Post by odien on Oct 13, 2018 17:10:02 GMT
A group of people sat in a basement dwelling, awaiting their mutual master. None in the room dared speak, or perhaps their nerves prevented them from being able to-for they knew that they had failed him, and that his anger would soon rain down on them. The pensive silence persisted for a dozen minutes, and then a dozen more. Soon, an hour had passed, and their lord was still not among them. Talking began to pop up, and then arguing began, as the mages began to throw blame for their mishaps at each other.
Lilith detested smoking in closed rooms, but sometimes, it was unavoidable. She ashed her cigarette into an empty glass vial and stared at the centuries of peeling paint on the stone wall across from her. Nakeem and one of their other acolytes—his name escaped her, someone unimpressive—were bickering on the nearest bench, but their words didn’t reach her. With another drag on her cigarette, she checked the petite watch on her wrist. “We’ve waited long enough,” Lilith announced. The bickering died down; a dozen heads swiveled toward her in the partial darkness of the cellar. This is what failure brought on them--meeting in cellars, like they were common criminals, or witches of no real power or skill. “It would appear we must resolve this ourselves.”
“Our mission was disrupted, and we haven’t the faintest idea of by whom. Not only did we fail, we have a new enemy on our horizons, with no clue what their motives or powers might be. It seems we are being tasked with handling this ourselves, as our Lord will not reveal himself to us. That said, our first course of action should be--” she was cut off abruptly as the two doors in the cellar, the only way in or out of the dwelling, lit up with a blinding light. The light passed, and the door nearest her opened. “I apologize for my tardiness, there were more deserving matters that needed tending.” The man that strode through the door was mesmerizing; he commanded the attention of not only the room’s inhabitants, but from the very air around them.
“You all know why we are here. You’ve failed the cause, and more importantly, you’ve failed me. What I want to know is how, and why, this has happened.” Half the individuals jumped forward, clamoring to tell their side of the story, but The Mammon cut them off. “Do keep in mind that if your words are not chosen carefully, you won’t get a chance to try again.”
Everyone looked around at each other, suddenly less certain of their tales. Maximilian Blackwell paused in front of Lilith and gazed down at her. “You were in charge of this escapade, and this failure took place under your watch. How did it happen?”
His face, the color of which currently had the hue of light brown sand by the Caspian Sea in the dim light of the cellar, revealed none of the anger that they all expected of him. Every emotion that the man before them expressed was chosen carefully beforehand. No one knew how old he was, only that, according to legend, he predated all of their ancestors, and perhaps even the Earth. Lilith had been in awe of him once—of the power that radiated from him like starlight. The Mammon gave her something to latch onto, a drumbeat beneath the rhythmless rush of life. She felt that drumbeat under her skin still. But it was her own now. She was his no more.
She thought carefully for a moment before answering. “We lost the artifact and its holder in the last venture, as you know, and I sought a way to reclaim them, and another.” Her mouth went dry when she watched the look of feigned surprise flash across her master’s face. “So you sought to attack a fortified sanctum, and it never occurred to you that you might need a larger force than the one assembled? Or to ask for my aid?”
“I selected a target I thought we could handle. We are not lesser casters. Our hands are not bound by procurement slips, bylaws, rigid chains of command—all things which shatter easily.” Lilith tipped her chin up. “Our forces were more than sufficient to handle the guards of the sanctum. We had no way of knowing there would be another foe to deal with.” The Mammon appraised her for a moment. “I do not expect you to follow some arcane protocol, Lilith. But I do expect results.”
“Our—our team was attacked.” Nakeem spoke up, though his voice sounded pressed through a too-thin pipe. “It wasn’t the Raven’s fault. The attacker took the sanctum unaware, too—set the temple on fire and proceeded to kill men on both sides—”
“Ah. Then what spells did you use to repel the attacker, Raven?” Maximilian asked. Lilith drove the butt of her cigarette into the bench beside her. He knew perfectly well she hadn’t been there to personally oversee the operation.
