by Lee Isserow
As the smoke cleared, he walked up a hill to get a better lay of the land, in case there were any indications where she might be. The village was still, the only scant movement the wrecks of the buildings as they collapsed in on themselves. But there was one sign of life, above the forest beyond the village itself. A great pillar of smoke that bellowed up into the heavens from somewhere within the woodland.
He knew exactly where it was coming from, and turned on his heel to trek through the overgrowth. She had returned to the site of her violation, the Villa de Vecchi, where just months previous a djinn had got up in her head and turned her into its weapon.
After that experience, she had been put on leave for a month to recover. . . but it was now more than clear that she had in no way recovered from the horror of being used in that fashion.
Faith walked through the woodland. It was still as quiet as it had been when he was last there. . . That time, it was because the creatures that resided there had been flayed by the djinn. He realised that there was a good reason for the lack of life to this day―when The Circle dialled back the death and injuries that had occurred there, they had only dealt with the human casualties, not the animals. Even if they had, he was fairly certain any critters that resided in and amongst the trees would have fled by now, as he came to a clearing just beyond the treeline, and found the Villa de Vecchi, long ago called 'the Red House', entirely ablaze.
There was something about the fire that didn't sit right. The plumes of smoke weren't coming from a fire within the building―it only encircled it, the facade was alight, but the old mansion itself was completely intact.
That, he decided, was because she was inside. Raven had returned to the last place that she was truly herself. Before she had her life turned on its head by the foul creature's will.
He threw a sigil out and began to quash the fire, and walked towards the entrance, an oversized wooden door that was burned black from the flames that had been licking at it. As he pushed it open, the damn thing screamed as it swung on its aching hinges, releasing a haunting moan that felt like it echoed not just through the mansion itself, but for miles around.
The doorway led through to a grand lobby, with hallways going off in three directions and a magnificent staircase up to the next level of the house. He had no need to guess which direction Raven might be. She would have gone left, down the corridor that led to the grand ballroom. That had become the djinn's throne room, where he sat atop a gnarled chair constructed of flesh and bone, bound together with organs and hair that was matted thick with blood. The image of the damn thing was carved into his mind―and he could only assume that it was a thousand times worse for Raven.
Faith threw the doors open, the hinges squealed in the same manner as the front door, as if the entire building was in agony. They swung in an arc and slammed into the walls behind them with an explosive shunt that echoed around the room. Ahead of him, sat on the marble floor, amidst the dereliction and archaic resplendence, was Raven Shaffec-Argo.
Her gaze shot up to meet his, eyes thick with tears that she dared not let fall. Her skin was blistered and burned, ash glued to her face by a thick layer of sweat. She glowered at him, and snarled, bearing her teeth. “Don't you dare come any closer.”
“Raven,” he said, turning his hands out to show her his palms, to demonstrate that he had no sigil waiting to be sealed.
“I said don't bloody move!”
“I need to know why you're here. . . Have you heard the whispers?”
“Whispers?! You think this is about bloody whispers! You don't know the first damn thing―”
“It's the djinn. . .”
She growled at the sound of the creature's name.
“I just had to ask about the whispers, to be sure. . . but you came here because of it. . . Because of what it did to you―”
“You don't know what you're talking about―”
“I do. . . You're not the only one who's been mesmerised. . .”
“Don't you tell me you―”
“I know exactly what it's like. . . to be powerless, to be watching through your eyes as you do things. . . awful things. . . Your thoughts frozen in time, but still present, your consciousness just sitting there on the brink of oblivion, as your body is used against your will, as innocent lives are ended. . . But you didn't kill anyone, all you did was punch me through some walls, and frankly, I deserve it.”
She scoffed, and shook her head. “You're full of shit.”
“I was at Jonestown. . .”
Her body language changed, only slightly, but enough to tell Faith that she was listening to his words, and taking in what he was telling her.
“It was just a simple investigation. . . We weren't even sure that there was anything magickal about it, cults spring up all the time, doesn't mean anything mystical is to blame. . . But as soon as I set foot in the commune, there was something in the air. . . an electricity, and I didn't notice it at first, it was a slow burn, took more than an hour to realise that I didn't want to leave. . . and then I met him, and he knew straight away what I was. . . He could feel the magick in my blood. . . and he knew my presence meant that the Circle wouldn't be far behind. . .”
Raven's lip started to quiver, the tears in her eyes welled all the more, as Faith told his story.
“So he put me to work, to wipe out all traces of what he had been doing there. . . and a major part of that was the nine hundred and nine people he had brought together. . . over two hundred of them children. . . All those lives. brought to an end by my casting―”
“I had no idea. . .”
“I was taken off duty for a full year, put through therapy, through eval after eval to make sure I hadn't gone completely damn insane. . . And even after I was back, I wasn't right in the head. . . Had to be relieved for a further year before I straightened out.”
“So you want to put me in the nut house?” she snarled.
