by Taki Drake
He held his hand out toward her, palm side up and waited. Zhanna looked at Mazza and then turned to consider Ilia. She knew that this was her decision and that there would be a price, possibly a large price. However, she would pay it since there was no other honorable choice. Placing her right hand into his turned-up palm caused a ripple of strangeness to flash through her body.
The contact of their skin sent a huge thrumming resonating throughout Zhanna’s body. This was not the harmonic of sexual attraction. It was something totally different. It was a deep level connection, a network of people and places that somehow, somewhere, they shared. Before she realized it, Zhanna found herself in a mage’s personal workshop. Etched in the floor, set indelibly into the fabric of the building itself, was a protective series of circles.
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With a wave of his hand, Ilia set the candles around the room alight. He motioned Dascha into one small inscribed circle and pointed to a larger one for Zhanna. Obedient to his wishes, the familiar and her witch took their places.
What followed next was nothing short of a master class on spirit protections and cleansing. At times, Zhanna felt that her head would explode. She was quite sure at one point their brains had spilled all over the floor. In fact, she had made a humorous comment to Dascha about it, saying that she was the one that normally had little or no patience.
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Acknowledging the hit, Zhanna once again remembered the uselessness of arguing with a familiar. Instead, she focused even harder on what Ilia was managing to teach her.
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Zhanna’s head was throbbing, and she felt like she would either scream or cry at any moment. She was beyond exhausted. She felt like she had been working solidly for days, desperately trying to learn the spell and do what she had to do to preserve not only her own life but the ashes. Mazza and Ilia had both been right. This was hard and there were prices to be paid.
In a moment of grim humor, Zhanna thought to herself, <
Adding a little snark, Dascha added, <
The concentration required to learn so much in such a short time blinded Zhanna to the activities around her. Food, drink, and rest were foreign concepts driven by the need to survive. The whole world could have changed around her, so tight was the young witch’s focus. Each time that Zhanna looked up from her work, something was changed, as others contributed what they could to her efforts. At one such break point, Zhanna realized that Mazza and Petra had joined them.
The sight of the dark-clad crone on her knees carefully inscribing an additional layer of protection around the largest spell circle shocked Zhanna into disbelieving silence. The incongruity of such a powerful witch performing the irksome chore to help her intensified the seriousness of the situation and drove the young witch back to her task.
Other vignettes stuck in her mind, to be reviewed and investigated at a later time. The memory of Dascha and Petra, heads close together in conversation, filled Zhanna with a sense of foreboding. Again, something to worry about later.
In contrast, when Zhanna had at last straightened from the last of her preparations, ready to start the first spell, the sight of her four companions filled her with a sense of confidence. Dascha, was leaning against Ilia’s leg, while Petra sat at Mazza’s feet. All of them watching Zhanna, all of them being supportive.
Staring at them for a moment, Zhanna thought of her path to this place, this step. She could see how each event, every decision, had led her here. For the first time, she was going to cast a major spell, one of creation.
The magical fabrication of a witch’s athame was a particularly intimate ceremony. The blade itself was an expression of the witch’s inner force and focus made visible to the world. The handle would come into being ready for her hand. Forged by her essence into a tool that was peculiarly her own, the aspects of the athame would tell Zhanna, and the world, what her chosen future would be.
It was frightening and daunting. The witch knew that delaying would only make it worse, so she said to her friends and companions, “I am ready.”
Zhanna stepped into the inner circle and touched the table set in its center. A wall of shimmering light rose around the edges of that circle, closing her off from the rest. Each of the other concentric circles raised their curtains of force in response, with the outer circle slamming from floor to ceiling in a blast of light at Mazza’s gesture.
Focusing on her center, calming herself and anchoring to the floor, Zhanna reached for the herbs laid out in front of her. Taking a handful of the carefully prepared leaves, she cast them in the brazier, sending clouds of sweet-smelling smoke swirling above her head.
She drew a breath of that smoke deeply into her lungs and held it. Reaching her right hand out to hover over the metal rods on the table, the young witch flung her left hand straight up into the air and shouted a word of power. The shape of the word seemed to hang in the air, hovering in front of Zhanna until she ripped the second word out of her throat to form a demanding question.
The answer came in the shape of a bolt of magenta lightning, slamming into Zhanna with the force of a charging bull. It swept through her body, freezing her feet to the floor and exploding out of her right palm. Steam rose from the metal pile, obscuring the vision of the anxious watchers. Three times, Zhanna shouted out words of command, three more times the lightning answered. Clouds of metallic, glinting fog had risen, filling the inner circle with a concealing mask.