“She charged an impressive array of charms for us. We all contributed beforehand, but she conducted the majority of the rituals to draw energies into the charms.” Nakeem tugged at his collar. “There was an-another event that she had to attend to, but the alignment of the moons was such that this was our best chance at getting the drop on the sanctum.” Mammon cut him off with a flick of his wrist “So the Raven, who seems to think herself the high priestess of our ensemble, had to go rub elbows with some Saudi prince.” He shot her a withering look. “You couldn’t get any of your lessers to do it?”
“We were attacked,” Nakeem snapped. Lilith cut her eyes toward him. “Or perhaps you don’t care that there is another player interested in collecting the artifacts?”
Maximilian’s smile thinned, stretching further to his eyes. “And do you know who this other player was? Because I was rather under the impression that you lot have still not figured that out.”
“N-no. All I know is that this person was no mere witch, or even a fae. They understood—things. They were doing something to the flames.”
“Doing things to flames! Ah, this is divine. I think I am starting to understand just why all of you have contributed absolutely nothing of value in the past several years.” The Mammon strode toward Nakeem and paused before him. “What kind of things?”
“There was this… dead zone around them. Magic, air, sound--everything was still. And the flames were a strange color—it wasn’t natural, not even by our standards-- they burned hotter, spread faster… I don’t know what kind of magic it was. None of us there had ever seen anything like it, and I didn’t have the right charms, or any incantations on me to root it out.” Nakeem swallowed. “We were prepared to fend off the sanctum guardians. Not whatever—whoever this was.”
“You did not have a dampener working?” Maximilian asked. “To neutralize a magical patch of space? Is that not standard anytime you undertake something of this magnitude?”
“Well, we weren’t expecting—” “You weren’t expecting. No, you weren’t expecting anything. Because you are weak. And you have allowed weakness to fester.” The Mammon curled his upper lip back and rapped the edge of his cane against the stone floor. “But that is not our way. That is not my way” His expression blazed bright in the cellar’s darkness. “Everything not useful must be burned away.” Lilith lifted her head, a retort building on her tongue, but before she could, the sharp stink of bile filled the cellar. The poor warlock tossed back his head with a dried-out moan. His skin was shriveling—peeling back from his lips and eyes. “Stop!” he hissed. But his protests withered as his teeth rattled free of his gums, then clattered to the floor.
He slid forward, off of his bench, and crashed to the ground. His knees crumbled into dust, then his torso, and his skull. A crack of energy shot through the chamber, then scattered. Every eye was wide and gleaming as they watched the warlock turn to nothingness; every mouth hung slightly agape. “One less useless mongrel to waste our energies,” Mammon said. His skin had acquired a faint glow, making him appear less like the monster they had all just witnessed and more alike an angel, come to bring them glorious news. He pulled a fractured crystal bound with a silver chain from his pocket and dropped it to the ground. It smashed and turned to smoke. Lillith reached, with shaking hands, for the breast pocket of her coat. She was going to need another cigarette. “The cause shall not move forward until we resolve this issue,” Maximilian said, and turned to Lillith with a stare that smoldered like coal. “You allowed those that sought to sabotage our plans, my very existence, to escape. Find them, or you will not be so fortunate as your fellow mage.”
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Mammon unwrapped the dagger from the chamois in which he’d stowed it. It was heavy, made of bronze and some other alloy, and its blade was actually four blades set in a cross shape for maximum puncturing and wounding. Its pommel was capped with a dazzling pale blue crystal that sparked and caught even the cloud-weakened sunlight. He took a deep breath, positioned his hand over the mortar and pestle on the basin’s edge, and pressed the dagger’s tip against the vein in his palm. Runes flickered along the knife’s blades as blood ran down the edges and dripped into the mortar. The Mammon tipped his head back and counted, keeping the blade pressed into his flesh, until finally he reached thirty. He clenched his cut fist around a rag, then began emptying an assortment of vials into the mortar. Chanting in a long forgotten tongue under his breath, he used the tip of the blade to stir the mixture until he’d made a thick paste of all the ingredients, he picked up the mortar and set it down in the thick brush, right along the Oetherline. Then he leaned back against the basin, folded his arms, and waited. Within minutes, a smell of forgotten decay, of dead long buried. A tomb, then. Mammon straightened up and seized another charm. To call it a mere “charm” was a disservice, perhaps; the convoluted hexagonal device held stored energy from a twenty-person strong ritual. Another benefit of commanding so many forces for eons. He opened a latch on the device’s front.
