day, and you can only do it once per day, but if you do so, then that's a way to get mana. The other main way is at a Hallow. A hallow is a sort of well of magical energy, to make it simple. A place where magic bubbles up in one form or another."

"A well?" Miriam asked, thinking back to the book.

"Yes. if one performs a ritual at it, one can harvest magic from it, and if one doesn't, it eventually crystallizes, like an oil well forced to burst even though nobody is there to gather it up. Access to a hallow, in other words, is one of the most vital parts of being a Mage. A mage without such access is magically limited, which is one reason why cabals are so common."

"Do people fight over hallows, can people make hallows?"

"Yes, and yes, if they have the right sorts of magic. Our own cabal has a hallow near a small house that we maintain, at the edge of Chicago, as a sort of neutral ground. That's where I want to take you. It's also where one of our two demesne are. Those are places where, because of the presence of a soul stone, magic can be performed without risk of paradox."

That sounded powerful, and she nodded, "So, will all of the rest of them be there?"

"Yes, they wish to meet you."

******

It was a long journey, but also a pleasant one. They rode the lines as far as they'd go, and then once they hit the outskirts of Chicago, she walked. True to his warning, she found herself getting tired long before she normally would, but she tried to ignore it, and the looks she occasionally was given, along with her uncle, as they walked down the sidewalks. The houses were nice, if old, and there was a surprising amount of greenery in the area.

Fences divided off the lines of demarcation, but every house had at least a tree or two in the back yard, and the house they stopped at, a very, very large house by the way she accounted things, had more like eight or nine trees, the backyard filled with rich green.

The house itself was two stories tall, with a red, shingled roof and lacy curtains in the windows, build in an oddly cramped manner. It seemed almost to lean or tilt a little when she looked at it, and despite that it was clearly a very nice house. Nicer than any she'd ever lived in, or just about anyone she knew at school.

"Don't be nervous," Jack said, "We are more welcome here than most. I understand what your concern is, or at least, what your fears are."

"I'm trying to ignore them," Miriam said. The feeling of being out of place had been very strong, especially when they'd passed a man walking a dog who had stared at them for a long moment as if trying to figure out if they'd attack. "But…"

"I understand. There are tricks that you can do with greater experience, to blunt that if you do not wish to face it, but they are not important at the moment. Now, let's go and meet some people...and in the waking world, this time."

So, what does Miriam do? (Choose 2)

[] Down in the basement, it is always damp, and the water seems to seep into everything, with the bone deep chill of death. There, Miriam may practice her magic, and through a single crack that peeks at something deeper down, she may draw a very little bit of mana, a tiny and strange secret, of sorts.
[] Amid the trees lay the hallow, which is a small bush that cannot be hacked away or destroyed, at least not for long. There she meets Wat, a member of The Uprising, who talks to her about the hunt for Seers, and just why they are so dangerous, and shows her a small bit of shapeshifting, among other things.
[] Aerie, a philosophical member of the Mysterium, started a debate with her at the dinner table, one that stretched far beyond simple disagreements into a complex discussion of the nature of magic and souls.
[] Coninunctio takes Miriam aside and offers to teach her something about her mind, or one way that it can be viewed, and to explain his own Legacy and goal.
[] Civitas, the leader of the Cabal, is powerful and wise beyond Miriam's ability to understand, and he called them together to discuss the specific details of an ongoing project. And out of courtesy, she was allowed to watch in for a little bit.
[] Dour and brooding, Hone seems to live in the house, at times, along with Aerie at other times, and he talks to her for a while about politics and the importance of cabals and other such groups, as well as the rules that govern joining a cabal.

*****

Spoiler: Roll-Play

Spell Construction:

Done as a Rote, so 3 free Reach. One for speed of spell, one for knowing when it's broken, one for duration to get it into advanced, and one for Potency to get it some of that sweet Withstand bonus.

Gnosis 3+Fate 4+3 (Old Stories Rote Mudra)+1 (Order specialty)+2 (Second Yantra: High Speech)+1 (Tool: A Piece of paper, a list of sorts…)=14 dice-6 (One Month)=8 dice=3 sux, got it.

Now, Paradox is one over.

2 dice=1 sux

Contain paradox: 5 dice=1 sux, it's contained.

Intelligence+Student=3 sux

A/N: Alright, so, here we go. I hope it's acceptable.

 

[The Laurent]

Page 21: Lessons In The Strange House

The one she knew as Hone opened the door, his face as blank as a slate as he took them in. Though he wasn't tall, he loomed in a way that could make people nervous. Especially, she'd noted, having seen other people like him, white people. And he didn't seem to be trying to look any less imposing. His eyes, though, they were moving left and right and up and down in a rapid, hard to follow pattern, and only after a dozen moments of this did a smile begin to slip onto his face, polite and thoughtful. "You're clean."

"Course I am, Hone. Am I never not clean?"

"You've come in here before quite unclean," Hone said, drolly, glancing over at Miriam. "Drunk."

Jack shook his head, his face darkening with a blush, but he merely said, "And you haven't drunk?"

"Not in a year, no," Hone pointed out, nodding to Miriam as if she had something to do with it. His tone was dire, as if the fate of the republic rested on each word, but she thought that perhaps that was just his way, and he certainly didn't seem, despite the tone, to be in a bad mood.

"Either way, is everything else here?" Jack asked.

"Yes. You're late, Shadow." Hone paused and reached up to tip his hat for Miriam. "Afternoon, Ruth, nice to see you in the flesh.". He was dressed well, if not as well as Jack, and his bowler hat certainly looked smart.

She curtsied in reply, and then stuck out a hand to shake his, looking him over, curious, but not so curious as to use her magic to test what he was like. A solid handshake would tell something already, she thought, looking up at the stairs leading up and down. Stairs right by the door, and then a hallway leading towards the main part, a strange design choice, she thought. There wasn't really a foyer, or an entry place, and if the living room was around here, it was far enough back from the front for...what reason?

She wasn't sure.

He shook it firmly, and then nodded, turning.

"She'll want to go out and see the Hallow," Jack said, as they followed him into the house, closing and locking the door behind them. The hallway seemed to branch off into what looked like a small study, and another hallway. From that hallway, she could hear the sounds of discussion. The floors were wood, the walls were bare of paint, though there were a few photographs hanging here and there, never of anyone she knew, or anyone in the cabal from what she could tell.

On she went, until they came to a door that opened to the back. A whole cluster of trees, some of them the sort that might bear a little fruit, all startlingly healthy look. City girl or no, staring at them gave her the urge to climb them, or run around them, use them as a base for tag, or...something.

Hone opened the door, and gestured for her to step out.

It smelled of pollen, and she glanced back to see that her uncle wasn't going out with her. So she stepped forward again, warding the sunshine with her hand, looking this way and that, wondering what a Hallow--

Oh, there it was. She felt it, as much as she saw it. Felt not dimensions, but presence. Saw it, too, but almost as an after-effect. Beyond the small cluster of trees was a larger one, that bore no fruit at all. Massive, scarred with lightning on one side, and yet growing healthy towards the sky, its leaves the sort of green that made her think of money. And beneath it was Wat, tall and muscular and, in this case, for whatever reason, lacking a shirt.

She wondered why, a little confused. Certainly, he had an impressive physique, as he ran through what looked like moves of a dance, or something like that? She wasn't sure. He was breathing in and out, and she stepped forward, afraid of disturbing him. This felt as if it was ritualistic, or at least planned.

Yet he noticed her immediately, "Oh! You're here, Ruth. This isn't the Hallow. You think it is, but if you look more closely, behind it is the real Hallow." He gestured, and she walked around the tree to see a bush. An ordinary, plain look bush, though it looked surprisingly hearty, and when she touched it, she felt a short shock, a little like...well, like the lightning that had once hit the tree.

"Oh," she said, frowning, "Are you using magic to mislead, or is it just that people expect a tree?" Certainly, having looked at all these trees, it made sense that the Hallow would be centered in one, whatever it was and however it was created.

"Expectation." Wat grinned and wandered over to her, "It's the best weapon we have." He was huge, and while she was tall for a girl her age, that didn't keep him from towering over her. She saw that his shirt was wadded up next to the bush, and in the heat, he was starting to sweat. She'd seen men go without their shirts when doing heavy labor, and perhaps that was what he was doing?

"What do you do to gain...mana from a hallow?" she asked, still trying to get used to the strange new terminology.

"You have to do a ritual of some sort. You could get down on your knees next to it and pray. Or you could do a ritual dance. Y'ken do any number of things," Wat said, voice slipping back towards in the slow butter accent that she associated with the south, even though Virginia told her that it was actually a bunch of different accents.

"Should I do it now? How long does it take?"

"An hour. You can't just draw it like well water. It's sacred, an hour is the least you can give it. Course, a strong enough Obrimos could just make one if they were willing to push and work at it, but this, this one is natural. What matters is focus, and meditation, and that it's gonna take time, but it's worth it for what it gives you. Can only give so much in a day, though. This one still has a little left for today, don't want to take too much or you'll run it down."

"Alright," Miriam said, frowning thoughtfully, deciding that she would need to really focus for this, then. She wasn't going to make a mistake, and she knew that all sorts of good things took time.

"First, though, are you safe? You know if anybody been following you?" Wat asked.

"Why? Do you think someone is?" Miriam said, biting her lip. She had cause to be afraid, she thought, after what she'd seen that Mages could do to other people.

"Never know with the Seers. They ain't anyone to mess around with." Wat spit on the ground and then stretched, "They can be beat for a while, but they have their tentacles into everythin'. The unions are theirs, the bosses are theirs. The Democrats and the Republicans, to one extent or another. Powerful slaves, the kind that report on the doin's of anyone trying to escape the plantation."

"What are the Seers?" she asked, frowning. It was certainly a vivid metaphor, and she could picture it, picture how it could be true. But if so, then who were the masters.

"Seers of the Throne. They're a bunch of orders that believe all sorts of crazy things, but what matters is that they say, and they have some proof, sometimes, that they work for these beings called the Exarchs, that are supposed to rule the whole world, keep it enslaved and keep as many people from Awakening or trying to get rid of them as possible. I've seen enough that there's somethin' up there, for sure, and it's something that needs to be done away with. But they're powerful, they control the plantation, and the Seers get rich and tear people apart. Start riots…"

He frowned, and again his voice slipped back down away from the plain northern accent that he'd been using, though it felt oddly trustworthy, this strange accent, in a way that wasn't supernatural, or at least didn't show in his nimbus. "Wars. Make Protestants and Catholics go a'killin' each other so that they don't ever pay attention to what they're doing up in the Supernal, tryin' to choke off the last bits of truth there is. They're Mages who'd rather be rich slaves than poor rebels hidin' away and planning against the master."

That, that made her stomach churn. "They're powerful?"

"Powerful enough to be everyone, but not powerful enough to stomp us out. We survive, y'know? We rise up, no matter what they throw at us, because we have the strength of ten--"

"Because your hearts are pure?" Miriam asked, smiling despite her sinking heart. It sounded dangerous, it sounded insane. "How do the Exarchs...do they talk to them?"

"Hear visions, sometimes. See things, they say. Most of the time they just do what benefits them, and say it's the will of the Exarchs. Least, that's how I see it." Wat spat on the ground, an angry, violent gesture.