“No.” Faith said, as he took a slow step towards her. “That won't do a damn bit of good―sure as hell wasn't any use to me. . . It takes time, to get right again. . . Time is the only damn cure. . .”
He took another step towards her, hands out to his side, palms still open. “I know how much anger you must have inside. . . How much pain you must have been bottling up. . . But you need to know that you're not in this alone, that I've been there, that others have been there. . .”
He continued to walk towards Raven, until he was right in front of her, and dropped down to his knees. “We're all here for you, you're not alone any more. . . You can let go of all that anger, and we can get you through this, together.”
She leaned forward and draped her arms around him, finally allowing the tears to shed. He held her tight, and tried with all his might to send reassuring vibes through on his aura as he glyphed her to heal her burns.
“Are you ready to come home?” he asked.
She pulled away ever so slightly to catch his eye, and nodded.
“I'm sorry,” she snivelled.
“You don't have to apologise.”
“But. . . Hildebrand. . . I completely ripped him apart. . .”
“Barely a flesh wound, far as the Circle is concerned. We'll dial that back, like we'll dial everything else back. None of that matters, not any more. . . All that matters is that you're okay.”
“I'm not.” She sniffed, and wiped her tears against his shoulder. “But I will be.”
28
Whatever it took
LONDON, ENGLAND
Mark Shapiro woke from his slumber, and found himself in a cold sweat. It was the middle of the night, still dark out, and yet unlike every night that had come before it over the last month, he had not dreamed.
He closed his eyes tight, breathed deep, tried with all his might to quell the thoughts that were rocketing through his skull, begging with every fibre of his being to return to sleep. To be returned to the dreams that he had relished so very much.
But sleep did not come for Mark
Shapiro. He lay there for hours, until the sun rose. And despite being exhausted, was not able to be reunited with the dreams that eluded him. A feeling came over him, not just a thought, it manifested as a physical reaction, a response to the emotion that was brewing under his skin.
A loss. As if someone he loved had been taken from him. More than that, it was as if a part of him had been ripped out against his will.
He likened it to a memory from early childhood, of having his favourite toy taken from him by his older brother. He could recall the tears, first at the horror of such a violation, something of his being stolen away. Then the fear, as he truly believed it would never be returned. It was not a memory that he should have been able to recall, for it was an experience from when he was an infant, barely one or two years old. And yet, he could remember it as if it were yesterday.
That was not all he realised he could remember. He could picture his birth, crystal clear, as if it was just another day of his life. He could feel the forceps that clutched hold of his body, remember the massive bulk of the doctors and nurses that towered over him, feel the loving embrace of his mother, then his father. He could remember it all. Even though it should not have been possible.
But those were not fond memories, they were just memories. There was no emotion attached to them. The only emotion he felt was for the desire to return to slumber, to return to the dreams, with their infinite possibilities and lessons of impossible skills.
In that moment, Mark Shapiro realised that he would do anything, whatever it took, to get that feeling back.
And Mark Shapiro wasn't the only one in the Natural World to feel that way. Across the globe, men and women, girls and boys, were feeling just as he was. And soon, they realised they knew exactly what needed to be done to feel that way again.
29
A myriad smiles
In the abyss of a realm that lay beyond the realms of man, a place so far removed from that reality, that to merely imagine it would drive even the strongest minds to madness, the being that disguised itself behind the name of The Knowledge had a myriad smiles on its myriad mouths.
The others of its kind, its kin, had no notion of the scheme it had embarked upon. They were so limited in their scope that he did not see the point in wasting the breath explaining it to them. They were fools, two thirds of them simple, inbred and malformed in body and mind. They were creatures of smaller stature for the most part, who thought themselves smart by burrowing into his flesh as he slept, clambering through his organs for the doorway he commanded as Opener of the Way, a portal deep in his guts that was an entry point to the Natural World of man. A portal that, once crossed, turned them into even feebler-minded simpletons than they were at full strength.
His plan was so much grander in scope, a mass manipulation on a scale unlike that ever seen by his kind. A manipulation that he could not accomplish by himself―and the Circle had acted exactly as he wished. . .
They had reshaped the world to undo what had been done thus far. . . and by doing so, with the 'grandest' of their pathetic rituals, that required more magick than any one of them had alone, they had aided him more than they could possibly know. . . and had spread his whispers far and wide.
30
Surplus to requirement
EPICENTRE, THE CIRCLE
Faith and Raven returned through a door, and found themselves greeted by a cold and silent response. All eyes from those present were fixed on the woman that had attempted to burn their workplace to a cinder.
Raven couldn't bare to meet their accusing stares, her eyes skirting the floor as she felt their anger and betrayal laid on thick. A hand rested on her lower back, and she turned to Faith, who gave her a kind smile, before he turned his gaze to the room.
