She had nothing to compare it to, but she guessed that dying and suddenly finding yourself somewhere…other would be confusing as all hell. Even for a Magus.
Amanda reached out with her Astral Magic and gently guided the Shade to press through the Aetheric barrier, and back into the Material World. As she watched, Eudoxia’s translucent figure shimmered into view before her.
Eudoxia looked at Amanda, and then around the room, before seeing the remains of her body on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said.
Eudoxia looked back at her. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”
Amanda nodded. “You are. Yasmin killed you.” Eudoxia seemed to sag before her, as if all her energy had suddenly left her. “But you can help me. You can help me stop her from killing more people.”
Eudoxia looked up, her pale eyes peering at her from the Realm of the Dead. “How?”
“She’s hunting Shaitan, and the only person who knows where Shaitan is…”
“Is my mentor,” Eudoxia finished.
Amanda nodded.
“Can you read my mind in this state?” Eudoxia asked.
“Yes,” Amanda said, and mixed in some Psi Magic with her Astral Magic and reached into Eudoxia’s Aetheric mind. She found what she needed right away as if Eudoxia were presenting it to her. Amanda grasped it and immediately, intimate and detailed knowledge of where Nefertiti lived bloomed in her mind.
Amanda smiled at Eudoxia. “I hope I’m not too late,” Amanda said.
“Me, too,” Eudoxia agreed as she faded away, passing back into Sheol and whatever awaited her there.
Amanda didn’t waste any time and worked her Magic, focusing on one of the central areas of Nefertiti’s lair which, unsurprisingly, was in the depths of the Egyptian desert.
Air rushed, light flashed, and Amanda Ported partway around the world, appearing in an underground chamber that had been carved into the sandstone beneath the desert.
The room was large and rectangular with columns around the edge that were all intricately carved with detailed Egyptian iconography. Rugs covered the floor while pots and statues had been carefully placed around the room. Amanda quickly noticed that a couple of the rugs had been pulled out of place, and beside one of the doors, a large urn had been smashed to bits. Amanda moved towards that door, following some scorch marks as she heard the sounds of movement and maybe a fight. Light flashed and Essentia surged as Amanda drew level with the door in time to see Yasmin on the other side, locked in battle with Nefertiti, who was doing an excellent job of holding her own.
Yasmin glanced back, apparently sensing her presence and sneered at her. “Get her,” she said, and a figure stepped into view between them.
The woman was perhaps in her fifties, wearing a long, ragged robe complete with a deep hood that was tied at the waist with a length of old rope. Amanda recognised Yasmin’s apprentice, Sybil, who was a Magus with a gift for Temporal Magic and seeing into the future.
The Seer glared at Amanda from beneath her hood for a moment, before she screeched and stepped towards her, Magic flaring.
As the Nomad’s attacks flew at her. Amanda unleashed Magic of her own, smashing Sybil sideways, away from the door. In the lull, Amanda looked for Yasmin, but she’d moved and was no longer in view. Having recovered, Sybil’s Magic hit Amanda hard, knocking her back.
“Shite,” Amanda cursed as lightning lanced from Sybil’s fingers, flying across the room and hitting her Aegis. Her shield held, but it knocked her back. Amanda turned her focus back to Sybil and for the moment, put Yasmin out of her mind. Nefertiti would need to deal with her for the time being.
With her Aegis shedding the damage, Amanda set all of her separate minds to attacking Sybil, sending a barrage of destructive energies and Essentia at the Nomad. Sybil, as far as Amanda knew, had shown off traits that seemed to reveal that she was perhaps a Sage or Master Magus. Powerful, and potentially dangerous.
Lightning streaked between them. Fireballs exploded, rocking the underground complex. Kinetic Rams pounded at the Nomad while Essentia Strikes, pulling huge amounts of Magical energy from the world around her, smashed into Sybil’s Aegis.
The Nomad fell back, staggering under the onslaught. Her Aegis glowed and hissed as it struggled to fend off Amanda’s attacks until it finally failed and disintegrated. But Amanda didn’t stop. Instead, she threw even more lightning and fire at the Seer.