But she felt the meaning behind it, and if he was right, then he was right to do that. Right to fight it. She wasn't someone who could imagine using violence, but if they really did control as much, then surely they fought in all sorts of ways. "So, why were...were they behind the Thread-Shearers?" She thought about it, tried to think in a way she wasn't used to, in a way that saw people as objects, in a way she imagined a plantation master would. "Was it because destinies are dangerous, too capable of shaking things up, changing things?"

"You got it right on," Wat said, stretching a little and glancing around, "They want to take away everything that makes people more than just animals. They want to beat us, they want to break us. Got captured by a Seer once, during the war. Not even that long." He turned, and for the first time she saw that his back was a knot of scars. They seemed to form whirls and eddies, like looking at a river closer up, but then there were knots and breaks, places where the flesh seemed to have knit almost-wrong. "He tried to make me a slave, but we done with that forever. Never again."

"Is it…" Miriam hesitated, considered her question, and then reformulated it. "Is there a lot of racism among Mages?"

"Not sure it was racism, so much as just being the sort of people who like hurting others." He touched his back, seemingly amused at the look on her face. "Some are racist, but there's Negro Seers like everything else. People want power, and among Mages, y'gotta learn not to look at the outside. You're weaker than me, but in a decade, if you're still around, you'll be a Mage worth knowing, and you might be twenty years younger, and not white and not a man, but you'd still be better, at magic at least, than the banker who recently Awakened 'cause he was worrying about money so much. Magic's the great leveler. Even racists, they're like...Dancing Shadow said it once, his first Master, the one that got him in the Silver Ladder before he knew about everything else, he said, and I remember this because it's pretty stark, right? The sort of thing that calls for revolution, that calls for a change in the world."

She listened, thinking about what her uncle had said. He'd not wanted her to get pushed into an order without knowing all of them first. And this master, he'd done that. She knew he had to mean master as in master-and-apprentice. The first person to teach him the ropes, and he'd said something enough to make Jack remember it? To make it worth sharing?

"He said: 'Ain't no negroes once you're Awakened.'"

She winced at the word, so full of bile, even in a throat that was clearly just quoting another throat. "Which means that the people who hadn't become Mages…?"

"Yep. They were inferior. Sharecroppers. Not like Shadow. He left when he could, went up north because he had family and friends and he didn't like that sort of attitude towards sleepers. Most of the Ladder isn't like that, it's against a lot of what they believe, or try to believe, but some of them can be nasty, especially down south. Some of everyone can be nasty, but they learn not to do it to anyone's face. Polite society, but an armed one too. You saw what we did to that creation of the Shearers?"

"I did," Miriam admitted. Thinking about it made her a little sick. They'd devastated it. But it had deserved it, and she had to guess that he knew what to say to get her on the right side. But nothing she'd seen or heard about the Seers, including the very first thing, about the riots in '19, gave her any faith that they were any better than anyone was saying.

"It was the right thing. It's the only thing you can do, with a lot of them. Now, Seers have factions and groups and so on, worshipping different Exarchs or doing different things with themselves. Most of them are young compared to the Orders, though age doesn't mean much." Wat smiled, "What matters is that we've put them on the rope. As many Seers as we've driven out and killed, we know they're weaker than they used to be...but even then, that doesn't mean they don't have a bite."

"How many of them are there?" Miriam asked, "You talked as if they controlled the world."

"They do, I suppose, just for having the Exarchs on their side. But, I dunno, they keep secret, but we can tell things about them. For instance, we've just about torn apart the start of a network, and now we know how they were keeping on, all secret-like." He shook his head, stepping over to the tree, "But now that they've lost the network, if I were them, I'd scramble. Hide, cause we're going to come in and cause them trouble."

"So, we've hurt them?" Miriam asked.

"Well, we captured one potential recruit, another killed himself, so that's down two, and it had to have taken an awfully long time to get everything in place. Takes years to build a network, but like I'm sure you've been told, it doesn't take long to ruin a lot of hard work. Then it all comes crashing down. Think on that, think about it, all that work to create, all that work to make something, whether it's bad or good, and yet any idiot with a wrench can gum up the works. It's the way things are, but it doesn't have to be that way," Wat said, "People can change and so can the world."

"I believe that too," Miriam said.

"Believin' ain't anything. It's knowing," Wat said, "Knowing deeper than deep. It's a conversion experience, y'know?"

Miriam had never gone through one, but she heard stories about them. It was a popular story to tell, the moment Jesus knocked on the door and the moment you let them in, but she'd not had that. She'd believed and known and all of that from the start. Came with her father, and her mother. "Maybe," she said.

"Either way, you haven't seen that much magic, have you? Just heard about it? Haven't done much? Shadow's being awfully careful about you."

"A little caution doesn't hurt," she said, but while she meant the words, that didn't mean she wasn't eager to see more and do more. Because magic was far too interesting to just leave lying around. But she knew that as dangerous as paradox was, to herself and others, she couldn't just leap into it.

"Well, here's a place where you can see a little caution," he said, gesturing around, "No sleepers in sight. So…"

She saw it, a sort of flash, a sheen across his form for a moment, and then he held up a scaled hand. Dark green scales, running up and down one arm, but nowhere else. They looked oddly, bizarrely natural. As if they were always meant to be there.

"Weaving?" she asked, frowning, thinking of all one could do, "Giving yourself the features of an animal?"

"Claws. Jaws. Legs like a grasshopper, writ large," Wat said, gesturing again. "Gills and scales. If you know animals, I'm sure you could imagine even more."

She nodded, thinking about it. All sorts of animals had all sorts of useful traits. A dog had a nose that could smell everything, she could change her vocal cords, she thought, if she wanted to make birdsong, for whatever reason. And she could probably give an animal, if she wanted, the features of another. Or herself a tail for balance, or as an extra grip.

She stared at the scales, and then at his other hand, where the sheen moved up, and suddenly there were the claws. Long, sharp and thin. The scales retreated after another few moments, but the claws clung on, and she was surprised, again, at how natural they looked. It didn't look grotesque on him, and she had to assume that it could.

Miriam frowned, nodding to herself, "That's very impressive. Is that something I could learn to do?"

"With time and effort, yes," Wat said, "Next thing, I'll need to get behind a tree for, because if I'm going to turn into, say, a wolf, I'll need to take off my clothes, briefly." He paused, and for a moment she saw embarrassment, "Sorry if I discomforted you with the whole 'no shirt' thing, I was in the middle of something, and didn't want to get distracted."

"It's fine," she said. A little baffled, in a way. Not at his embarrassment, but at the possibility of taking offense. Admittedly, if a man off the street took off his shirt in front of her, she'd think him a drunken lout, but she'd assumed that he had a reason for it, and it hadn't really elicited that much attention, all things considered.

"Well, right then. Be right back." He hurried behind a tree, and she listened to him undress.

Certainly, he was far faster at it than a woman would be, with the stockings and the skirt and the blouse and the bra, all of the this-and-that of clothing. It was well under a minute that a large, shaggy wolf stepped out from behind the tree. She hesitated, crushing the small twinge of doubt and fear that she felt. It was more a matter of instinct. Humans feared wolves, and probably for good reasons, she thought. Though as a city girl, who'd never seen a wolf up close, she had to admit her first thought had to do with dogs.

And of course, this was Wat, a member of her uncle's cabal, not a wild animal. He was a big man, and a big wolf for that matter. Not unusually large, as far as she could guess, but certainly the kind of wolf that, were it among its fellows, would strut and growl and lead.

She stepped forward, holding out a hand, and saw the sheen of power, shivering up him, and then heard words in her head. 'Any form that can be imagined can be gained. Including those of birds in fight. It's a joy, though there are still instincts. One wears the flesh, and the flesh wears you back.

' She hesitated for a second, surprised at the words, and at the voice. But this was magic, and more than that, this was mind magic. This was something she could do, eventually. Send thoughts to other people, communicate with them with a closed mouth.

The she stepped forward, and the wolf licked her palm, like it was any ordinary dog. The tongue too, felt familiar, and she patted him on the head, smiling a little. The smile kept on growing, growing beyond its bounds, because this was really something. She loved animals, liked taking care of them, even if she'd never really had a pet long term. Nurse a cat into health, and then give her away to someone else. That sort of pattern. There had not been much need of a pet, and so she'd never really gotten one for a long time, for more than a little, while seeing where it should go.

So she allowed herself to enjoy the strange moment. Wind singing through the breeze, trees swaying, and her hand running over the fur on the head of a wolf. A wolf that was in fact a man. 'Try it now. The oblation. Whatever helps you meditate.'

She moved towards the bush, and he followed, and then she kneeled and he lay down next to her, like a dog on a rug. She remembered when she was little, eight or nine, and she'd had a stray for a while, and the mutt would roll up against her for warmth on the ground, and she'd smile and put away the book so it didn't get dog hair on it.

She closed her eyes, and began to pray. She ran through it again and again, and then reached a hand out to stroke his belly, absently. And she got into the rhythm, got into it until she could feel the coolness coming from the bush. Until she could feel only what she needed to feel, her prayers trailing off for something deeper than prayer. The difference between believing and knowing, perhaps, the way that thoughts weren't needed.

She knew that time passed, and not a little time, but how long didn't really matter that much. And so eventually, in the fullness of time, she felt some of that coolness flow into her, filling her as she let out a long, satisfied sigh, her thoughts coming back at all once. Her stockings were no doubt dirty from kneeling in the dust, and when she opened her eyes, Wat was gone. She stood up slowly, looking around.

She blinked as if waking from a dream, and then, somewhat disheveled, Wat stepped out from behind a tree. "And that, that was getting mana from a Hallow. It's just about tapped for today. Any day you don't use it, it builds up what we call tass. Solid mana. Berries in the bush, usually, or sometimes other forms. There's more to it, a lot more to it, even, but that's about it. Most hallows are owned by someone, so you'll have to ask permission to use them. Unless you wanna try poaching."

He gestured towards the door, "They're probably done talking about the Astral work, which means we're moving into the part where I can do more."

"What does the cabal do?" she asked.

"This and that. Work with spirits and the Temeros, helping sleepers and fighting the good fight," he said, and she knew that he was definitely being vague with the specifics. Because she wouldn't understand them, or because she wouldn't like them? Or because it was something she didn't need to know?

She stepped into the hallway, just as she saw a few others, including her uncle, step out of the room. "So, that's about that. We should," Civitas said, the older man's voice quite formal, "Convene on the matter within the next week to see how it is going. Ah, Wat, and...Ruth, was it?"

He turned to look at her, and there was that same feeling of scrutiny with Hone, as she glanced over at him, and Jack, and Aerie. The only person not there was Coniunctio, or at least he was not standing with the rest of them.

"So, we were going to talk about the new spirits that're moving into the packing?" Wat asked.

"Yes, of course," Civitas said, "Shadow, you'll join us, I assume? And Aerie?"

"Well, maybe, but I want to chat a little, and I'm sure we shouldn't leave Ruth alone," Aerie said, a smile slipping across his pale face. He was dressed in a rather more casual way than before, like he was a laborer coming home from work, rather than the wizard-like robe she'd seen before. His hair was just as frazzled, though, and he smiled at Wat. "Looks like we're all trying out new styles, today. Where's that necklace of yours?"

"At the cleaners," Wat said, shaking his head.

"Oh," Aerie said, momentarily taken aback, and she wondered what that meant. "So, Miriam, would you like something to eat? Being a bachelor means I can cook, and Hone's probably going to be watching for trouble."