A fierce wind erupted, and then dissipated as quickly as it had came. The smell swirled around him, strong as a freshly dug grave and just as cold and musty, but he kept his grip on the charm, holding it high. “Come, now,” he muttered to himself, and to the spirit he was trying to channel. “You’ll be far better off in here than out there, I assure you of that.” The markings along the device began to light up, and the air grew still. Yes, that was it; the Link was nestling inside—And then, just as quickly, it was gone. No earthy smell, no lit runes, no hairs raised along his arms. Maximilian swore and slumped back against the fountain. The determination he’d felt, the certain energy driving him, was gone, and with it, the Link. Even for a God at their prime, the ingredients needed for this ritual were scarce-not even the the storehouses of the Oether would have everything required again on a moment’s notice. He looked down at the paste in the mortar bowl; it was nearly used up. He’d had his chance, and he’d lost it. But perhaps, if he kept pushing … Maximilian took a steadying breath and set the device back inside the basin.
He rolled up one sleeve to the elbow. Then picked up the dagger again.
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The courier was terrified, and reasonably so. He had carried messages and items for magic warlords, dragon priests, and unearthly kings, but none yet possessed a name with such weight as his employer today. The man in question was awaiting inside his Tikrit estate, where the courier was to meet him. Guarding the entrance were a number of checkpoints, staffed with armed Iraqi militants, as well as a number of unseen protections woven throughout the fabric of the earth and the air. None of this would be a hindrance to the courier though; he pulled a key, sent to him from his employer, from his breast pocket. It looked no more sinister than any antique key, seemingly to a lock long rusted over, the door likely torn down centuries ago. It was only when held that one would notice the key’s significance-it was so cold that it seemed as though it should cause frostbite upon handling.
With a seemingly random, but in fact quite deliberate, movement, the courier twisted the key into the air, and a box fell before him. Inside of it was a locket, woven of priceless gold and platinum threads. The courier took the locket delicately , knowing full well that it was merely a cheap wrapper. The trinket contained a tuft of wool shorn from a lamb born on Easter morning, stained red with the blood of a roan bull slaughtered with a silver blade. A unique item from Mammon’s special inventory, and one that had taken several nights to prepare, some centuries ago.
He followed his instructions and took the locket to a group awaiting him in southeast Asia, where they would begin preparations for the ceremony.
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Candles burned in the windows of the farmhouse, inviting the two gathered to ritual. Already Lillith could feel power sparking on the air, like the thrum of anticipation in the moments before a symphony begins a performance. All the instruments tuning, preparing themselves to be played. She was even more certain now that the ritual would succeed. The power in the air was too strong. There was no way they could fail, not on a night like this, blustery and cold, the stars glimmering in the gaps between the clouds. Tonight she would finally prove to Maximilian that she was still that girl in whom he had seen so much promise. That she was willing to take the necessary risks to see their Lord to victory. Their attempts at channeling the fallen ones had failed before. But she wasn’t afraid. Tonight The Mammon would see her courage, and he would choose her. The next time they attempted to create a new Oether One, she would ensure their success. The other candidates had been unworthy—she was certain that was why the primal forces had rejected them. But Maximilian would see tonight that no entity would be able to refuse her.
She pulled open the door to the farmhouse and slipped inside. A scent like dying flowers wafted through the air. The Mammon stood in the corner, speaking into the mirror before him, where other sorcerers awaited across the globe. His cane leaned against his thigh. A clock ticked on the wall above the old gleaming fireplace, charms of flowers and metal twisted around it to ensure that it ran at the same second as other clocks spread across the globe. In the center of the room, the symbols for the ritual had already been laid out on the floor in white chalk.