Something about all this, about Yasmin’s single-minded quest, told her that she couldn’t hold back. This was important. What Yasmin was doing had the feel of some kind of endgame to it.
There was no going easy on her or her coven. Not this time. Overwhelming force was the only way to see this through. She had to get in there and throw everything she had at Yasmin and her allies. Whatever it was that Yasmin was doing, she had to be stopped.
With her Magic obscuring her view, she relied on her Aetheric Sight to know if Sybil was still a threat, and when her lifeforce suddenly faded, Amanda pulled her Magic back to reveal that little was left of the Nomad Seer.
Amanda didn’t smile, and she didn’t crack a joke. Instead, she just registered that the Seer was gone, and dashed through the side door into the room beyond, towards the feeling of powerful Magic as she gathered her Essentia to her once more.
Yasmin stood in front of an immobile Nefertiti, holding the Lazarus Scroll in one hand, its green mist enveloping the Egyptian Magus as Yasmin’s own Magic reached into Nefertiti’s mind.
Amanda unleashed hell, sending a wave of devastating Magical fury at Yasmin designed for shock and awe, and knocked her sprawling to the floor. The Green mist faded as Essentia flared once more, and Yasmin was gone.
Nefertiti dropped to the floor, gasping for breath and coughing as she sucked in life-giving air. Amanda ran over to her and dropped to her knees beside her.
“Are you okay?”
Nefertiti coughed once more and brought her breathing under control before looking up. She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think so,” she gasped. “Thank you for coming. I… I thought I could take her. I thought I could defend myself, but that Scroll, its power is… incredible.”
“Yes, it is, and I know what that feels like.”
“She’s after Shaitan, isn’t she?”
“That’s right. Look, time is limited. I’m guessing she knows where he is now. I need to get there fast. I need to know what she’s doing before she kills him.”
“Of course,” she said, and Amanda felt a pulse of Essentia press into her mind. Nefertiti wanted to Link with her. Amanda opened the Link and felt Nefertiti pass the knowledge over to her.
“Thank you,” Amanda said, now knowing exactly where Shaitan was. “I hope I’m not too late.”
Amanda’s Magic flared, and she left Egypt behind.
- Somewhere in the Middle East
As Kennedy moved up towards the sarcophagus, Lillia felt an urge to get closer as well. The large stone edifice scared her, terrified her even, and yet, she felt drawn to it. There was something about it that pulled her to it.
She stared at it in fascination as she drew closer, marvelling at the intricate carvings and the curious inscriptions in an unknown language.
The words seemed to move, to rearrange themselves and almost make sense to her as she found herself reaching the bottom step.
Kennedy was already up there, running his fingers reverently over the ancient stone, his face the picture of wonder.
“Come to Lyka…” something whispered in her mind. There was no resisting this.
Lillia placed her foot upon the first step. She moved, shifting her weight, and then stepped up another and another until she reached the top and saw the beautiful carvings on the lid for herself. They were wondrous to behold, but also lacking something. They weren’t... bright enough, or clear enough. They needed something, something dark, something that would contrast against the tan sandstone lid.
As she watched, something started to splash over the stone and seep into the
crevices of the carvings. The dark liquid was the perfect addition to the sandstone and showed off the carvings perfectly. She smiled as she looked at it, knowing how beautiful it now was.
“That’s so much better now,” she said, as a fog that had covered her mind, but that she'd not noticed until now, started to lift. “Don’t you think, Kennedy?” she asked.
What was that noise, she thought? Why were people screaming? She couldn’t understand it. Her hand was heavy, which was another curious feeling. She looked at it to see that she was holding her knife and it was slick with blood.
“Did I…?” she said, confused until she looked down at Kennedy where he lay on the top of the sarcophagus, his blood leaking over the carvings on the lid.
Realisation hit her hard, and she stumbled from the coffin as Sandy and Bryn ran to Kennedy’s aid. Lillia stumbled to the floor and dropped the knife.