"Sure," she said, nodding, "Thank you, sir."

"Me, a sir? I perish the thought, and then Hone brings it back," Aerie said, gesturing for her to follow him.

*******

The kitchen was pretty normal, if rather larger than any she was used to. The color scheme seemed eclectic, none of it matching, and it was disorganized enough to have caused her mother to groan and roll her eyes, but as she sat at the dinner table, a sandwich began to materialize, ham and tomatoes and lettuce and cheese.

"So, you have an education in philosophy?" Aerie asked.

"Some, I suppose. I've read a little," Miriam said, not wanting to brag.

"And now you're magic. Now you're a witch, suffered not to live, or so some books might say," Aerie said, "Do you believe magic is evil?"

"How can I? How can anyone?"

"You would be surprised. But what is magic, if it's not evil, is it a tool? If I use my magic to tear someone's mind apart, and another man uses a hammer to tear someone's mind apart and end their life, is one act the worse than the other? What is acceptable with magic?" Aerie asked, "Thou shall not kill? But then, isn't there the Christian philosophy of the just war? Is that just an excuse for war?"

"Do you think it is?" Miriam asked, frowning. She knew this style of conversation, the way he was, like Jack, dropping ideas and possibilities without ever committing to one.

"Do you know what I mean by just war?"

"I haven't read Augustine in a while," Miriam admitted, "It hasn't really been a focus, but if just war doesn't exist, then it calls into question quite a few things. Yet I'm not someone who would ever go to war." She hesitated, "Would ever go to war. It seems to me that using magic to do something might be worse if it does something impossible that harms others, but if it does something simple, then maybe it's merely as bad as the act?"

"Yet, the simple things can be the hardest. Any man who is strong enough might murder another, but if I use mind magic to give myself the skills, and life to give myself the strength, then am I doing anything worse than if I'd instead gone exercising, run around and practiced killing the man?"

"It seems like it'd be worse," Miriam admitted, frowning. "Or at least, it's using a lot of potent magic to do something that maybe shouldn't be done in the first place."

"Does it taint you? Magic done like that. People get used to power, but souls? Did you know that you can extract a soul? Buy and sell it if you're the right sort, or the wrong sort, of Mage?"

Miriam stared in horror, she'd heard that magic could do something with souls, but it was one thing to hear it as part of a lesson, and another to hear it like...that. "I...I do not think anyone who does that would be accepted in any polite society."

"But if souls can be bought and sold, then what are they? Even we wise don't have every single answer," Aerie said, "But if you don't' ask the questions, if you don't open your mind to explore, and explore the possibility that you might be wrong, then what's the point of waking up? I'm with the Mysterium, we're Mages who seek to understand, I guess you'd say. Not recruiting you, just telling you to think about it. That's what we do, at our best, try to understand the hidden knowledge of the world."

"Does that involve stealing souls?" Miriam asked, glancing at him.

"No, that's illegal. There are things against laws of not only moral but political."

Miriam frowned, "But that doesn't stop people from doing it, does it?"

"Nobody in the Mysterium who did something like that would escape punishment, I'd like to think. And we're good people, locally," Aerie said. "Magic itself is something more than can be defined briefly, wouldn't you agree? It's not a tool, and you said it, and it isn't evil, as you said...but then, what is it? Where does it come from and where is it going?"

Miriam frowned, staring at him, and then at the sandwich as he presented it to her. She took a bite, and it was very good, the flavors all melding together as this thirty-something man watched her. "I don't know," Miriam said, "But whatever order I join, I do intend to keep on finding out, however I can. God willing."

"God willing," he said, quietly, "God willing. That's something else you'll have to come to a solution with. Myself, I don't believe in God the way you might, but I do believe in something. You always have to believe in something, or you'll come unmoored. Perhaps we might talk some more, later, but for now, I'm curious...what have you read, what haven't you read? I'm not sure how thorough Shadow's been, seeing as he is how he is, but--"

******

That saturday, she went to church as normal. Prayed as normal, to the extent that any prayer could be normal, and then made her way towards the church she had visited before. It was a hot, sunny day out, the good weather persisting, and so she made her way along, towards the storefront church, and from it came beautiful singing.

Singing with not only purpose, but with a lesson in it as well. Meaning. She closed her eyes, thinking through what she'd want to ask and what she wanted to know, and stepped inside.

What's she here for? (Choose 1)

[] Though she doesn't know it, rotes are an important part of magic, and there are a few rotes that are more public territory. She might learn about rotes, and even learn one (1 XP per, unlocks a training/practice session over the next week to learn/etc. More rotes means more time, and it's also, you know, costing XP)
-[] A rote for being able to do two things at once, mentally.
-[] A rote that can subtly influence someone to act in a way they've always been thinking of.
-[] To know the nature and soul of another is a divine, of dangerous, blessing.
[] The Folk are a group, as well as merely just folk, and perhaps she should ask more about their beliefs, and what they do for the world.
[] Everyone's gotta help out. Eve's going around to distribute some food and money to those who are doing poorly, and Miriam finds herself enlisted in doing the rounds, seeing more of what they do on the ground. Seeing a lot more poverty than even she's used to.
*****

Spoiler: XP

1/5th XP (Debate, learning, more reading)
1/5th Arcana XP (Hallows, etc, etc)

Spoiler: Roll-Play

Thought: 4 (Int)+1 (Can we keep them)=2 sux

Resolve+Composure=1 sux

Oblation: 2 (Composure)+1 (Gnosis)+1 (Setup)=2 sux, 2 Mana gained

Mana 8/10.

Miriam, in two--

Thought Portion: 4 (Intelligence)+2 (High School -2)=2 sux
Thought Portion #2: 4 (Int)+3 (Preacher's Daughter)=failure
Talking Portion: 2 (Presence)+2 (First Sux)-1 (Failure)=1 sux

Aerie: 3 sux

A/N: Alright, so here we go!

Also, having read all of the Order books, I have to say that depending on circumstances Miriam could fit in most of them. People underestimate...well, all of them, or rather base things on cliches.

 

[The Laurent]

Page 22: What Clothing Fits…

"Have you gone to many such places?" Eve asked her, the older woman looking at her with a kind, curious expression. "Going to be one more of us, to see what we can see, figure out what we can figure out, but I know you've seen some great poverty, but that ain't the same as having seen it all."

"I know I'm a little sheltered from some of it," Miriam admitted, looking up at the other woman. "I've...seen some, but I live…"

She hesitated, looking at Eve, and then at John. He was standing by a large pack of what seemed to be clothes, considering it for a moment. He seemed more tired today than before, hunched over just a little, his movements lacking some of the vibrancy she'd seen before.

"In better circumstances? Truly, you are blessed."

She knew that plenty of her friends lived worse than her, maybe way worse, and that there was no real way to get out of it. Many of the houses had been divided up, gutted on the inside and turned into four one-room houses, or so on and so forth. Compared to that, having two bedrooms, having a living room and a real kitchen with a dining room, and having a bathroom that was large enough to have its own shower and plenty of room.

And those were just the houses. Then there were the tenements. She'd seen them rising up, the network, the web of stairs, the stuff strewn on the ground, the laundry hanging from windows in necessary defiance of the Chicago Defender's advice for new migrants. They'd come all the way here, she sometimes thought, and yet what they found wasn't much. But they seemed so grateful, and she wondered, and knew that perhaps she wouldn't understand. She'd been born here, and she'd been lucky, by the grace of God. Grace, never deserved, never asked for, as grace must be.

"I am," Miriam said, bowing her head humbly, glancing over at the older man, his skin like pitch, contrasting with his white robes, unstained and unlined. Perhaps it was a matter of care, or perhaps magic cared for it as well. "What are we going to be doing today?"

She looked around the one-room church, small and yet it had been filled with such song and passion. As if the smaller the room, the more could fit into it. An impossibility of space, she knows that, and yet she doesn't feel it. She looks over at them, wonders what they think of her.

Knows that it doesn't matter, or rather, she shouldn't be thinking about her own worries.

Eve is a solid woman, like Miriam's mother she carries some weight, but she made it look like, feel like, it didn't matter at all, or that it only made her stronger, and her hair was greying without her looking wizened, broken down.

The sort of woman, Miriam thought, who could work until the day she died and never slow down more than a little.

"We're going to be visiting about a dozen homes, checking up on them." John glanced over and nodded.

"We," he said in that baritone of his, voice still showing every sign of the south,"Will need to do some convincing. They'll be hesitant."

"Why?" Miriam asked.

"Pride," Eve said, "They've done for themselves what they can do, and some of them don't like bein' given clothing and advice, because why should they? They've been making their way better than most people could. Working two jobs, all of them that can."

Miriam, who had only a single parent who worked outside the home, and yet had so much more, nodded. She understood it. If the south really was as bad, at least to live in, as she'd heard, then rising even to this, working that hard, it was all for a good cause, wasn't it?"

"And we need to convince them to let a friend of ours come by," John said, his voice grave, "He's white, but he means no harm. He needs to check a few things, work a few things out."

Miriam, who understood that tension--hadn't everyone been suspicious when Sara had started trying to hang around with her, and hadn't they been right--nodded. It wasn't that they hated white people, or at least, she never got that feeling from most of the people who were nervous. But what Virginia appreciated, often as not, was the right to be left alone and ignored. It was a big city, and there was too much to do. Nobody would be lynched over a wrong word accidentally said, nobody would start a fight over nothing...except when they did. Except when the riots came in.

Except when the city burned.

But until it burned, like Miriam's cooking before her mom took it into her head to really teach her, it was left at a simmer.

Warm, but not too hot. Not scalding.

"What can I do to help?" she asked.

"You're a strong girl," John said, appraisingly, "Can you carry this?" He gestured over at what looked to be a bag of pies. She lifted them up, a little surprised at the weight for a moment, but easily able to manage it. Though it was more of a struggle to wrap her arm around the bottom out of the bag, just to make sure nothing shifted around. There had to be dozens and dozens of pies, enough to feed the whole of the world, or so it seemed, each in a tin, with what looked like plastic covers for each of them.

They had to be plenty strong, though, what with all the other pies stacked on top.

"What is it?"

"Sweet potatah," Eve drawled, and Miriam made a face. She had a northern set of tastebuds, and so sweet potato pie was not her thing. But with how much she went over to Virginia's, she'd probably eventually be forced to like it by sheer repetition, at this rate.

******

Miriam looked, wide eyed, at the scene. Three children, a mother and a father, all in the same place. All in a room so small she wouldn't have reckoned that two people could fit in there. And worse than that, it lacked a window. A cold water flat, she thought, glancing at the sink. A sink, a kerosene stove as if they were back in the south, a bathroom, at least, to create a supposed second room, though it was more like a closet, and then a crowded mess.

Sheets hanging up in the air as the kids, two boys and a girl, between maybe five or six and twelve, if she had to guess, danced and dodged around it.

Their father was short, skin dark, talking as slow as if he were carefully measuring and building each word, which dripped down from his voice like honey. The mother, thin and pressed, in her twenties but looking far older, head rag on her hair in the southern style, dress fraying a little bit.

"I got a job as a housekeeper," the woman said, nodding, "But now there's not so much time to look after the littleuns. I've asked Alli May here to do what she can, but she has school too."

Eve frowned, "Keepin' them in school?"

"Of course," the woman said, nodding.