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Lilith never liked hooded robes, but Mammon relished his formalities, so here she was, hooded and robed, pacing around a chalk circle ringed with candles, in the center of which lay two medallions, each with a bit of cat’s eye agate at its heart. Incense drifted from a burner in the corner. Her throat felt raw from the chanting, and her legs and back and arms ached from the care and precision of the movements. The room’s walls and floor bulged, rippled, pulsed. Was that magic? Or were the ritual strain, the exhaustion, her nerves about tonight getting to her? Was there a difference? That confusion, to be fair, was a core element of sorcery. Perception created reality, and reality perception, under the right circumstances, and with the proper tools.
She stumbled, or the floor did, and the bare wood walls around her hummed like a singing bowl properly rung. Mammon folded back his hood, so she did too. He gingerly rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well, we’ve almost done it. Once we add in a touch of energy, the whole thing will fall into place.” “Should we use a Bond?” “Let’s not.” He drew his hand back into his robe’s voluminous sleeve, and delicately pulled from inside. “If we draw off them, or if we draw off the Oether through them, we may tip our hand to the rest too early, and I’ll run no risks on that point. Let’s see, I have it around here somewhere—ah! Yes, there’s the beauty.” He produced a curved piece of glossy black wood, which had a dull, oily sheen in the candlelight. It was a staff, but one built in such a way that it couldn’t have been of much use for walking. It seemed to draw the light out of the candles, and into its grains. “Seventy-two men, all mystic masters in their own right, died to fuel the energies contained within here. May their sacrifice not be in vain.”
The Mammon drew his head back, offering a quick phrase into the staff, and then spoke to the acolyte. “Quickly now, before the walls stop ringing. Start the chant again.” She did. She did not speak the syllables so much as open a gate within her and let them flow through: dark words issuing from the dawn of time. Lilith imagined—or did her blood remember?--- Mammon in a cave, or perhaps on some green Greek hillside, with a knife, speaking the same words that his students then spoke, and their students, forward through history. Lilith was merely the most recent gate. All the words came from before. Maximilian took an emerald ring from his pocket, placed it on his ring finger, and dragged the emerald across the staff’s handle. The wood flared orange and then cracked in two lengthwise, and a greenish golden fluid seeped out from within. Only the fluid did not fall: It waved and trickled through the air, a river following slopes she could neither see nor feel. She kept speaking, kept weaving. She let the past roll through her. Her arms rose and fell in postures long learned. The walls rang. Her bones shook from within. Her teeth hummed. The sound filled her skull and she chanted, as the fluid trickled, spiraled down through the air. Syllables of broken light tore her tongue. The greenish gold touched the agates set in the silver charms. A lightless flash blinded, a soundless crack deafened. When Lilith recovered her senses, she found herself leaning against the (no-longer-humming) wall, panting. Her heart raced in her chest. She wanted to scream. She had no breath to scream.
The magic filled Lilith. The power of the Oether swelled inside of her, and she could feel each of her individual cells as they moved in the formation of her body and her soul. She lifted her voice, the words spilling out of her as if they were animals freed from a trap. The Aramaic sliced across her tongue. She and Maximilian stood apart from each other, the chalk ruins between them. In the center of the circle a fire burned, made of sage and hibiscus and stinging nettle. In Xi’an, China, a group of eight sorcerers did the same, only their fire burned juniper, ash, and cardamom, charging the Oetherline with power to call down the elements. Similar groups were assembled in Johannesburg and Anchorage. The collective power of the mages converged through the Earth and into this room, the Raven and the Mammon serving as a conduit for the energies into the talismans.
Maximilian stood, stepped across the circle, and draped one of the cat’s-eye agates around his neck. All at once, he changed. For a brief, haunting moment, Lilith witnessed a glimpse of the power that lie inside of him-even the shadow of the God that she saw was enough to make her quake with fear, and with envy. None had the glory of her master, that she was sure of. But she would take as much of the energy, of the knowledge, of the sheer might as he would bestow her with, and she would plant those seeds inside of her for them to grow. The Raven would take her rightful place by the throne.