Had she killed him? How did she do that? She had no memory of it.
A dull thud sounded from the tomb, and her teammates backed away in surprise and fear.
Was there something alive in there?
Whispers of the Dead
Saudi Arabia
The air crackled, light flashed, and Amanda found herself standing in a small room deep within the borders of Saudi Arabia. The room was sparsely furnished, with dust and dirt and debris as its only decoration. A battered sofa hugged one wall, covered with a tattered throw which had seen better days. A table sat nearby with an old boxy radio on it and several layers of dust illuminated by a single window which was cut into the sandstone wall. A rug covered the centre of the floor which looked like it might have once have been brightly-coloured, but was now nothing more than a worn and dirty grey.
A series of rapid-fire thuds from upstairs drew Amanda’s attention away from the depressing room, and at almost the same instant, there was the sound of someone running down the stairs in the next room. A door burst open, and a man with swarthy skin dressed in the typical loose linen clothing of the area crashed through with a terrified look on his face. He caught sight of Amanda and fell over backwards with a shocked yelp. She could tell right away he wasn’t a Magus as she looked at him with her Aetheric Sight.
His eyes wide with terror, he looked her up and down and a disapproving sneer twisted his face. “Decadent Westerners,” he muttered.
She shrugged. Her tight, red leather trousers, strappy heels, and white camisole top did give her away, and were probably a little offensive to his sensibilities, but she didn’t give a shite. Still, that was no excuse to be rude.
She smiled at him. “Hi,” she said. “Trouble upstairs?” She pointed up.
The man nodded dumbly, his head bobbing up and down like crazy.
“Okay, thanks. Go, go,” she said, waving him off as she dashed through the door and up the stairs, taking two at a time. She reached the upper floor and saw another figure also in Middle Eastern dress, laid out on the floor with blood pooling around him. She recognised him immediately, as she’d seen him a few times throughout the last millennium, but most notably in Los Angeles when she’d teamed up with Celest and also met Nefertiti.
It was Shaitan, and he was dead.
Movement from the corner of her eye drew her attention left, just in time to see Yasmin, holding what looked like an ancient book under her arm. Reacting on instinct, her Essentia reached out to conjure an Aegis from the ether, only for a wave of Essentia to burst from Yasmin, disrupting her effect. Amanda’s powerful Magic struggled for a moment before it forced its way through, but it was too late. Yasmin Ported away with a wink before the Aegis could appear.
“Damn it,” Amanda cursed. She walked over to the corpse, crouching down beside him. “Well, shite. Awful sorry, matey.”
She looked up at where Yasmin had been standing and noted the large empty space on the desk and remembered the book Yasmin had been carrying under her arm. She frowned. What had Yasmin taken this time?
Looking down at the body, she raised an eyebrow. “Only one way to find out,” she muttered. “I’ll come to you this time.”
Amanda pulled on the local Essentia and worked her Astral Magic once more. Except, this time, she tore open a hole in the fabric of reality and shifted herself over into the Realm of the Dead.
She’d visited Sheol many times over the years and knew its look well enough. Even so, every time she visited it gave her a horrible, sinking feeling and a keen sense of her own mortality. There were very few colours in Sheol. Instead, everything seemed grey and gloomy. When there were colours, they were striking in their vibrancy against this realm’s charcoal miasma.
She stood in the ruins of a half-built building that wasn’t too dissimilar to the real-world version she’d just left behind, but different enough that she knew she wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Shaitan’s shade, which looked quite solid here, in what was now his native realm, stood by a shadow of his desk, looking down at it. He seemed to sense Amanda’s arrival and turned to look at her.
“And so-begins my next adventure,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I tried to get here in time, but she beat me to it.”
“Yasmin is a slippery foe,” he muttered.
Amanda walked over to him, noticing how the impression of his body was fading from this world. She stepped up to his desk and looked down at it, seeing that his fingers were resting where the book must have been in the Material Realm.
“She took something.”
“My life’s work,” he said. “The Libre Nox Noctis.”