"Ain't nothing better than an education," the husband said, his words ringing with a sort of finality as he glanced over at the pies.

Miriam wasn't experienced with lifting stuff up, or at least she'd never given it much thought, hadn't exactly practiced it, and so her arms were aching a little bit, at least at the moment. But there was a hungry look, and she assumed that she should set them down on the table, if it could hold it.

Two beds, slammed next to a wobbling table, and then a small stove that served as both heat and the source of food. There was a pantry bolted into the wall, and what she noticed most of all was not the individual elements. There was less in the way of furniture, sure, and less in the way of everything, but how it was all slammed together. You could crawl from the bed to the dinner table and then stumble over to the bathroom, if you didn't hit your head on the dripping laundry, shirts and socks and underwear all strewn about.

There was no privacy here, no distance, no space. The idea of a bookshelf would have been an absurd question of space, she thought, glancing around, trying to imagine even a single place to really read a book. Not that there weren't books here. Textbooks, stacked in a corner, their covers worn out.

Pencils and pens laying around there too, as if that was the designated study corner.

"Helps you get ahead, you hope," John said, nodding, "We brought a little in the way of clothes, we've heard you've been running out."

"They've been growin," the woman admitted, "Growing and growing. Who is this?" She looked at Miriam, frowning, as if trying to place her.

Miriam knew she'd have recognized the woman if she went to church with her. Which made her wonder how many of the women and men she saw at church went back to live like this. Or a little better, with a window or a few more feet of space, and paying dollar for dollar ten times what it was worth, and without even hot running water to say for all that cost.

"You can call me Ruth," she said, knowing that that sounded weird. "I'm just helping out."

"Good girl," the woman said, "It's Christian kindness that they do here, isn't it, Earl?"

"Yes," he said, and she realized just then that the woman had been subtly encouraging her husband to accept the charity. "A little clothing wouldn't hurt. It's summer now, though, so not so much. We're gonna get plenty of work down at the slaughterhouse, though people been poking around."

"Why?" Eve asked, and Miriam wondered at the way she asked. Curious, certainly. More interested than expected.

"Nobody quite knows for sure. White folk poking around, muttering to themselves." He shrugged, a hopeless sort of shrug, because what could he do. "That sweet potato, or pecan?"

"Sweet potato," Ruth said at the same time as John said, instead.

"Some of both," he said.

Oh, she hadn't looked except at the top.

"Would you like one?" Eve asked, smiling wide. She hadn't used magic yet, but Miriam felt as if something was going on. It was hard to define, hard to quite understand, but John was gazing intently now at the wall, and for a moment the room's lights seemed just a little bit, and she felt dizzy for a moment.

Earl, the father, paused and looked down at his kids, and she didn't need to touch him to understand his thoughts as she regained her balance. She'd felt odd for a moment, disconnected, but now things were better, and she had to assume it was magic.

An easy answer, but a true one.

"Sure. Bet they're great."

When they left, Miriam turned to John and asked, "What did you do?"

"Their wall was weak at a place. Kid probably banging on it," John said, nodding, "I just reinforced it. They won't notice, because you don't notice these things until they break or something gets busted, then you hang a sheet in front of it and hope nobody notices too much." The older pastor gazed back at Miriam and her burden. "Thank you for helping out."

*******

It wasn't all she did, and she tried to engage with people. Ask about their kids, about what they learned in class, about what she could as she stood there and every so often a little thing was fixed with magic that nobody would notice. The houses didn't get richer, though they didn't get much poorer than that, either. All of the ones she visited were one-rooms, and she started to gravitate towards the kids, talking to them about school, or at least hearing their complaints and trying to give advice.

It was what she already did around the neighborhood, and she found it was easy to talk to them, easy to help them. She wasn't sure why, but they just seemed to connect to her and listen to her, even the boys. And if there was one thing she knew, it was that boys could be contrary and ornery, given to strange fits of pride or a desire to show off. Not that Virginia didn't show off plenty at times. But she'd been brushed off more than once before with 'you're a girl' or the like, but all the kids, most of who spoke with a southern accent, but a few of whom had clearly started shifting to talking more like she was used to. Her own accent, which of course to her ears sounded like no accent at all.

They had their concerns and worries, about clothes or fights with other kids or friends or how hard math was (or how easy english was but they couldn't shovel enough books into their hands to fill their minds), or anything and everything at all. She wasn't sure why they trusted her, she wasn't using any magic, and she'd never been the sort of person that charmed everyone, but it seemed to be working, and as the pies slowly left the bag, until it was easy enough to carry that she was more concerned with them falling out of the loose bag, and it kept up.

It baffled her, really.

"It's your accent and the way you dress," Eve said. "And the hair, maybe."

Miriam didn't move to touch her hair, but, "The way I dress?"

"Nice. Clean. Proper. You look northern," Eve said, as John forged forward, glancing down now at a list. His suit was not so crisp now after hugs and backpats and running up and down stairs, but he seemed to have come alive, the exhaustion slipping from him like it hadn't even been there. "And you talk it too. Erudite, you'd probably call it. You talk fast, and you talk politely."

Miriam shook her head, "And that's it?"

"And that's it. Though it's also that you're with us, so that makes you someone who's part of something," Eve said, shaking her head. "Thanks for what you're doing. We'd have had to enlist someone else for this."

"It's good that I'm able to help others," Miriam said, smiling. This wasn't how she might like to spend every Saturday, but that didn't mean anything. She had her selfish parts, the parts of her that wanted to run and jump and play.

"You're quite strong," Eve said, thoughtfully, "And without any magic, too."

"I just keep active," Miriam said, flushing a little. It wasn't the sort of thing one talked about, anyways. Strength wasn't really all that important, or maybe it was in the south, when you had to be in the field or doing something...then again, one had to do what they could in the north, too. She knew some of the laundries had plenty of heavy lifting, so maybe it was just her position. She was going to be going to college, probably, and maybe getting married to someone or other eventually.

It was a prospect that managed to excite nothing, though also excite no feelings of disgust. She could imagine marrying in the abstract, could picture--if prompted by some other girl--some man and some wedding veil, some place and some time. But the specifics never seemed to matter.

Not really matter, at least.

"Well, you should keep it up," Eve said, "Healthy mind, healthy body."

"Just one more place, and you know which one it is," John said.

"Ah, right."

She followed them up the tenement stops, by now used to the squalor. And the smell. People tried to keep clean, but if they didn't have hot water then they couldn't bathe as often as they should, and there was nowhere to put a lot of the trash, and so the smell certainly was a counter-point to the joy of using Life magic to grant enhanced senses.

But you adjusted to it, she thought, as they knocked on a door.

A woman answered, short and just a little plump, her skin the deep brown of a tree, her eyes dark and roaming. She looked tired, very tired, her hair tied up and covered in a rag, her clothes smelling faintly of alcohol.

"Ugh, honey," a man's voice said, "Who is it?"

"Just the people from the church," she called, "And some other girl." The woman, shorter than her, stared up at her and asked, "Who are you?"

Miriam opened her mouth to answer just in time for something to take her breath away. It wasn't the room, though the bottles of empty alcohol and the short, plump man sprawled out on one of the beds, bottle still in hand, looking sickly, but the kind of sickly she had to assume came from drinking too much. His skin was as dark as a rubber tire, eyes shining brightly, a little madly, out from them.

"Oh," Eve said, frowning. Miriam wondered what she was thinking, but there was again the issue of politeness. "This is Ruth."

But what mattered was that in the corner was a small cot, thrown on the floor, a few books here and there around it. Bleak House, so well named, most prominent of them. And then there he was, little Dickens. One look at him, and then at his mother, in the thirties, and the man, in his forties, was enough to tell her that they weren't related.

Family mattered in the south, and most of the migrants came with their family, or were young men living with relatives and saving up for their wife and kids to come north once they had a job. There was very little of this kind of thing, and Miriam looked over at the wide eyed, staring boy, who stood up, opened his mouth, but couldn't quite speak.

"Ruth?" Dickens asked, confused.

"Y'know her, boy?" the man asked, his voice slurred.

"Uh…"

Miriam stepped forward, glancing around the room, which as an absolute mess, slipping past the woman with the pies to set on the table, which almost fell over from even that little weight. And then she glanced over at Dickens, whose face was as red as a hydrant. "Hey, Dickens."

"Ha, Dickens," the man said, "She knows you alright, then." The man held his hand in front of his mouth as he burped, an oddly polite gesture.

"Uh...hi. Ruth?" he asked, and it was then that she realized something. He didn't have even a trace of a Mississippi accent, which meant a lot more now that she could barely understand the mother's words, and now that she heard the man's voice. It must have been something he trained, something he worked on, and Miriam, who had only been guessing at this, had only been told, realized just why he might want to go anywhere but there. Why he might come over to read her books, because if there was no space for books except the corner in the first place she'd been, and if learning was respected but hard to fit into their world, then here was a place where even that wasn't true.

"Hey, just helping some people out," Miriam said, leaning in to touch him on the shoulder, "I'm sorry, I didn't know--"

She ignored what the adults were saying, except that Eve was talking about the latest man with Monnie, as the woman's name turned out to be.

"It's fine," he said.

Well, that's what he said. But she could feel his embarrassment, and warm other emotions. He didn't want to be seen like this, by her. Or perhaps by anyone at all. This wasn't a scene she wanted to see either, because this wasn't what Dickens wanted to show, and it wasn't what he wanted to talk about.

"Let's sit down," she said, frowning a little over some of the emotions she'd felt. She didn't have words for them, didn't quite understand them, but the shame had its own flavors, but just like collared greens, they were a flavor she didn't quite understand. Didn't quite like as much. Or...again, it was hard to interpret. Like a blind man trying to describe the sight of the sun. Or something like that. She moved over to the bed, and she sat down next to him, as he squirmed and fidgeted.

"You having a good summer?" Dickens asked, "You're really helping out here. We could...I mean, a little bit of clothes wouldn't hurt." Then he paused, looking away, eyes cast downward, "I mean, not that I, I."

"Don't worry. We all need help sometime. You should come over, hang out more." She looked at the boy and said, "Ma'd say that you could use some plumping up because you were skin and bones." And he was really spare, lacking in excess, on top of his shortness.

"Maybe, maybe. But I don't want to intrude. It's family and I'm not family, so I don't want to...plus I'm sure you have the baseball to do and all of that." He sounded jealous in a way, though whether it was for her freedom or her abilities or for no reason at all, she couldn't quite understand.

"Well, I'd tell you not to be a stranger, if you'd listen," Miriam said. "Good job on your performance."

At school, of course.

"I did what I could. Still lost to you, though," he said, and yet his mood seemed to be lightening. She could even feel it, the way he was getting into it.

"You know Dickens better than I ever would. I've never read Bleak House."

"Man, after all the times I've tried to get you to read it--"

The book was battered, and she'd been afraid of it, almost, the one time he'd offered it. Not of its size, but of the fact that it clearly meant a lot to him, and if it got even more beat up, would it even be usable? So she'd hesitated, and then forgotten about it.

"Well, so it's about a legal case, right?" Miriam asked.

"It's about a lot of things. It's a Dickens novel," Richard said, eyes wide, "If you want we could read a little of it." He picked up the book and opened it up. "It'll be a while."

They were arguing. Politely, but it was clear they were arguing. About money? About charity work? She wasn't sure, but she'd seen the clothes in that bag, and now that she'd seen them, she imagined Dickens wearing them. Dickens, who was about as smart as her, really, and needed it ten times as much as she did. Needed his brain to get out of this place.