The Mammon flexed his shoulders, and cast his gaze to the ceiling above them. “There is a shop in a Japanese province known as the Spider’s Web. We’ve had dealings with them before, through some of our more disposable acquaintances. Send the gargoyles to fetch the shopkeep there, as well as the peculiarly one-eyed man in Washington. Have them brought to the estate on the Tigris. We have work to do.”
Lilith detested smoking in closed rooms, but sometimes, it was unavoidable. She ashed her cigarette into an empty glass vial and stared at the centuries of peeling paint on the stone wall across from her. Nakeem and one of their other acolytes—his name escaped her, someone unimpressive—were bickering on the nearest bench, but their words didn’t reach her. With another drag on her cigarette, she checked the petite watch on her wrist. “We’ve waited long enough,” Lilith announced. The bickering died down; a dozen heads swiveled toward her in the partial darkness of the cellar. This is what failure brought on them--meeting in cellars, like they were common criminals, or witches of no real power or skill. “It would appear we must resolve this ourselves.”
“Our mission was disrupted, and we haven’t the faintest idea of by whom. Not only did we fail, we have a new enemy on our horizons, with no clue what their motives or powers might be. It seems we are being tasked with handling this ourselves, as our Lord will not reveal himself to us. That said, our first course of action should be--” she was cut off abruptly as the two doors in the cellar, the only way in or out of the dwelling, lit up with a blinding light. The light passed, and the door nearest her opened. “I apologize for my tardiness, there were more deserving matters that needed tending.” The man that strode through the door was mesmerizing; he commanded the attention of not only the room’s inhabitants, but from the very air around them.
“You all know why we are here. You’ve failed the cause, and more importantly, you’ve failed me. What I want to know is how, and why, this has happened.” Half the individuals jumped forward, clamoring to tell their side of the story, but The Mammon cut them off. “Do keep in mind that if your words are not chosen carefully, you won’t get a chance to try again.”
Everyone looked around at each other, suddenly less certain of their tales. Maximilian Blackwell paused in front of Lilith and gazed down at her. “You were in charge of this escapade, and this failure took place under your watch. How did it happen?”
His face, the color of which currently had the hue of light brown sand by the Caspian Sea in the dim light of the cellar, revealed none of the anger that they all expected of him. Every emotion that the man before them expressed was chosen carefully beforehand. No one knew how old he was, only that, according to legend, he predated all of their ancestors, and perhaps even the Earth. Lilith had been in awe of him once—of the power that radiated from him like starlight. The Mammon gave her something to latch onto, a drumbeat beneath the rhythmless rush of life. She felt that drumbeat under her skin still. But it was her own now. She was his no more.
She thought carefully for a moment before answering. “We lost the artifact and its holder in the last venture, as you know, and I sought a way to reclaim them, and another.” Her mouth went dry when she watched the look of feigned surprise flash across her master’s face. “So you sought to attack a fortified sanctum, and it never occurred to you that you might need a larger force than the one assembled? Or to ask for my aid?”
“I selected a target I thought we could handle. We are not lesser casters. Our hands are not bound by procurement slips, bylaws, rigid chains of command—all things which shatter easily.” Lilith tipped her chin up. “Our forces were more than sufficient to handle the guards of the sanctum. We had no way of knowing there would be another foe to deal with.” The Mammon appraised her for a moment. “I do not expect you to follow some arcane protocol, Lilith. But I do expect results.”
“Our—our team was attacked.” Nakeem spoke up, though his voice sounded pressed through a too-thin pipe. “It wasn’t the Raven’s fault. The attacker took the sanctum unaware, too—set the temple on fire and proceeded to kill men on both sides—”
“Ah. Then what spells did you use to repel the attacker, Raven?” Maximilian asked. Lilith drove the butt of her cigarette into the bench beside her. He knew perfectly well she hadn’t been there to personally oversee the operation.
“She charged an impressive array of charms for us. We all contributed beforehand, but she conducted the majority of the rituals to draw energies into the charms.” Nakeem tugged at his collar. “There was an-another event that she had to attend to, but the alignment of the moons was such that this was our best chance at getting the drop on the sanctum.” Mammon cut him off with a flick of his wrist “So the Raven, who seems to think herself the high priestess of our ensemble, had to go rub elbows with some Saudi prince.” He shot her a withering look. “You couldn’t get any of your lessers to do it?”