“The Book of the Night,” Amanda said. She’d heard of it. Most Magi who knew anything of the history of the Nomads had.
“You know it?”
“I’ve not read it, but I’ve heard of it. You wrote it, right?
He nodded. “I did.”
“You wrote of your visit to the Abyss in it, and your encounter with the Archons, correct?”
“Indeed, I did.”
“So, why would Yasmin want it? She knows all about the Archons, she’s been dealing with them for hundreds of years.”
Shaitan nodded. He was a wild-looking man, both in life and now in death. He had long frizzy hair and a big bushy beard. His dark eyes were intense as they stared out from beneath his thick eyebrows. He turned to look at her. “You’re right, of course, but there’s something she doesn’t know, something that is contained in that book, something which I think you can already do.”
Amanda glanced down at herself, and then around the room before looking back to him, realisation filling her mind. “She’s going to cross into the Abyss.”
“My book details how to do it. It had gone missing, but I got it back recently with the intention of keeping it safe. I’d wanted to destroy it, but… Alas, I could not. I was weak. To destroy my magnum opus, my life’s work, it was more than I could bear.”
“Why would she want to cross into the Abyss?”
“To find the Archons in their prison where the Demiurge confined them, of course.”
“I’m sorry, the who?” Amanda asked.
“The Demiurge,” Shaitan answered, looking up at her again.
“Who is the Demiurge?”
“An ancient, powerful being. He lived on Earth during the earliest days of humanity, and when the Archons went too far in their bid for power, he banished them to their prison, Tartarus, in the Aetheric Realm, and stopped the Magi from crossing there themselves. The Archons have been in the Abyss, as we now call it, ever since. Did you know that the Abyss was once known as Arcadia?”
Amanda sighed. “I did, yes.”
“It’s where you lot get your name from, isn’t it?”
“The Arcadians? Yes, it is. But, hey, Yasmin might be strong, and the Lazarus Scroll is certainly powerful, but she wouldn’t last five seconds against the Archons. She’d never be able to enact the ritual on the Scroll to steal their power. They’re too strong, it’s impossible.”
“Is it?” Shaitan asked.
“I
would say so, yes.”
“There used to be eight Archons, you know. But one of them was killed by a Magus many millennia ago. Her name was Lilith, or, at least, that’s what we call her now,” he said as Amanda noticed the area around Shaitan getting brighter.
“I’ve heard that rumour before, but it’s just a story,” Amanda protested. “How do we know it’s true?”
“I’ve met her, Lilith. It’s quite true,” he said, his voice starting to sound distant as if he were walking away from her down a tunnel.
“Okay, let’s say I believe you, how did she do it? If she were just a Magus, how did she kill an Archon given how strong they are?”
The white glow had been growing and getting brighter, and his voice more distant and echoing. He answered her, saying something, but she couldn’t make it out as the light grew and flashed.
For a moment, she felt relaxed, at peace, and strangely, at home.
The flash faded to nothing, and she found herself standing in the shadows of the ruined room. Alone.
Damn it, she thought scowling at the empty space where he’d been but a moment before. She’d heard of Lilith before and of the rumour that she’d killed an Archon. That’s all it had been to her so far: a story, an allegory, perhaps. Nothing more. But, was it true? She needed to know more, and she needed to know how Lilith might have killed an Archon. They were supposedly beings of terrible power, like ancient dark gods who were not to be trifled with. The stories had them ruling over humanity for hundreds of years with an iron fist. The Magi were around then, of course, fighting the Archons and their Scion offspring. But the Archons were cunning and seduced some of the Magi, creating the first Nomads.
The fight between the first Arcadians and the early Nomads was the stuff of legend. The main beats of the story were somewhat known, but less well known was what had ended that war.
At some point, the Archons were either banished or retreated into the Aetheric Realm and it was sealed to keep the Magi out. But how that had happened was a point of debate amongst many, and the truth was hard to find. Now, Shaitan had told her that a creature called the Demiurge was responsible.
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