Wouldn't be able to afford it. Wouldn't be able to get anywhere on his own.

What she was doing, it helped the Dickens of the world, as well as everyone else, and she thought about the charities her own father's church had done, ones that she hadn't gotten as involved in as she should have. Social work.

"London," he intoned in a voice that seemed to waver from accent to accent, as if he were trying to imagine a british one (an accent neither of them had ever heard, really), "Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill…"

Week of May 25th-June 1st

Teachings (Choose 2+1 (Temporary Resolve boost))

[] Mind magic.
[] How to use Space and the nature of Sympathy.
[] Magic pertaining to Life.
[] The Nature of Fate Magic, and how to do it.
[] Tools and Yantra.
[] Rotes.
[] Legacies, what they are and the names and natures of a few.
[] The lesser magics of the world.

Meeting With People (Choose 1+1 (Temporary Resolve boost))

[] "Cleopatra is a powerful Mage of the Silver Ladder, and knows things that it is well worth knowing. She would no doubt be delighted to speak to you."
[] "Perhaps I need to confront Valkyrie directly. Maybe with you there, we could get to the bottom of this matter. That Guardian, if she interfered…"
[] "A discussion is being held, not usually open to everyone, but I can get an invite. A Mysterium scholar is discussing a new field he's...invented, I suppose. 'Dream Archaeology.'
[] "Mars is to war as the newest Hierarch is to peace. He will no doubt be interested in this latest act, being as it is likely perpetrated by those aligned with the Seers…"
[] "Gabriel Breda is the leader of The Uprising, as I have told you. I've mentioned him to you."

During the Week (Choose 3)

[] (.9x) Explore back into her mind, and perhaps the minds of others.
-[] (.9x) Perhaps find a way into Virginia's mind some night, to see what's going on there.
she might find answers.
[] Read a book!
-[] The book of Life and Mind 'rotes' whatever that is.
-[] The psychological book of dreams Virginia found.
-[] The book of philosophy.
[] Introduce Jack to Virginia in a way that will allow him to check.
[] Invite Dickens over for dinner. He sure could use it.
[] Ronald can see magic, and so can is father. Let him in on the secret of her nature, and see what they have to say. Perhaps they even have advice?
[] Talk to the Folk about their beliefs.
[] Visit with Aerie, and talk to him about philosophy, and perhaps the Mysterium.
[] Get some exercise, train up a bit, it's good for the body.
[] Feel free to write-in.

*****

Spoiler: XP

1/5th XP for exceptional successes and finding things out.

Arcana that might be bought (when you have enough XP, which isn't yet):

Spirit 1

All others still not unlocked.

Spoiler: Roll-Play

Strength 3 means pretty good shot=1 sux

Presence (2)+1 (Friendlyish strangers)=3 dice=2 sux

Presence+Student+Neighborhood Helper=7 dice=5 sux

Mental Scan: 2 dice=1 sux

No reach beyond what's needed (1 for the time, not reading his thoughts, at least not yet.)

Presence+Friendship=5 dice=1 sux

A/N: And here we go. Another week vote!

 

[The Laurent]

Page 23: Understanding, Knowing...

The summer sprawled out like a contented cat now. It was not quite so new anymore, no longer a kitten, and it was waxing hot and windy and humid, the kind of weather where the barbecuers (and there were stands now along the Strand, people selling down-south food for summering men and women) sweated and cursed the sun. It was a steady sort of heat, even so, and the nights were almost as warm as the days, or so it felt for those who weren't used to it.

This was her city, and to Miriam, this was what weather did, though that didn't stop her from sweating, or wishing that she didn't have to wear stockings with how the weather was. In the winter she wondered how the boys survived without stockings, but in the summer, especially when she was tearing at them every day, sliding and running around, they were an unbearable annoyance that, somehow, annoyed nobody but her. Virginia didn't complain, her mother didn't complain, and none of the other girls she knew seemed particularly bothered by it, which only made her wonder what she was missing.

And there, that was a thought to get one to open up the window for a little cooler air (just a little) and stare out into the darkness, peering out at the streetlights and the people walking under them, knowing that plenty of streets did not' have even that. There was the occasional straggler, looking tired and exhausted from work and sometimes drinking after work, moving slowly, their skin as dark as their shirts, soaked with sweat and exertion, and some nights, and nights even before she had magic, she'd peek out at them, curiously.

She had always felt some desire to know about other people, but it seemed only to grow, to become central now that she had magic. Now that she really could. And having taken a step towards being able to understand them, she suddenly found that there was this huge gap between what she had thought she knew and what she knew. It made her feel every inch of distance, in a way she hadn't before.

She'd felt it, of course. She'd apparently even wished for moments that she was a boy, just out of a frustrated desire to get out of these stupid stockings and the stupid confines that seemed to hem her in, but there was a difference. Or rather, she was starting to realize what was and wasn't usual, and what had seemed a normal affectation now made her wonder.

Just as she looked down at the night long enough that it seemed to have shape and form and distance, as if it were spitting out the next group of people. People leaivng for parties, dressed up, wearing makeup, or coming home from parties at all hours. People worked hard, and people partied hard, and she still judged them, still watched them and couldn't understand them.

But now it felt almost as if it was her problem. They seemed innocent and guilty all at once: innocent because she had seen what depths sin could fall into, and now drinking and partying seemed, while horrible, no longer the worst sins a person could engage in.

A mob was one thing, a mob wasn't a person, it was a collection of animals, or so she had thought, though perhaps now she'd be able to see into each mind, be able to understand what was going through that gestalt entity.

But it also seemed even more guilty, because who could know whether or not there wasn't magic on them right now? Who could know that when they went to a buffet flat, opened up for cards and alcohol and music, all to try to make some money to pay for rent, they weren't being hoodwinked, they weren't being turned into someone they weren't.

She'd missed everything wrong about how Sara was acting, and it made her feel like an idiot, a feeling she hadn't had in years. She'd always known her limits, but within them she'd had pride, a sin that couldn't quite be stamped out, in what she could understand.

But now she had to admit that there was so much more to learn, and not in the ways she'd thought about before. If she didn't understand other people, did she understand herself? So she watched them, and knew that she could dive back in. She could look at herself, and try to understand it.

Or she could go and visit Virginia, or one of her friends. The world was open for exploration, and so staying up was in some ways an abrogation of duties she could be doing. But instead, she stayed up, rubbing her eyes, and began to read a book she'd gotten some time ago.

******

A healthy mind and a healthy body are not the same thing, but they can be. They stand together, as four pillars might hold up a building. And thus this is the book of four pillars. It contains four ways to understand and improve one's health in mind and body, and in each chapter we shall talk about one of them. This is a text for the beginner, and also for the expert seeking fresh understanding, and so we shall begin with the simplest question of all.

What is it to be sound of mind?

It spoke about the nature of insanity, the way that some psychologists had located it in the nature of past stresses. The actions of one's childhood, even things one couldn't remember, made one who they were today. And so by thinking about a person's past, by imagining turning a page of their story to see how it came to be, a person could examine their present. More specifically, they could look at the shape of their mind, how intelligent they were, and also how their self had been shaped.

It went on in depth about the various sorts of madness. How one man might see what wasn't there, while another might think what wasn't true, the way that this madness marred the smooth perfection of a man, or at least their understanding, and that as a learned person, it was one's responsibility to understand these infirmities to avoid them.

And then it began to talk about how to imagine it, how to put it all together combined with a gesture, the flipping of a page, that could be easily hidden, and yet made so much sense. It was, she realized, a way to more easily understand a spell. A thousand small tricks that all seemed to combine in one action, in a spell done just so. Doing just that, and no more...and yet that 'no more' was still something.

The second chapter spoke of the way that a mind had only so much time, the way a person could only do so much, and yet also the way that a principle in the previous chapter could be applied in a way that would benefit her.

The medical term was schizophrenia, split mind, and it was a disease, a weakness. And yet in understanding it, and in getting at the heart of the madness and the madmen that might later be treated, though the book didn't promise that, one could understand how to use this principle as a basic method to…

It was complex, this one, and seemed to function as part of her understanding of the mind, which was still rather slim, but…

She fell asleep reading, and woke up the next morning clutching it, ready to continue. Two more rotes, apparently, and by the time her uncle came to tell her about them, she could almost guess what he would say.

******

"They're mnemonics, right?" she asked, "Ways to do a spell that help you remember the details?" Because it really was far more difficult than it should be, pulling together all of the elements of a spell, imagining in exact details what she wanted to do. Ambiguity was something that she knew could make a spell fail, and of course once it failed once, you were rushed to try it again, unless there was plenty of time, and so it made it only more likely that she'd make a mistake. Honestly, for every spell she got off, there was at least one failure, on average.

And while that was fine for now, she thought, leaning against the back wall, sitting on her bed with the book to the side, it wouldn't be okay later. She was stretched out a little, hand smoothing down her skirt, and her uncle was pacing back and forth, face thoughtful.

"Exactly, rotes are just that, and that means you can do a lot more. Stretch the limits of what a spell can do because you're not thinking about the details. It makes paradox less likely, for one, at least paradox from making the spell too complicated and messing it up somewhere. It still doesn't stop a Sleeper from seeing it and messing everything up, but--" he shrugged, smiling a little, "So, each rote helps you remember how to do it, but there are other such devices. That's what Yantra are, most famously tools. Anything that you can wield, you can incorporate into a spell. But you have to incorporate it. Rotes involve movements, whether with the eyes or hands or even just tensing your body a certain way. That means you can't do it as subtly as you might."

"That makes sense," Miriam said, thinking about it as she leaned forward a little, tapping her chin, "But one can already see the nimbus of another spellcaster, right, so it's not like it's that different, is it?"

"That's a very good point," Jack said, with a shrug. He set down the bag he was carrying, bending down as he did. "So, there are many different types of Yantras. It's a word that, in India, means something like a mystic diagram, a mystic device in the language known as Sanskrit. And that's what each one is. There's nothing necessarily special about Yantras on their own. My carpet bag has no magical properties except the ones I bring to it. I'm the one that's magical. But each Yantra has a meaning. Imagine, say, that you have a magical wand. What does that mean?"

"Power? Control?" Miriam asked, not entirely sure.

"It could. Different people feel that different things are symbolized differently, but like the shadow on the wall, what matters is that the symbolism has power. If I imagine a wand as a tool to aim or direct something, than only spells which are aimed can be enhanced with it. If I imagine it, say, to symbolize maleness, as some say--"

He seemed awkward, saying this, and she understood. After all, she was a niece, and he'd always tried to not talk about things that would be awkward for the both of them.

"Then you could use it for a spell involving that?" she asked, frowning.

"Possibly, possibly. It all depends on what you're able to justify to yourself, when you're trying to use it. And of course, the more Yantras you use, the more time it takes to focus. Seconds spent winding up for the pitch means that someone can predict what you're doing, but when the alternative is failing the spell," he shrugged.

Miriam nodded. "What are examples of Yantra?"

"A demesne, a place of magic and power, can be used, but so can the environment. During a thunderstorm, calling down lightning is far easier, for instance, and a church might be a place where one can better cast, if one tries, spells to persuade people, or make them aware of something higher," he said, "And so the active Mage searches for these ways to incorporate details, and in a ritual, they have even more time to pick and choose such things. But when in a rush...I can eventually teach you how to use High Speech to empower your spells with their authority, and similarly if you learn how to write Atlantean, you might, say, write down a rune."