“We were attacked,” Nakeem snapped. Lilith cut her eyes toward him. “Or perhaps you don’t care that there is another player interested in collecting the artifacts?”
Maximilian’s smile thinned, stretching further to his eyes. “And do you know who this other player was? Because I was rather under the impression that you lot have still not figured that out.”
“N-no. All I know is that this person was no mere witch, or even a fae. They understood—things. They were doing something to the flames.”
“Doing things to flames! Ah, this is divine. I think I am starting to understand just why all of you have contributed absolutely nothing of value in the past several years.” The Mammon strode toward Nakeem and paused before him. “What kind of things?”
“There was this… dead zone around them. Magic, air, sound--everything was still. And the flames were a strange color—it wasn’t natural, not even by our standards-- they burned hotter, spread faster… I don’t know what kind of magic it was. None of us there had ever seen anything like it, and I didn’t have the right charms, or any incantations on me to root it out.” Nakeem swallowed. “We were prepared to fend off the sanctum guardians. Not whatever—whoever this was.”
“You did not have a dampener working?” Maximilian asked. “To neutralize a magical patch of space? Is that not standard anytime you undertake something of this magnitude?”
“Well, we weren’t expecting—” “You weren’t expecting. No, you weren’t expecting anything. Because you are weak. And you have allowed weakness to fester.” The Mammon curled his upper lip back and rapped the edge of his cane against the stone floor. “But that is not our way. That is not my way” His expression blazed bright in the cellar’s darkness. “Everything not useful must be burned away.” Lilith lifted her head, a retort building on her tongue, but before she could, the sharp stink of bile filled the cellar. The poor warlock tossed back his head with a dried-out moan. His skin was shriveling—peeling back from his lips and eyes. “Stop!” he hissed. But his protests withered as his teeth rattled free of his gums, then clattered to the floor.
He slid forward, off of his bench, and crashed to the ground. His knees crumbled into dust, then his torso, and his skull. A crack of energy shot through the chamber, then scattered. Every eye was wide and gleaming as they watched the warlock turn to nothingness; every mouth hung slightly agape. “One less useless mongrel to waste our energies,” Mammon said. His skin had acquired a faint glow, making him appear less like the monster they had all just witnessed and more alike an angel, come to bring them glorious news. He pulled a fractured crystal bound with a silver chain from his pocket and dropped it to the ground. It smashed and turned to smoke. Lillith reached, with shaking hands, for the breast pocket of her coat. She was going to need another cigarette. “The cause shall not move forward until we resolve this issue,” Maximilian said, and turned to Lillith with a stare that smoldered like coal. “You allowed those that sought to sabotage our plans, my very existence, to escape. Find them, or you will not be so fortunate as your fellow mage.”
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Mammon unwrapped the dagger from the chamois in which he’d stowed it. It was heavy, made of bronze and some other alloy, and its blade was actually four blades set in a cross shape for maximum puncturing and wounding. Its pommel was capped with a dazzling pale blue crystal that sparked and caught even the cloud-weakened sunlight. He took a deep breath, positioned his hand over the mortar and pestle on the basin’s edge, and pressed the dagger’s tip against the vein in his palm. Runes flickered along the knife’s blades as blood ran down the edges and dripped into the mortar. The Mammon tipped his head back and counted, keeping the blade pressed into his flesh, until finally he reached thirty. He clenched his cut fist around a rag, then began emptying an assortment of vials into the mortar. Chanting in a long forgotten tongue under his breath, he used the tip of the blade to stir the mixture until he’d made a thick paste of all the ingredients, he picked up the mortar and set it down in the thick brush, right along the Oetherline. Then he leaned back against the basin, folded his arms, and waited. Within minutes, a smell of forgotten decay, of dead long buried. A tomb, then. Mammon straightened up and seized another charm. To call it a mere “charm” was a disservice, perhaps; the convoluted hexagonal device held stored energy from a twenty-person strong ritual. Another benefit of commanding so many forces for eons. He opened a latch on the device’s front.
