Stranger amid the Strange

Andras kept his softly pointed ears hidden by long hair. The rest could be explained away easily. He wore dark glasses to hide his lilac colored eyes. Dental bonding changed his teeth. His acquaintances were from the 'alternative' communities and didn't ask his age, nor remark on his odd habits. He used soft drugs, but not when he was jacked in. Most others in the commune were too bombed out of their mind to notice what he did. He disappeared when the occasional drug bust happened.

The drugs, booze, women, money, none of it mattered. He lived to jack in. It was a world he controlled and he could bend to his will. Through it, the real world could bend to his will, as well.

A buzz emanated from his front shirt pocket. He tapped it. “Speak.”

“Andy, I need some information.”

He didn't care if any one else needed, but it did provide money. And this being was one of the few to fear. It didn't exist in his world, and barely existed in the outside one. Yet, This One always had a steady reserve of funds. Since This One seemed to read brains the way the way he read the 'net, he never cracked his way into the info regarding This One. This One killed with impunity.

“Savvy. Mark?”

“427 Third, Canton. I need exact coordinates for a gate.”

“Roof is 34.2272226,-84.4947221, 19 feet..”

“One thousand?”

“Positive.”

“Residence?”

“Positive.”

The connection ceased. Andy continued his webcrawling.

Beware the Obvious

Year 5: The two initiates walked down the hallway together. Morgan kept one hand on the wall while Herreth walked upright next to him. Herreth put a hand on his partner's shoulder. Morgan stopped the minute he was touched. “There's a large blade crossing the hallway. It slices straight down.”

Morgan got down on his hands and knees. There was no trip wire that he could discern. He sensed no magic in the area. Herreth took his staff and ran it up the side and used it to tap the blade edge. It wobbled suggesting it could move. Morgan brazenly placed a hand across the fall groove. The stones on the other side depressed under his hand. He quickly retracted his hand.

Herreth quickly jumped to the other side. The blade came slashing down. It stopped inches from the ground. Morgan considered the heavy blade, then hopped over it. It didn't reset. Morgan's brow knit as he pondered it.

Herreth tried to urge him further. Morgan whispered. “If this was a trap, it was too easily foiled. This was a distraction. What if..”

Herreth was continuing up the hallway. At a certain point, the floor depressed under Herreth and the blade lifted back to its original position. Morgan sensed a different purpose to the trap. “Herreth! Wait!”

It was too late. Herreth ran into Morgan while trying to get away from whatever was coming from the opposite end of the hallway. Morgan stopped them just shy of the triggering stones. “What's it?” he asked.

“Basilisk!”

Morgan covered his companion's eyes while he wailed and struggled. The creature smashed into them, knocking them back. Morgan, as best he could, tried to control the flip so they landed mostly opposite the groove. As their pursuer hit the trigger, the blade came down again and the boys were splattered with blood. Morgan passed the exam.

Confession 2

It was not a choice I made consciously. At least, I hope it was not. Geas always look blurry in hindsight. But, I made it voluntarily and so I answer to the Order of Dark Life. They told us not to hope our mothers would come rescue us. Few of us did. They left us there, after all. They told us emotions were useless. We learned to bury them. They told us we should become immune to pain. We learned to fake it. I remember the masters discussing what they should do with me as if I could not hear them. They do it to this day, in my head. I understand the link is necessary to send me on my missions, but often they all simply ramble to each other and me the business of the guild as it pertains to me. They will occasionally honor my request to be silent while I work or rest.

My mother held a geas over me, too. I had no choice in it. She impressed it shortly after I was born. I can hear her voice in my head constantly. Alcohol can make it temporarily go away, but the effect fades quickly. Her voice will disturb my sleep. Her voice irritates me when I am missions. Her voice presses me to kill people that upset her. Her voice tells me to kill for others who will pay us money for the work. If I ignore her, her guardian disciplines me. Her guardian likes the fact that I can be injured with impunity. Her control was officially to ensure I would protect my brother. If he so much as scraped his knee, whether I was there or not, I was punished. Punitive deaths from Sethiel are intentionally horrible.

And then, there is Michael. Yes, it was a voluntary geas. I chose to submit to this one at the tender age of twenty-six minutes. As a result, he is my primary. He can always know where I am and I can always hear him when he needs me. The compulsion is so deep that he need not even be aware of what he wants me to do. I can instinctively feel it in his subconscious and am compelled to follow it. I did it out of love and I would do it again, for the same foolish reason.

Then, there is Valerie. She was a vicious little thing when I met her, but I have grown very fond of her as she has grown into an incredible, indomitable woman. She is like a little sister to me. Perhaps, even more of late. I pledged myself to her. I serve as an instrument of her power and a sword of her justice. I have bribed, beaten, extorted, maimed, and executed men in her name. And, I do it willingly, without geas or bind, entirely on the honor of a pledge. I started as her assassin, but she now refers to me as her justiciar and hears my advice as much as sends me to do her bidding.

So, I question myself, after all I have been through, after all that I have sacrificed, after all that I have been compelled to do against my will or with it, would I be able to make a decision without any of the myriad voices in my head? Would I have the capability of saying no to my brother if I truly wanted to do so? I did want to do so. I did want to ... I can say yes, but I cannot say no. Is any activity between us then consensual by default or forced? I cannot imagine it any other way... but what if I could have said no... I love him just the same. I love him just as much. He is still my brother. I still care... Why did this have to happen to us, between us? I cannot change what we did. He does not want to change what we did. All those times throughout our life that we hugged or kissed or held hands were innocent. We were just siblings... ... He is happy. That is what matters. That is ...