"Carve one?" she asked.

"Yes. But then the spell relies on it. If you paint a rune of protection on a house, then if the rune is washed away, so is the spell."

Miriam nodded, noting all of this down. It seemed complicated, but seemed to make sense. "And tools?"

"I actually had a few more things to note down that I might write down for you, about sympathetic connection and sacrificing things for a spell, but...I did have something I wanted to show you. There are several types of tools, and each is their own yantra, as I said. It has its own symbolism, it takes time and work to make it all make sense, but…"

He opened his bag and pulled out a hand mirror. It was far more ornate than she was used to, the kind of thing Virginia would have. It was wrought iron, a pattern of flowers in bloom all along the back, hints of brass for color, and other materials as well, expensive looking enough that she wondered why her uncle had it. "Many female mages carry the mirror in a purse. It's one of the five traditional tools of a Mage's path. Mastigos tools are in bronze and iron, stark and beautiful. I know this is not the sort of thing you would normally carry, even when you have a purse, but it's not that big, so perhaps you can find a use for it."

He walked over to her and handed her it, and then said, "Try, say, reflecting my image, and then imagining doing something with me. Some sort of magic. And then see how much easier it is."

She looked down at the mirror, angling it to catch him, wondering at it, and thinking about Virginia. "I've invited Virginia over," Miriam said quietly, "I went to her place earlier this morning." The morning was almost shaded over into afternoon. "Asked if she'd like some northern lunch, and to talk a little."

"Ah, good, I'll go down and look, then. When will she get here?"

"Very, very soon," Miriam said, glancing down at the mirror and then up at him and tilting it a little, trying to imagine his thoughts, the feelings and sensations that were making it up, and the mirror, it showed one's soul.

Or at least, that felt like something it could do. It was not her mirror, though. It felt unfamiliar and strange to her, the idea of using it. But then what was she? This was an elaborate mirror, like a princess might have, though without the gems and gold that stories had them draped in, everything about them. There was something common about the tool, despite the elaboration, as if its very material was defying its beauty, or perhaps defining it, telling the world that it was all a construct.

Built up, like a human mind, in the image of God just as much or more elaborate devices. And then she felt it, his thoughts seemingly almost etched on the mirror, though when she moved it away, she could still feel them. The low hum of words, of meaning. A flash of pride in her, a moment where he was composing a speech. 'The mind is…'

Something. What it was, she thought, standing up, was fascinating. She was starting to understand this better, the way that the mind could be understood, the way that it might be changed. It wasn't a sin, not if it was done in kindness. She imagined being able to calm an angry, drunk man, or to think two or even three things at once. A part of her was curious what it'd be like, to be someone different, or to be more skilled at socializing, and another part was curious about the nature of mind, of memories.

Hearing his thoughts, feeling them before he'd say it, only made her more and more desirous. She knew that there were limits, and she'd stay in them, she swore, but it wouldn't hurt to peek a little. She knew that this road might lead somewhere bad, eventually, but it seemed so amazing, such a fascinating thing to examine and think about.

And so when she followed her Uncle down, she thought of those people she didn't understand out there, and she thought of the poor people struggling, whose challenges she sometimes did not fully comprehend until she'd more fully realized what Dickens was going through. That was a bad thing, that was a thing she could change. That was a thing she would change: it was wrong not to. Wrong...and also a little boring.

*******

Virginia was down there, talking to her mother, pretty and vibrant, though also on the defensive. Her hair, the fact that even now she was wearing makeup, her clothes, the skirt-line quite modern, all of it clashed with what her mother, Eliza, thought proper. And yet it wasn't nearly so pointed as it had been with Uncle Jack.

She respected Virginia's circumstances, or perhaps there was something they shared. There was the commonality of their womanhood, perhaps, or the fact that Jack's own rootlessness contrasted with the way that she'd devoted her life to being a mother and caretaker. She'd done something that Miriam didn't know whether she'd be able to do. Something that she was afraid might be beyond her, almost broken in some small, hard to notice way.

Virginia, on the other hand? She wasn't broken at all. She looked up at her uncle, who had stopped on the top stair as she passed him.

"Hrm?" she asked, turning up, even as Virginia saw her and let out a cry, racing to give her a greeting hug.

She hugged Virginia back, squeezing her tight and lifting the girl off her feet, "Hey! Man, what do they feed you at your aunt's? How's the summer been going, the hair's going to actually go back to normal, right?"

"It's already getting there," Virginia said with a frown, touching her hair, "I really should do something with it, and--"

She was looking at her Uncle.

He mouthed, "Demon child" without making a sound, and she could read it.

Oh.

Though, the truth was, as she chatted with Virginia, she didn't know what it meant. Just another thing she didn't understand. But would, one day.

What does she do about it?

[] Let it wait for the moment, since it might not mean anything, or rather...perhaps it's best just to be polite with her and not violate her friend's mental space?
[] [.8x] Perhaps, if she really is not quite a Sleeper (though not quite not one either), she could be told about this. Or confronted to see if she knows anything? Of course, it could go really bad, especially without proof, but it would be open, direct, and honest.
[] [1.2x] Go with Uncle Jack to her mind, and they can both look for signs, figure out more about it, while she gets a little bit of a lesson in such things. Learning more about what Astral Demons are and what it means for her friend with someone who knows what he's doing could be the best option, if she's willing to take the time to do it.
[] [1.4x] At the same time, that'd take time to find the time in his schedule, and it would involve showing off her best friend's mind to someone she might not be comfortable with reading it. Miriam had been fine with her Uncle in her head, but there were plenty of things--or so she'd been able to guess--that a young girl might not want a random adult guy to see. Or something. It was something of a mystery to Miriam. But she's also curious to check it out herself. So she could just go on herself, and look around. Try to get a feel for what it is, and hopefully figure it out on her own.

******

Spoiler: Gains

1/5th Arcane XP

Two Rotes available for purchase a little bit later on in the week.

One is Mental Scan, but specifically targeted for psychosis/mental illnesses, as well as emotional states and mental things, and thus it cannot look for, say, desires. Damn open source Rotes. But it's still a pretty good deal, no? It plays off of her Promising High School Student Aspect, -2 for the unfamiliar subject matter. So on top of being Rote, and thus having 5 Reach to play with, it gets a 2-dot Yantra. Combine with a path tool and the dice pool goes from 2 dice to 5 dice.

The other is just plain old One Mind, Two Thoughts, based on the same understanding of psychology as before. It thus is a 2-dice Yantra, and the gesture involves an action of splitting, almost.

Neither can be purchased just yet, nor can the Life Rotes that she'll also look at (though that's partially because she doesn't have Life), but will be available later. So mark your calenders!

Spoiler: Roll-Play

Learning the Rotes: 2 sux

Extracting Principles: 3-2sux=1 sux

Doing Magic:

1 (Gnosis)+1 (Mind)+1 (Yantra)=3 dice=2 sux

1 Reach for instant, one reach for distance, 1 reach for scene long which means two dice of Paradox to roll…

And failure, luckily.

A/N: Alright, and so some more learning, some more thinking, that sort of thing!

A little short, but oh well!

 

[The Laurent]

Page 24: Her Best Fiend, Part 1

This was perhaps a bad idea. She understood that ahead of time. She'd smiled at her uncle and then moved to act in a way that might be unwise, and yet she couldn't resist it. She wanted to know, and more than that, as she sat on the bed and looked down into her hands, tracing the lines of them, as if she could read the future in them, she knew that she'd done it out of more than just a desire to understand. There was also a fear.

One of her friends had turned out not to be her friend, to have been hurt. So she wanted to protect someone else...but she also wanted to be sure she had a friend. Virginia was the person outside of her family she was closest to, funny and enthusiastic and far better at all sorts of things that she should know how to do, things that a woman was supposed to know. Besides the fashion, which could be forgiven, she was a better cook than Miriam, better at doing chores, even if she sometimes avoided them.

And more than that: she respected Miriam, she shared and shared alike. They bartered for their own time and understanding of each other, and both of them walked away richer. But what if it wasn't real? So she sat there, for a long moment, lost in doubts that were not usual. Miriam was someone who didn't doubt themselves as often as perhaps they should. She knew it: another flaw, another bit of pride that should have been worn away, but hadn't been.

So even though she knew this was a mistake, she was surprisingly confident as she glanced over at the window, at the streetlights, the streaks of color in the darkness, and then down at her bed, before her hands came together slowly and she closed her eyes and tried to focus.

The world slowly fell away, bit by bit. It took time, as always, and yet she didn't begrudge it. This was magic, and of course magic was something that took time, something that was amazing and complicated, and she loved it already, even though she knew she barely knew anything. But oddly, that only made it more exciting, and so she let the time pass and focused, praying to God for the wisdom to see the truth.

Until there was nothing left but herself, and then she was on a stage. She looked around as an actor stepped forward, a man holding, as if it were a mask, Virginia's face. She turned, looking at the crowd, a sea of white, fat faces, jeering parodies of real people more than anything else, and then at the blood-red curtain that seemed to loom overhead, threatening to come down upon her head.

She cleared her throat, but before she could speak, he did, in a bad approximation of Virginia's voice. "I hate you. I'm just your friend because a Demon told me to be."

"I hate you," a voice said behind her, and she turned to see 'Dickens' or rather a man holding up a mask that looked like his face, his voice a flat monotone, "I'm just your friend because you're smart too and you have lots of books. I'd rather not spend any time with you. So full of yourself, so much better off than me--"

"Me too. Really, you're just fun to watch strutting about, acting like you're anything much when you're just a girl," 'Josiah' drawled, played, oddly, by an older woman, whose acting was, if anything, worse.

"No," she said, firmly. This all wasn't true. It was a test, and she waved her arm, imagining what they were really like. Josiah, lazy and playful, Dickens, smart and energetic and enthusiastic, Virginia, hip and beautiful (all the guys said it when they thought she wasn't looking) and free, and she pictured them in her head and slowly the forms shifted in front of her eyes, until at last there were her friends, and others in the audience. Acquaintances and family and other friends, all of them as they should be.

People.

People she cared about and who cared for her. She...she knew that her worrying about Virginia's friendship was illogical. That was so obvious, and yet that didn't change how she felt. That was how people were. But they didn't have to worry, they didn't have to be…

She blinked and was in the church of before, but it was different now. There were only a dozen people, and they were muttering indistinct words. The whole church seemed different now, cleaner, clearer, and she realized why it was. She was getting used to it. The first time, her mind had not been entirely focused, but the second time? The second time she'd gone through much faster, probably not in time taken to meditate, but in her ability to focus, her understanding of what she was doing.

There was a test each time, before she entered the world of the mind, and so she walked down, towards the exit, thinking of Virginia, each step confident, sure that soon enough she'd be able to get out of here.

She was guessing now as to what it involved, but she thought of Virginia, and--

******


"Hey, watch this," Virginia said, and then she did a handstand. As a twelve year old kid, she was cute, not yet pretty, her features delicate and her hair shorter than it would be later. She shifted one way and the other, wiggling her hips as if she were some dancer, walking on her hands. "Bet you could do it even better!"

Miriam blinked, smiling a little, glancing around at the room, divided down the middle. Virginia had always talked about how she wished she had her own room, instead of sharing it with her brother. She'd ignored the divide, going back and forth at will, but yelling at her brother if he did the same. She wanted her privacy, but she always wanted room to stretch out.