A fierce wind erupted, and then dissipated as quickly as it had came. The smell swirled around him, strong as a freshly dug grave and just as cold and musty, but he kept his grip on the charm, holding it high. “Come, now,” he muttered to himself, and to the spirit he was trying to channel. “You’ll be far better off in here than out there, I assure you of that.” The markings along the device began to light up, and the air grew still. Yes, that was it; the Link was nestling inside—And then, just as quickly, it was gone. No earthy smell, no lit runes, no hairs raised along his arms. Maximilian swore and slumped back against the fountain. The determination he’d felt, the certain energy driving him, was gone, and with it, the Link. Even for a God at their prime, the ingredients needed for this ritual were scarce-not even the the storehouses of the Oether would have everything required again on a moment’s notice. He looked down at the paste in the mortar bowl; it was nearly used up. He’d had his chance, and he’d lost it. But perhaps, if he kept pushing … Maximilian took a steadying breath and set the device back inside the basin.
He rolled up one sleeve to the elbow. Then picked up the dagger again.
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The courier was terrified, and reasonably so. He had carried messages and items for magic warlords, dragon priests, and unearthly kings, but none yet possessed a name with such weight as his employer today. The man in question was awaiting inside his Tikrit estate, where the courier was to meet him. Guarding the entrance were a number of checkpoints, staffed with armed Iraqi militants, as well as a number of unseen protections woven throughout the fabric of the earth and the air. None of this would be a hindrance to the courier though; he pulled a key, sent to him from his employer, from his breast pocket. It looked no more sinister than any antique key, seemingly to a lock long rusted over, the door likely torn down centuries ago. It was only when held that one would notice the key’s significance-it was so cold that it seemed as though it should cause frostbite upon handling.
With a seemingly random, but in fact quite deliberate, movement, the courier twisted the key into the air, and a box fell before him. Inside of it was a locket, woven of priceless gold and platinum threads. The courier took the locket delicately , knowing full well that it was merely a cheap wrapper. The trinket contained a tuft of wool shorn from a lamb born on Easter morning, stained red with the blood of a roan bull slaughtered with a silver blade. A unique item from Mammon’s special inventory, and one that had taken several nights to prepare, some centuries ago.
He followed his instructions and took the locket to a group awaiting him in southeast Asia, where they would begin preparations for the ceremony.
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Candles burned in the windows of the farmhouse, inviting the two gathered to ritual. Already Lillith could feel power sparking on the air, like the thrum of anticipation in the moments before a symphony begins a performance. All the instruments tuning, preparing themselves to be played. She was even more certain now that the ritual would succeed. The power in the air was too strong. There was no way they could fail, not on a night like this, blustery and cold, the stars glimmering in the gaps between the clouds. Tonight she would finally prove to Maximilian that she was still that girl in whom he had seen so much promise. That she was willing to take the necessary risks to see their Lord to victory. Their attempts at channeling the fallen ones had failed before. But she wasn’t afraid. Tonight The Mammon would see her courage, and he would choose her. The next time they attempted to create a new Oether One, she would ensure their success. The other candidates had been unworthy—she was certain that was why the primal forces had rejected them. But Maximilian would see tonight that no entity would be able to refuse her.
She pulled open the door to the farmhouse and slipped inside. A scent like dying flowers wafted through the air. The Mammon stood in the corner, speaking into the mirror before him, where other sorcerers awaited across the globe. His cane leaned against his thigh. A clock ticked on the wall above the old gleaming fireplace, charms of flowers and metal twisted around it to ensure that it ran at the same second as other clocks spread across the globe. In the center of the room, the symbols for the ritual had already been laid out on the floor in white chalk.
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Lilith never liked hooded robes, but Mammon relished his formalities, so here she was, hooded and robed, pacing around a chalk circle ringed with candles, in the center of which lay two medallions, each with a bit of cat’s eye agate at its heart. Incense drifted from a burner in the corner. Her throat felt raw from the chanting, and her legs and back and arms ached from the care and precision of the movements. The room’s walls and floor bulged, rippled, pulsed. Was that magic? Or were the ritual strain, the exhaustion, her nerves about tonight getting to her? Was there a difference? That confusion, to be fair, was a core element of sorcery. Perception created reality, and reality perception, under the right circumstances, and with the proper tools.