Then the cloud started to dissipate, the circle protections began to subside. Zhanna had completed the first step, the athame, and everyone in the room waited with bated breath to see the result.
Zhanna sagged in weariness over the small table. She stared at the results of this massive effort. That she had an athame was cause for rejoicing. That she had made this one, would take some getting used to.
The effort that she had gone through had created a solid object, at least here on the astral plane. It sat on the surface of the worktable, throbbing in time with her beating heart. It was a dagger. Some might call it in athame, the personal dagger of a high-level witch. Forged out of precious metals and quenched in a witch’s own blood, the blade had a peculiar silvery tone and a slight oil sheen. Built from subconscious ideals and the conscious control of the witch, the form of the blade was indicative of many things.
Zhanna’s athame was about 16 inches long. The handle had formed out of a swirling cloud of lightning and thunder that had appeared during the middle of her spell ritual. Zhanna had no idea where that part of the form had come from, although it apparently was significant to Ilia and Mazza. They just hadn’t shared why with Zhanna or Dascha yet. The young witch had decided to question them about it later, especially after she had seen them exchanging astounded looks and little head shakes while she was completing the spell.
The blade of the dagger was also unusual. Instead of the usual shiny, simple metal, Zhanna’s blade had a slightly oily look to it
. It also was not silver but instead was an almost luminescent gray. Nothing in anything that Zhanna had read or seen led her to expect this form of spirit dagger.
The unusual nature of the dagger extended to the rest of its appearance. Where most witch’s daggers were simple to the point of austerity, Zhanna’s was ornate. A complex mixture of design elements, the dagger showed a fairly smooth and slightly rippled gripping surface on the handle. Very fine, braided wires had been inlaid to add extra traction. Dascha seemed to think that that would make it less likely to slip out of her hand if her hand was wet. Like with blood.
The pommel and the cross piece were heavily carved and figured. Some form of complex design was partially visible on the pommel. Another set of carvings were present on the cross piece which swirled slightly on the ends.
Overall, it was an extremely fancy dagger and one that most witches would not recognize as an athame. But Zhanna could feel the hum of its power, the leashed intent, and energy.
Mazza and Ilya seemed very pleased with Zhanna, although she was totally and completely exhausted at this point. She knew that she would have to carry out the next step of the spell very, very soon. She could feel that the slow drain had not stopped. It eased when she had pulled the belt off but the transfer of her energy continued, and the thought of some unknown person sucking her lifeblood out of her was an unspoken but constant outrage.
Zhanna drew a deep breath and stood up abruptly. Her rapid movement drew the eyes of the others in the room. Ilia had been consulting with Mazza about something while Dascha and Petra had been watching from the other side of the room. Zhanna looked at Ilia and Mazza, saying, “I believe it’s time. I’m not going to get any more energy, and if the spell goes awry and I die, at least I won’t die totally drained and defenseless. So let’s do it.”
With those words, the atmosphere in the room changed immediately. There was a sense of anticipation, like a hunting dog on a leash, straining to get free and to run. There was also a colder wind edge in the air. This was the icy breath of risk and reward where decisions are balanced on the knife edge of determination, skill, and luck.
It was time.
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There was not much more to do to set the stage for the main spell. Zhanna quickly cleaned up their working space, providing the hands needed under Ilia’s direction. Mazza settled herself back in her chair and was flanked by both Petra and Dascha. Dascha stood at the old woman’s knee watching intently as Zhanna finished her preparations.
As the young witch walked around her area one last time before stepping into the casting circle, she made sure to stop by Ilia and Mazza to say thank you. She also made sure that Petra knew how much Zhanna had appreciated everything she had done. When she stopped by Dascha, the conversation was different. The witch looked at her familiar and felt their bond hum along the psychic lines. She looked at the one constant comforting factor in her whole life and simply said, “I love you.”
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From the smiles on everyone’s faces, Zhanna knew that Dascha had broadcast her answer. It somehow seemed appropriate that she would begin the most difficult spell of her whole life buoyed by the sarcastic wit and shared amusement of her acquaintances and friends.
Zhanna began the spell. Raising the circle in a protective arc, Zhanna made sure that whatever the outcome, any adverse effects would be contained. Pointing her hand at the dagger, the young witch spoke the first word of the incantation. It was a poem for life and a poem for death. It was birth and death and rebirth all in one word. It hung in the air above the dagger like a motionless raptor waiting for prey.