"Uh."

"Oh, come on. Please?" Virginia said, her voice growing a little quieter, "I know you can do a handstand. I've seen you!"

It was true. Miriam was not someone who did gymnastics or anything (how could you be, honestly, all things considered) but she did run and jump around enough that she'd learned tricks like that. But now wasn't the time and she tried to focus on the link between her and her friend. And she felt the world seem to dissolve, like one of those impressionist painting she'd seen in books, but not in life, because she'd never had a chance to go to the Art Institute, and wasn't sure how it'd go even if she went.

And then she was standing in a far larger room. It was similar, though. There was a big makeup table, more than Miriam had ever imagined laid out there, and there was a huge blue bed with lovely purple curtains, and the floors were clean, though she could hear the sound of rats in the distance, hundreds of them squeaking. There was a walk-in closet, and when she moved over to it and opened it, she saw there were hundreds of outfits inside, ranging from the simple to the elaborate. She couldn't imagine anyone wearing a ball gown like that, white and shimmering, like some fairy-tale wedding dress, but she knew immediately that this is where Virginia wanted to live. This was the room she wanted to have.

The room she dreamed of, even.

Miriam stepped towards the door, and then paused, thinking. And then she moved to the bed, which had big, red down pillows, and was so soft she could imagine falling asleep on it just sitting there.

She pulled the pillows aside and underneath them was a diary. She touched it and focused on the thoughts. The feelings.

Something hidden, that's what she was looking for.

******

"See, this is the library," Miriam said. To herself.

Miriam blinked at the Dream-Miriam, who was just a year younger. She looked odd from the outside. It was hard to place, but there was something about her that seemed different. Perhaps it was just seeing herself from the outside, moving around, active, smiling all the time. Vital in a way she sometimes didn't see herself as. Miriam frowned.

"C'mon, Virginia, what's got you down?"

Oh. She was in Virginia's place. Well, this was odd. "Nothing, nothing," Miriam said, feeling as if she was missing something important. "You were saying?"

"Well, do you know the Dewey system?" Miriam asked, "It'll help you get around here if you want to come sometime. I mean, knowledge is important, you know? And--wait, where are you going."

Miriam stepped forward, trying to think about, say, what this scene meant. Why was it hidden. What was important about it? The library seemed normal, if a little larger than it should, and it dissolved for...the library again. In a back shelf.

She was looking at a bunch of old books. Rooting through them. Most of the covers were rotted off, and she glanced through them, but the words didn't register, weren't remembered. She frowned, going through the books one by one, wondering if there was something she should be looking for. What was she looking for?

She imagined the emotions. Shame? Hiding something? What would allow her to find what she needed. She focused on it, the feeling of shame, of guilt, of...what? Of the unknown? Did Virginia know about it? Maybe all she was looking for was the fact that Virginia stole a book, or...something. Or that she was guilty about not reading enough. Either way, she pushed through, not wanting to keep up the charade, not when she could keep on looking.

Only this time, she found herself standing in a bright park, and there was Virginia in front of her. No, not Virginia, or not her alone. She looked like Virginia, but she seemed a year or two older, and also curvier, her hair in a short bob. She was wearing a pale yellow dress, the kind Miriam imagined a flapper might wear? Miriam didn't know a lot about fashion, but she did know that despite the differences, she could tell the emotion on that face: fear.

"You need to stop, now. Please.. Stop digging. Stop looking," Virginia's voice, but older, a little more lush, told her as the other girl stepped forward. "This needs to stop. But...how are you here? Have you run into her yet? Me, I mean. Are you what I'm supposed to become? Are you some kind of dream-walker? Am I some kind of dream walker?" The girl stared at Miriam for a moment and stepped forward, "What is this? I know what I'm supposed to do, but not what happens next."

"I was worried about you, or about Virginia, or...something was wrong. Something's happened to her, or is happening to her, something dangerous," Miriam said, the words bubbling out, "Something that might make her my friend when she doesn't want to--"

"Doesn't...doesn't?!" False-Virginia said, her voice raising in anger that seemed to come as suddenly as a summer shower, "Really? That's what you think? That's what you're going to do and say? You should be ashamed of yourself. Yes. Ashamed of what you're doing!"

Miriam blinked, stunned by the sudden reversals of emotions.

"What are you--"

The other girl gestured, and the whole world seemed to turn upside down. Miriam grabbed for the grass, holding on as she dangled and tried to drag herself closer to a tree in the park. She felt the grass slipping, and down beneath her was nothing more than sky. Sky below her, and her heart racing, pumping blood as she said, "I was afraid, but that's not why I came. I wanted to know, I wanted to know what was going on. Are you...what do you know about yourself? That's all. I'm willing to…"

She almost slipped off there, so busy was she talking, "I'm willing to just talk, can you please stop this?"

"I don't know what I am. I just know that I need to go to the place where there are many people, where everyone's dreams meet as one, and I need to go with her, if we're going to...going to get out of this place. If we're going to stop lying." Each word seemed as if it was being slowly hammered in, said as if this false-Virginia, or perhaps this part-of-Virginia were afraid that she'd burst out and say the wrong thing again.

And Miriam feared the same thing. Apparently this part of Virginia didn't like the implication that she wasn't Miriam's friend. Was she nervous about it?

"Stop lying? So, I've been told you're something called a demon...spawn. Like, it's complicated. But it's not necessarily... bad or anything."

"You tell her that," false-Virginia said, with a roll of her eyes, in a chatty, breezy way, as if she didn't have Miriam hanging on for her...something above an endless sky.

"But you have some ties to beings in the Temenos, and some sort of power you get from that."

"The...Temenos?" Virginia tilted her head, frowning.

Miriam nodded, dragging herself closer to the tree, desperate now. The grass should be tearing, she should be falling into the great blue, and she had no idea what would happen when that happened. Did she die in real life? Wake up sweat-soaked and exhausted? Keep on falling until she finally woke up? She didn't know, had no way to understand that.

So her heart, and her nerves treated it as life and death. "The collective human unconscious. I've never been there, but…"

She swung a bit, trying to get closer to the tree "But that's what it's called."

"How do you know so much? What are you?" false-Virginia asked, and then corrected itself, "I mean, who?"

"I...it's complicated," Miriam said, and then her hands slipped and she was falling. She flailed, grabbing out for the tree, and near the top, or the bottom, she landed hard, hands scrabbling as she held onto the branches and began hauling herself up, chest hurting from having slammed into the tree. It was a thick, big brown tree, but thin at the top, and it swayed madly from one way to another.

"Explain, please!" not-Virginia said, her voice pleading, "I want to understand what's going on."

"I...the dreams," Miriam said, "The bad dreams meant something. I...don't know how much more I can tell you. But I'm not what Virginia is, but that doesn't mean I'm not a friend, you know?" She kept on climbing up, or down, the tree, panting a little, looking at not-Virginia standing outside down, one arm stretched out, clearly causing this to happen somehow.

"The dreams you had? Did you look at the book? I felt...I felt deep down that you needed to see it. It was very important."

"I haven't, yet," Miriam said, "I've been very busy."

"So...so," she said, frowning, and Miriam waited to see what happened. "Are you some kind of root woman? Doing magic?"

"I...maybe?" Miriam admitted, "It's something like that. I can meditate into my dreams, among other things, and from there I can follow the ties between me and other people to enter their...mind, I suppose, but only when they're sleeping." She paused and admitted, "There are other things I can do, but I've just barely started learning."

"I haven't learned anything at all. I just know that we need to go into this...Temenos place in order to claim our true power. Or...something? If we're a...demon thing,whatever that is, then we have not yet grasped this power. We need to do more."

"You," Miriam said, thinking back to what she'd heard, "You're her fears. Astral Demons represent what people think of as evil, and they can sire people, or something, that are part them. They tempt one into sins, whatever they may be. Sometimes, these are things that aren't sins, not really. Like things that a savage culture thinks is bad, but a true Christian knows is perfectly fine."

The false-Virginia was the representation of her fears and whatever else it was that drove her. It wanted her to step beyond, for good or ill, and claim the power that she could have, whatever supernatural abilities Virginia might gain. But in doing so, what would that mean? The other girl looked nervous, uncertain, as Miriam spoke about sins. Yet ultimately she gave a gesture, hand moving down towards the grass.

Gravity reversed itself, and Miriam fell in a heap, struggling to get up. "Not quite a handstand," Miriam said.

"Hah, no it wasn't," demon-Virginia said, "Now, are you going to help me? Together we might convince her to actually take a step forward. I can't convince her, she doesn't want to. I don't know, maybe you being there will help make it make sense. Or maybe it won't."

She gathered her skirts and slowly shifted toward the ground, until she was sitting, staring up at the blue sky.

Miriam looked at her for a moment and said, "You're trying to protect her?"

"I am her. Really," not-Virginia insisted, "I mean...sorta?" She let out a long breath, "I let it push too far. I got too angry, but you...you being here. You of all people."

"Am I not wanted?" Miriam asked.

"Of course you are," not-Virginia said, patting next to her. "But...it does make this all tricky, you know?"

She didn't.

What does Miriam want to do?

[] Go to meet dreaming-Virginia.
-[] Agreeing with not-Virginia and trying to convince her to take the step into the Temenos.
-[] Just to introduce herself, and tell Virginia that she's magical. Hopefully she'll remember some of this in the waking world. And then...what? Miriam didn't plan that far ahead, honestly.
[] Miriam still wants to know what it is that this not-Virginia was trying to hide. She could try to convince her to allow her to see, though failure could ignite some sort of conflict once more.
[] Perhaps inwards isn't the right direction?
-[] Can not-Virginia enter other minds? If so, perhaps she could 'visit' Miriam?
-[] Jack is probably awake and drinking, but it's always possible to try and hope, and maybe ask him.
-[] Write in.
[] Write-in.

******

Spoiler: Roll-Play

Willpower point spent: ⅚

Resolve+Composure: 3 successes

Friendship: 1 sux

Thinking Cap: 1 sux

Talking: 7 dice (Man, Power lets you be oddly persuasive in dreams)=...and failure

Hang on: 4 (Power)+2 (Tomboy)=4 sux

Talking #2: 7 dice+1 Destiny point=5 sux, plus Rote reroll of failures=6 sux.

Talking #3: 7 dice=1 sux…

Hang on #2/Get closer: Failure

Rough Landing?: 1 sux

Try to Talk: 7 dice-2 (Failures)=2 sux

Once More?: 7 dice-2+3 (WP)=1 sux

Willpower at 4/6

Stand Off?: 7 dice vs. 7 dice=3 vs 1 sux

A/N: Alright, so here's the update.

 

[The Laurent]

Page 25: Her Best Fiend, Part 2

Miriam was a girl who could usually be counted on to realize things, eventually. Like that this was foolish and she really needed to plan ahead before taking the words of some bizarre demon aspect of Virginia's. It wasn't evil, necessarily, but then maybe it was? She looked at the other girl, older than the Virginia she knew, and more confident. Oddly, or perhaps encouragingly, her skin was no lighter than before. Her hair was still straightened, and the length of the skirt on her dress was not proper, but she was still recognizable.