She stumbled, or the floor did, and the bare wood walls around her hummed like a singing bowl properly rung. Mammon folded back his hood, so she did too. He gingerly rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Well, we’ve almost done it. Once we add in a touch of energy, the whole thing will fall into place.” “Should we use a Bond?” “Let’s not.” He drew his hand back into his robe’s voluminous sleeve, and delicately pulled from inside. “If we draw off them, or if we draw off the Oether through them, we may tip our hand to the rest too early, and I’ll run no risks on that point. Let’s see, I have it around here somewhere—ah! Yes, there’s the beauty.” He produced a curved piece of glossy black wood, which had a dull, oily sheen in the candlelight. It was a staff, but one built in such a way that it couldn’t have been of much use for walking. It seemed to draw the light out of the candles, and into its grains. “Seventy-two men, all mystic masters in their own right, died to fuel the energies contained within here. May their sacrifice not be in vain.”
The Mammon drew his head back, offering a quick phrase into the staff, and then spoke to the acolyte. “Quickly now, before the walls stop ringing. Start the chant again.” She did. She did not speak the syllables so much as open a gate within her and let them flow through: dark words issuing from the dawn of time. Lilith imagined—or did her blood remember?--- Mammon in a cave, or perhaps on some green Greek hillside, with a knife, speaking the same words that his students then spoke, and their students, forward through history. Lilith was merely the most recent gate. All the words came from before. Maximilian took an emerald ring from his pocket, placed it on his ring finger, and dragged the emerald across the staff’s handle. The wood flared orange and then cracked in two lengthwise, and a greenish golden fluid seeped out from within. Only the fluid did not fall: It waved and trickled through the air, a river following slopes she could neither see nor feel. She kept speaking, kept weaving. She let the past roll through her. Her arms rose and fell in postures long learned. The walls rang. Her bones shook from within. Her teeth hummed. The sound filled her skull and she chanted, as the fluid trickled, spiraled down through the air. Syllables of broken light tore her tongue. The greenish gold touched the agates set in the silver charms. A lightless flash blinded, a soundless crack deafened. When Lilith recovered her senses, she found herself leaning against the (no-longer-humming) wall, panting. Her heart raced in her chest. She wanted to scream. She had no breath to scream.
The magic filled Lilith. The power of the Oether swelled inside of her, and she could feel each of her individual cells as they moved in the formation of her body and her soul. She lifted her voice, the words spilling out of her as if they were animals freed from a trap. The Aramaic sliced across her tongue. She and Maximilian stood apart from each other, the chalk ruins between them. In the center of the circle a fire burned, made of sage and hibiscus and stinging nettle. In Xi’an, China, a group of eight sorcerers did the same, only their fire burned juniper, ash, and cardamom, charging the Oetherline with power to call down the elements. Similar groups were assembled in Johannesburg and Anchorage. The collective power of the mages converged through the Earth and into this room, the Raven and the Mammon serving as a conduit for the energies into the talismans.
Maximilian stood, stepped across the circle, and draped one of the cat’s-eye agates around his neck. All at once, he changed. For a brief, haunting moment, Lilith witnessed a glimpse of the power that lie inside of him-even the shadow of the God that she saw was enough to make her quake with fear, and with envy. None had the glory of her master, that she was sure of. But she would take as much of the energy, of the knowledge, of the sheer might as he would bestow her with, and she would plant those seeds inside of her for them to grow. The Raven would take her rightful place by the throne.
The Mammon flexed his shoulders, and cast his gaze to the ceiling above them. “There is a shop in a Japanese province known as the Spider’s Web. We’ve had dealings with them before, through some of our more disposable acquaintances. Send the gargoyles to fetch the shopkeep there, as well as the peculiarly one-eyed man in Washington. Have them brought to the estate on the Tigris. We have work to do.”