“Don't you dare look at her like that!” he barked. “What happened to her could have happened to any one of you. And when one of us falters, the rest come to their aid―we're not mundane, we don't hold pointless grudges. Raven made an error in judgement, and nothing more. She's going back on leave, and will return when she deems herself ready to do so. There will be no punishment, and no retribution acted out upon her―do you hear me?”
He took the silence that hung on the room as a silent agreement from all those present.
“Boss,” Tali chimed up.
“You say a damn word I don't like and you're―”
“I'm picking up reports of mass suicides across the world.”
“What?”
“Literally across the world. . . Suicides, and blood letting and―”
“Alright, I hear you. . . Tac teams, get your gear. I want boots on the ground in twenty.”
Faith stormed to his office to take a look at the intel, leaving Raven standing by the door, watching as her colleagues prepared for an operation on a global scale. There had been times like these in the past, where she had felt surplus to requirement. But she had never been able to accept being cut out of a mission before. She would always react with vitriol and anger, raise her voice and cause a fuss.
Now, for the first time in her life, she was willing to accept that she was not of right mind to participate in an operation.
She turned to the door and traced out a sigil as she reached for the handle. The right thing to do, for the Circle, and for the world, was for her to get the hell out of the way and let them do what they did best.
31
A powerful force
Light tore across the beach in Krabi, Thailand, as the tactical team arrived on the golden sands. In the blink of an eye, the glow from their teleportation had shed, and Shana took the lead as they headed inland.
Despite the matter at hand, and the tragic loss of life that they were expected to come across, she couldn't help but take in he magnificence of the locale. Shana knew this place, it had been an early homosapian settlement close to thirty thousand years previous. A home for those who did not have the gift of magick in their blood, with many caves, shelter in which they could hide from the elements and predators.
If these suicides were related to the whispers in the dreams that had ignited the dormant magick that lay within the mundanes, then it made sense that it would start in this place. Those that resided there, the descendants of those early mundanes, would have a genetic memory of seeing magickians ascend to the status of gods, whilst they were stuck fending for their lives, eventually coming out of the caves to toil the land. . . That kind of resentment was a powerful force when left to gestate for so many millennia―the kind of power that could activate what little magick flowed through their veins, and ignite it to life.
The team hiked through thick, lush forests for close to a mile until they came to the site of the incident, and as they stepped out of the woodland, they discovered it to be truly horrific, and worse than anything they could have ever imagined when the term 'mass suicide' was put to use.
In the shadow of a grand, expansive beach resort, close to a hundred bodies lay on the sand. Each of them had blades of one description or another in their hands. Knives from the resort's kitchen, intended for chopping and carving, had been taken to wrists and throats. When those were all taken, it appeared that some of the guests and employees had ransacked the cutlery, opting for steak knives. Others had not been so industrious, and had decided to go with anything vaguely sharp. Shana walked past one man who appeared to have used a melon baller to gouge perfectly spherical chunks of flesh from the meat of his arms and legs and chest.
She dropped to her knees and inspected the balls of wet musculature, then glanced around. One or two of the others near that man had used cookie cutters, another had smashed a glass and used the shards to carve open her chest. This wasn't just a suicide, it was organised in some fashion, with an intent behind it all.
“Do you see this?” she asked Tali.
She felt a nod in her periphery. “Seeing the same from the other teams.”
There is a method to this madness. . . so much so, that to call it madness would be incorrect. . .”
“It's a ritual,” Faith growled in her head, as he watched through not only her eyes, but the eyes of all the team leaders at all the other sites.
“Sigils carved on all the bodies,” said the team leader in Budapest.
“The blood shed in specific directions,” from the leader in Copenhagen.
“This is looking like a sigil in and of itself from above.” Observed the one in Tijuana.
“Not just a ritual,” Tali added, as she took one last look at all the points of view from the operatives.
*
Tali's eyes regained their emerald hue as she pulled out of the points of view of the operatives, and cast what she had seen on to a holographic globe in front of her.
When all the blood and body parts had been accounted for, she spun it around, and her jaw dropped. She saw something that shouldn't have been possible, and she flattened out the globe to take a proper look at all the blood lettings at once.
“It's a sigil that's carved across the planet. . . this thing is making it's own circle. . . Turning the act of suicide into a massive hypersigil.”
“To do what?” Faith grunted in her ear.
Tali heard Shana gasp in her periphery, and found herself turning to look in the direction, as if her subconscious expected her to be standing there.
“I have seen this. . . Only in stories, but . . . I believe this is a sigil to bring an Old One forth.”
“That's not possible,” Tali insisted. It was common knowledge that the Old Ones were all but trapped in the Outer Realms. Their only means of transport to the Natural World a doorway that siphoned their power, and often their sanity, as they crossed through.
“This is not the act of a god traversing through the doorway. . . This is the doing of a god that has no other means of entry, that is themselves the passage. . . The lurker at the gates, the opener of the way. . . this 'Knowledge'. . . I believe it is an alias for something truly ancient, even amongst the Old Ones.”