The next word of the incantation ripped out of her chest like a cough of the north wind. That word encapsulated everything there was to say about icy fog and the sharpness of crystals. The words swirled around the room building a peculiar pearlescent and almost bubbly fog that slid caressingly over every exposed skin surface. It became very difficult to see across the room as the fog thickened, and movement was restricted by the fog’s icy grip.
When Zhanna had practiced this part of the spell, the fog had not been this thick nor this intense. It had felt slightly chilly but nothing like the vicious bite of this cold, the weight of this fog.
Someone walking into the room would have had to stop immediately, unable to go on due to lack of visibility. Zhanna had no such problems. Even though the thick fog obscured many details, she seemed to know the location of everything important.
Reaching down to the table in front of her, Zhanna picked up two small handfuls of different herbs. In rapid succession, she threw each of them in the air and muttered her third and fourth words of the spell. Exploding through the fog like tiny homing pigeons, the two herbs formed a skin that clearly showed a pulsing tentacle that attached to Zhanna’s shoulder and disappeared out the door. Here was the shape of the attack, here was the reach of the enemy.
Without further hesitation or pause, Zhanna grabbed the athame and slashed across her palm. Blood had coated the blade before it flew through the air, merging with the waiting raptor component of the spell.
The merged spell dove toward the pulsating conduit and slashed it. So thick was the tentacle that it required more than one blow. Once, twice, thrice. As each cut was made, some of the floating herbs dove into the conduit like an avenging arrow of bees and disappeared like arrows shot in battle. Each slash of the dagger drew a bigger group of the herbs to travel the conduit.
On the third blow, the tentacle was severed, but the spell was not done. There was still that piece embedded in Zhanna shoulder. A possible weak spot that could not be allowed to exist. The final gesture and word would complete the spell, and Zhanna gathered her flagging energy for one last effort.
Bringing both of her hands up into the air, she grasped a handful of fog in the still bleeding palm of her left hand. Catching a few of the herbs that still remained in the air with her right hand, Zhanna pulled her two hands together forcing the herbs and the fog into the still open cut.
There was an explosion of wind that whipped through the room. The remnant of the spirit drain the still remained on Zhanna shoulder was exploded away from the inside of Zhanna’s body, blasting it outward.
Lightning struck in rapid succession around the room and thunder filled the senses, slamming the witch’s ears again and again and again. Six times the lightning struck, and the thunder answered.
Zhanna dropped unconscious to the ground.
Chapter 7
The elderly seer swirled the bowl repetitively. The oft-repeated pattern was soothing. She knew that this was not her battle, but she couldn’t help but want to see what was going on. She watched as her granddaughter built her spell, layer by layer. Only the resonance that she had with the child of her child made it possible for her to see anything.
Breathless with anticipation and fear, Bolormaa watched as the power of Zhanna’s spell echoed through the astral plane. She knew that witches everywhere would be able to feel that slight trembling, that announcement of a new presence.
Would Zhanna be able to handle the ramifications? Bolormaa didn’t know, but she knew her granddaughter would not back down. Proud of her, but frightened for her at the same time, the seer wished that she could have seen the companions in the room with Zhanna. But only Zhanna appeared to her vision.
Zhanna finished the spell. The draining connection was severed. Desperately. The seer tried to keep the focus on her granddaughter, but the universe had different plans. Instead, Bolormaa was drawn through the conduit, dragged along by the little arrows of retribution that Zhanna had crafted and released.
Bolormaa felt and saw the rush of those arrows toward the originator of the drain. As the first arrow hit, the seer got an impression of male and evil. As the second arrow of retribution hit, Bolor
maa saw flashes of a rich-looking and well-decorated room. One that had the lower part of a bloodstained leg sprawled motionless on the floor. She also felt that second arrow hit and the mage scream in pain.
Catching her breath for just an instant, the seer evened out the swirling of the bowl and focused strongly. No matter what else happened, she wanted to see who this villain was, the evil one who had thought to drain her granddaughter.
As the third and last overwhelming bolt of retribution hit the chest of the attacking mage, Bolormaa had two things engraved into her memory with the power of lightning and the role of rumbling thunder. The evil one was a blood mage.
It was Krava.
<<<>>>
As Zhanna slowly regained consciousness, emerging from the depths of sleep, she found herself luxuriating in a feeling of wellness. The tiredness and drain of the last two days were gone. She still had some lingering aches and pains, bruises from hitting the floor, and an itchy ache in the palm of her left hand. The usual discomforts of life.
Somehow, this struck her as very amusing. Since when had usual life involved life challenging spells and self-mutilation? She really needed to examine some of her life choices!