The other girl looked over at her, appraisingly. Thought was in her eyes as she sat down, and Miriam moved right next to her, thinking, breathing. She ran a hand through her hair, and found it was still different. It was starting to come back to what she knew was normal and proper, but it was still straighter than she was used to, and her fingers glided through it. She glanced over at not-Virginia.

"You're her, right?"

"Yes, I am," Virginia said, and that was another thing. Her voice was entirely without even a trace of accent: which was to say, she was northern-ized, as it were. "I am as much a part of her as anything else, and she doesn't like me because of that. Hates me, in fact. But she can be convinced, she needs to be convinced. She can't' stay where she is, can't refuse one of the only ways she might be able to maybe crawl on up."

"One of the only ways?" Miriam asked, looking over, stretching a little. The wind blew through the trees, which seemed to sing. It was a beautiful day, and yet the words seemed cool, calculated. But the distance itself seemed almost artificial. "Is she really that....unconfident?"

"Of course she is! Look at you." Not-Virginia paused, "Really, look at you. Pretty and athletic and pious and smart, good with animals and not that bad at cooking, considering all of the other things you do with your life." She put her hands on her knee, as if posing, "The very model of what a young Negro girl should be. And if you're struggling, if you might not have a path forward, what about her? Her skin's too dark to be in show business, even if she was that sort, and maybe she is." The demon shook her head, the motion curt, and then she smiled, "She wants more than she can grasp, being who she is. There's no sin in ambition."

"As long as it doesn't lead to sins, no there isn't," Miriam said, nodding, "I...I guess I understand, but me, pretty? Virginia--"

Miriam paused, the words she was going to say sinking in. Virginia was much prettier than I am, surely she'd find a way. But...what kind of thought was that? A reasonable one, wasn't it, but it felt wrong to say it. Rude, and unfair, and more than that…

"I know. She underestimates herself...but her estimation of you is spot on," Not-Virginia said, and there was this odd accent that Miriam guessed was fake-British, "You really are amazing, you know that." She shifted closer to Miriam and said, "Understand that, if you're going to do anything. She's afraid of you, more afraid than she can say, because she knows that you're…"

Not-Virginia shrugged. "Closer to perfect than she is."

Miriam goggled, touching her arm for a moment, startled by the very idea. The wind went through the trees, the sky was blue, and someone had...really? "Does she view me like that? She shouldn't. It's only...it's only going to lead to disappointment." A thousand thorns, a thousand nails driven into her flesh. She hated when people expected nothing of her. She'd hated the way some of the teachers had looked at her with that startled puppy look when she got an answer right, she'd hated that...but the opposite? She didn't want to be an idol, because...it wasn't as if Virginia treated her like that.

She was playful, she was funny, she as irrelevant and constantly urging Miriam to try to dress up a little more. But did she look at her that way deep down?

"Don't talk like that." A hand rested on her shoulder, the nails white and long, impractical, soft looking. "People look up to you, and you like that, don't you? You always seemed to enjoy helping other people."

"I do," Miriam said, "It's just that…"

She tried to put it into words. Now that she had magic, now that she'd gone through a crisis and her ambitions, her dreams had suddenly grown larger, she felt like she'd inherited her mother's clothes. She'd felt perfectly fitted for the ambitions and goals of her life before: grow up, go to college probably, get married maybe or something (she hadn't thought much about that), try to advance the Race however she could, try to advance herself however she could, and remain in faith with the Lord until He called her home.

It wasn't a vision of her life that lacked scope, but now she was more than that, now she would do far more than that if she could only grasp it. Did she deserve it? She didn't know what one could even do to deserve it, really. "There's a lot more to do. A lot of pressure, and Sara…"

"Sara was...somehow cursed or something?"

"Yes. Her mind warped and twisted. She was going to befriend me to attack me, but in doing so...the person hurt her. They hurt her really badly," Miriam said, trying not to tell too much. "And I could do nothing. I'm not strong, not as a...root woman, I suppose you'd say. I couldn't help her, and it might be years before I could have. She was just my friend because someone wanted something from me, and it got my thinking, thinking that other people want things from me. You want to go to the Temenos, don't you?"

Not-Virginia's eyes were wide, and she reached out and grabbed Miriam's shoulder, "W-we don't have to talk about that now. If we just go to her, you can introduce yourself." There was an odd note of desperation in her voice, and Miriam nodded.

"So, do you want to go?" Miriam asked. "Can you lead me to her?"

******

It was a department store like none that existed. The place seemed filled with light, and there was a quiet feeling to it that only heightened just how empty it was. Of people, but not things. Dresses hung on racks, perfume bottles were strewn around on the floor, the whole place seeming filled with objects, with things. Some of the perfume bottles were open, and when you combined the smell of all of them, it was honestly sickeningly sweet.

She followed Not-Virginia through this chapel to consumption. This gallery of greed. A place to try what she could not afford in life, Miriam realized, trying to be less judgmental. Their footsteps echoed on the tiles, and their shadows bounced this way and that, the light shifting constantly, bright as it was.

They found her in front of a mirror, barely dressed, in her underwear and a bra, holding a dark blue dress in front of her. The look on her face was despairing, but it was a familiar despair: the kind of look she gave as she was working through some problem. "No, that's not quite...what?"

She turned around. Not-Virginia was walking first, and for a moment, that's all Virginia saw. "What are you doing here? The answer is no! It's always no, and in just a few years, you'll be gone!"

"Is that what you think? You can't believe everything you read in a book," Not-Virginia said, as Virginia saw her.

"What? You think bringing some dream version of my friend will convince me of anything?" Virginia asked, though she tensed anyways.

"Virginia," Miriam said, "I'm not a dream version. I...came to visit."

"What?!" Virginia half-leapt out of her skin, pulling the dress in front of her, looking around at the whole store as if trying to figure out what incriminating things she could hide, and fast. It would almost be amusing, but the desperation in her gaze, the animal panic, made Miriam sad. As if she'd really be that judgmental of a little indulgence in a dream?

"I...have the ability to enter dreams now," Miriam said, "Ever since I had a dream."

"The dream?" Virginia asked, "The ones you were having?"

"Yes. It's...there are other abilities associated with it, but it turns out that there is magic in this world," Miriam said, "I'm...very new to this, but I wanted to check on something with you. I was able to see that there was something different about you--"

"Different? About me? Not really," Virginia said, quickly, "I'm perfectly normal. I mean, there's her, but she's just an ab...aber…"

"Aberration?" Miriam supplied.

"Yes. Yes she is. Now, thanks for checking up on me but I'm fine you can leave now."

"Ha. Even now? It amuses me," Not-Virginia said. "It's just a department store, that's nothing to hide. Your best friend came to visit you in your dreams and told you she had magical powers and in fact knew more about me than I knew, and you're brushing her off?"

"No! Of course not," Virginia said, "It's just...I mean, it is my mind, right? While this would be a great place to help you develop a fashion sense and all, since it's all a dream and we can try on anything, that's for some other time."

"Develop a fashion sense," Not-Virginia said, shaking her head, "Why don't you ask her what she can do? I mean, you're a root woman, right? Can you mix potions?"

"My powers are more...mental. It's why I noticed something in the first place. You seemed to, when I tried to...read it, have a sort of split nature."

Virginia looked ill, "What else can you do?"

"Well, there's a lot," Miriam said, "I'm still just learning, and I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to tell you. Just...I have a few abilities and I'm working on others. Are you okay, Virginia?"

She didn't look okay. "I'm fine." She really didn't.

"Please, you can talk to me," Miriam said, "I just wanted to see. I was worried. And I shouldn't have been." She stepped forward, and drew Virginia into a warm hug. Virginia had been a cuddlebug when she was younger, and after a moment she hugged back. She was soft.

"Worried about what?"

"I'm, not sure how much I can tell you, but I suppose I could tell you more than I've told…" she began, and then glanced over at Not-Virginia.

"Oh, ignore me. You all do," Not-Virginia said with theatrical amusement. She tilted her head and her whole body, a girlish pout on her face.

"Well, you can listen in too, but it's not that much you didn't know, though there's one more detail I guess I could tell you, if you promised not to let it get out…"

******

"Of course you have a special destiny," Not-Virginia said, at the end of the explanation, "Do you know what it is?"

"No, I don't," Miriam said.

"Is there any way I can help?" Virginia asked.

"I'm not sure yet. There's a lot I'm not sure of," Miriam admitted. She stretched a little, "But...we'll figure this out, right?"

"Do you think…" Virginia began, and then looked away.

"What?"

"Do you think, if I embraced the powers or whatever she's offering, that I might be able to help you more? Do you know what they are?"

"You shouldn't think about it that way," Miriam said, "I'm not the…"

"I do. Can you answer my question?" Virginia said.

Miriam glanced over to see, as expected, a look of triumph upon Not-Virginia's face.

"Maybe. Maybe it would. I don't know the details, but there are beings called Demons in the collective unconscious. They are representations of what people see as sins or evil, and they sometimes grant their power or pass on some of it to a mortal. Sometimes they sire them, or...something, and then those people have the possibility to use that power," Miriam said, trying to give roughly what she understood for a second time.

"It's not wrong?" Virginia asked.

"I...don't know. I have magic, isn't that against the bible? But now that I have it, I feel like it can't be anything other than right. Just, know that I'm your friend."

"I know," Virginia said, her voice soft, "I know."

******

Miriam woke at midnight, and kicked and turned for another hour before she could, at last, give up trying to sleep. And so she read.

A healthy body, so the rotes promised, and that's what they promised. The first chapter talked of diet, of the way a healthy diet was the key to many religious practices. One fasted to show one's devotion to God, even if in these modern days, it was a matter of showing one's devotion to thinness. Similarly, one's understanding of the principles of health and exercise could be encapsulated in a single gesture, a clearing of the arm from one side of the body to the other, representing the flow…

It got hard to understand at that point, and into the next chapter, which talked about ancient practices and rituals from India, and only towards the middle finally returned to trying to explain this latest Rote.

She didn't understand it, and eventually she put it away and drifted off into sleep.

The next morning, she had even more training with her Uncle.

And she had some choices, some ways to approach things.

Tell Uncle about what she did?

[] No.
[] Yes.

Mind Training! What does she want to focus on? (Choose 2)

[] Influencing other minds.
[] Dreams, and the mental world.
[] Protecting the mind, and shaping it.
[] The Ruling Arcana.
[] The Veiling Arcana.
[] Write-in.

******

Spoiler: Rotes

If she had Life, she just got a Purge Toxin Rote out of it, and a second Rote that she's struggling with, slightly. She doesn't, but keep that in mind.

Spoiler: Roll-Play

I could: 4 (Power)+5 (Best Friend)=2 sux
Could: 4 (Power+5 (Best Friend)=4 sux
Half: 3 (Not-Virginia's Power)+5 (Best Friends)+1 (Bonus)=3 sux

Willpower +1

Real Virginia: 4 (Power)+5 (Best friend)-2 (Home Invasion)+3 (Willpower in, willpower out)=2 sux

Real Virginia, Try two: 4+5-1=3 sux

Please Talk to me: 4 sux

Sleep Deprived Reading: 0 sux

******

A/N: And there we go. It ends for now...but only for now.

 

[The Laurent]

March 9th, 1924

Jack is showing off a new suit, and arguing points with his brother.

Miriam is annoyed that her stockings have a tear already, right when she was about to go out, after having gotten back from church.

Eliza disapproves of Jack. A lot. Also, that necklace isn't a usual thing.

Also, by @Andelevion.