No... please... just no...

Pawn Goes into Negs

The inhuman scream presaged a fight. Morgan flipped his cape forward and the spikes bounced off harmlessly. Flipping his spectacles out, an ear-splitting screech rended his eardrum. He re-pocketed the glasses and simply followed the discernible malevolence. He tracked an arc partway towards the closest target then veered down and to the right. He weaved back toward and away as fire erupted around him. His skin started itching and he felt as if acid and bugs were eating away parts of his flesh. He conjured up a shield in front of him but it didn't stop the ground from shaking beneath him, or the previous injuries from festering further.

After ten minutes, the damage to Morgan's body was slowing him. He made no attempts to attack, just weaved forward and back. The presence of deities seared the edges of his soul and it took a firm hold on himself to keep from melting away. His mind kept on the business of staying a moving target and a delectable distraction. Whether Panic or Chaos or any of the deities he was 'serving' were winning or losing was not on his mind, only moving.

Something pummeled into him. It felt like a large beast. Flattened to the ground, out of breath and bleeding from several places, he spiked the ground around him. That wasn't going to do much against this level of nemesis, but it might buy him a few seconds to regroup his strength. No such luck, he felt the ground writhe like snakes. A warm wave washed over him, easing the pain of his injuries, possibly even knitting rent flesh. A literal wave hit him next driving his body over his own spikes. He quickly rescinded them.

He picked himself up and tried to mentally focus to regain his shield. A deluge came from above and his shield failed to materialize. The second attempt worked and the water sluiced around him. He wasn't sure how much longer he could defy the will of gods. However, he seemed less the actual focus of any deity's particular wrath and was more likely just caught in the crossfire. He turtled down close to the ground. He tried crawling in the muddy, sandy field away from any noticeable vibrations in the earth. The question of why he was even here and the insanity of actually agreeing to such a mission crossed his mind fleetingly. Death's temporary hold on him might not apply against actual divine beings... which was part of the reason he was here. He wasn't quite ready to call Panic's bluff, if it even was one.

The wet terrain was getting treacherous. He pulled himself into a crouch. It was still raining torrentially and the while the shield prevented him from directly getting smashed by water, the runoff was now a foot deep. The water stopped and Morgan slogged away in one direction, hopefully tangential to the main fracas. When he hit firmer ground, he assessed his injuries. Too drenched to determine where he was bleeding, he pressed on body parts and determined from the quality of the pain the nature of any damage. His mind hazed when he found a his face half gone.

'This is not war,' he thought. 'War is what mortals wage and they eventually tire at the end of the day.' Even Morgan himself, the least on the battlefield, had a limited immortality. He never died permanently, but death itself was painful in ways mortals wouldn't understand. He contemplated two weeks of his face burning. Two weeks where there would be no sense of time, just an endless clawing, burning, shredding pain in his face and eye, not to mention the cracked ribs, various lacerations, several torn ligaments and muscles, ruptured eardrum, and some deep punctures. It wouldn't, he decided, be the worst death he'd suffered. It's a difficult thing to judge in the moment. Away from the deluge, he could feel liquid seeping from his face. Either through blood loss or shock, the pain had dulled around the edges. He murmured a short prayer for death to be quick.

When he awoke, the undulating nature of the pain in various areas of his body told him he was still alive, but the relative silence also told him the skirmish was over. He slowly attempted to rise. The searing pain in his chest discouraged the activity. He sensed a presence next to him. His shallow, gasping breaths kept him from saying or asking anything.

“Beautiously done, well.” Chaos's voice grated into his burst eardrum. “Reward, yes? Be right? Be bad?”

Morgan merely held up his left hand, slashed and burnt, in a symbol for freedom. It dropped like a stone afterwards. The sand and mud irritated the ripped, festering wounds.

“Shoo. Away from my minion. I'd like him in working condition a little longer, eh? He's sooooo useful.” Panic kicked Morgan in the ribs playfully. Morgan's pain crossed his threshold and he mercifully slipped into unconsciosness again.

Parental Negotiating

Traditionally, the Wallace family sends it children to public school for the first three grades of school. The purpose is less to expose them to rote education than to socialize them fully. The belief they should never lose touch with the average person strongly motivates them to befriend regular kids. As a result, Morgan went to a regular grade school, despite an obvious disability. It strengthened his bond with Michael and taught them both to deal with preconceptions of blind people. It taught him to deal with crowds of new people and they learned navigation techniques for busy public areas. Bullies also learned that messing with either was not a good idea.

Once some acquaintances are made, hopefully lifelong, the children are pulled from school and returned to more the formal tutoring and grooming that starts at age three. The tutors center the youngsters in their role as British citizens and nobility....

“And that's why you no longer need to go to public school.”

“But my friends are there.”

“Yes, and you can still keep them, visit with them, write them and play with them. You're just going to get a better education and have mannerisms polished into those of a young lady. Your father is gentry and there is no reason you can't be, too.”

“Can't school teach me that?”

“I don't think they teach heraldry, protocol, or dressage. All of which I expect you to learn.”

Nicole screwed her face up into a grimace.

“Okay, well, you can skip the dressage if you don't want to ride horses...”

“Can I have my own pony?!”

Michael smiled broadly “You may have your own pony, if you accept a tutor.”