Chapter #4: Interference
New Orleans, Luisiana
October 17th, 2044-CE
Yuri was Exhausted by the time he finished his mission with his companions. He returned home and slept most of the day. It usually happened when he expended a lot of physical energy in a day. Magenta, his avatar, could only supply so much physical energy, his body had to come up with the rest of it. Many mages used different tricks to get their energy back, but even with harvesting energy from the hallow, he would tire if he ran through his store of energy too much in one day.
Yuri had slept all day and into the next, finally waking up in late afternoon when the noonday sun beat down on his face through the window. He stretched and sat up. It was balmy, it was apparent it had rained the day he had passed out in bed. He reached over and grabbed his smartphone off the charger and looked through his messages. He sighed heavily as he threw the sheet off him and rose to his feet. It was the high magi that ran the coterie he belonged to. He was demanding a meeting, he had two hours to get ready and get over to the high magi’s office.
He showered and shaved, reveling in the hot water as his bathroom steamed up, oversaturated already from the rains the day before. He crossed back into the bedroom and grabbed his pants off the floor, he pulled the items out of the pockets, placing each of them on the dresser. He paused when he felt the cool solid surface of the citrine crystal in his pocket. He’d forgotten about the project he was working on. He placed the crystal on the top of the surface, separate from the rest of the items and pulled out clean clothes from the dresser then tossed his dirty clothes in the hamper next to the dresser.
After getting dressed, he packed up his things and placed the citrine crystal in the small change pocket of his black jeans. He walked towards the front door and grabbed the keys off his car. He headed out to his car and started it and backed out of the driveway. He drove through traffic, entering the highway before going south for a short drive. He arrived near the French quarter a few minutes later, finding a small non-descript building that most people passed as if it weren’t there.
Yuri stepped inside. While it was a house, the front room was set up like a reception area. The man manning the table looked up and barely acknowledged his presence, “Take a seat, Rich will be right with you.” He said as he pointed to a cheap threadbare sofa near the front door.
“Hit that button, he isn’t important enough to have a secretary,” Yuri growled and crossed his arms.
The man sighed and hit a button, a moment later a tenor-based voice answered, “Yes, Hom?”
Seriously? You can’t be that obvious? Yuri placed his hand over his eyes, subtly and silently casting a spell. He took his hand off his eyes and saw the man glowing as he replied, “It is Yuri Vanzanse here to see you for your appointment,” The man glanced at the clock on the computer, “He is over an hour early.”
Rich responded over the speaker, “Send him in.”
He pointed down the hall and Yuri waved off the comment, “I know the way, homunculus.” He said before he headed down the hallway and opened the door. He crossed into the room and closed the door, “You can’t be serious with the homunculus! Don’t tell me that guy is being worn as a skin suit by your avatar?”
“No,” He shook his head, “I constructed a simple homunculus that responds to emotions.” Rich sat back with his arms crossed, “Do you have an idea why I asked you in here?”
Yuri leaned against the door and crossed his own arms, “I can’t imagine what goes through your head, so why don’t you tell me?”
“After last night you told Ben you wouldn’t do any more hunts for Rogue Mages. I thought I was placed as head of the order,” Rich glared at Yuri, “When I give you a task, I expect you to do it!”
“Hunting down innocents? Fuck no!” He hissed, “Those three Rogues were minding their own business! We were way past the times when we hunted Rogues just because they had weird arcane elements, they cast spells with. Now if you have someone that could be the next Reaver to hunt down, someone that could do real damage to the world then let me at him, but no more mages of any kind that are keeping to themselves!”
“Who do you think you are?” Rich rose from his desk.
“I am Dunn’s grandson,” Yuri’s eyes narrowed as he stayed leaned back against the door, “I was trained by him. Just because I don’t owe you a damn thing for the magical knowledge doesn’t mean you get to send our cabal on stupid missions to kill avatars.”
Rich leaned against the table, “What project are you working on? You only refuse this stuff when you are working on something.”
“I wouldn’t tell you even if I were working on something,” Yuri mentioned, “It only took you turning in my stuff to the Eye of Ra once without crediting me for me not to trust you.”
“You think you will get out of here, that the High Magi in the Eye of Ra will take someone like you? Born in the sticks and trained in the sticks, you aint going anywhere because they don’t take anything from a blood mage,” Rich mentioned, “Do you think I would still be here if your brilliant work on binding enchantments got me in?”
“Maybe they saw through the fact that you were turning in someone else’s homework!” Yuri sneered, “Maybe you should understand the work you are turning in before you turn it in.”
“Look, if you are thinking that the EOR uses us for anything but their shit work then guess again!” Rich said then motioned for the door, “But for now, go ahead and do your detached duty. Prove me wrong and come up with something amazing. After all you are the grandson of Dunn, our last High Mage, maybe you will come up with something that will finally lift your family above all the other blood mage riff raff!” He sat down, “What are you waiting for? Go on, you wanted it, walk out that door!”
“Right because nothing is that simple with you!” Yuri stopped leaning on the door and balled his fists at his side, “What’s the other shoe that will drop, excuse me, throw at me?” He growled, “Things were not like this when my grandfather led us!”
“No, they were worse, the EOR hardly contacted us for jobs and other smaller groups of blood mages popped up more than willing to take care of any jobs that our Coterie should have been handling!” Rich growled back, matching venom for venom, “I got us back in their good graces but that doesn’t mean that the grandson of Dunn can walk in here whenever he wants and demand whatever he wants. You don’t want to be a team player, then leave. You don’t even have to stay with our order.” He smirked, “But quitters aren’t something that the EOR will even look at.”
“If I am leaving the order, it is because I was thrown out,” Yuri stated calmly as he crossed his arms, “I have no intentions of leaving the order.”
“If you have no intention of leaving the order then you need to do the work the order requires of you,” Rich stated calmly, his dark eyes glancing to the desk, “I know you don’t like it, but the EOR are the ones sending us the jobs. Not every mage we hunt is going to be the next Kota Kiriu. A lot of them just use Forces and Prime Force and we know enough about them to track the magic now. The point is a lot of the Rogues we hunt have gotten on the radar for a reason.”
“Yeah, using fate magic to win the lottery is a real problem that hurts humans and draws attention to our society needlessly, I heard it all before,” Yuri rolled his eyes and stated sarcastically. He turned and reached for the door, “The next time you want me to handle one of these jobs, don’t send Ben. Darken my doorstep some time.” He said then stepped through the doorway, “Maybe come with a file so I can see for myself if they are doing anything that will cause a problem with society.” He closed the door behind him.
As he walked through the hall he cast a spirit spell on his eyes, granting him a similar sight to what he had to identify the homunculus originally. He glanced at the homunculus on the way out the door and could see the spiritual presence he sensed before, divine spirit, I don’t think he is knowledgeable enough in Spirit Magic to create a divine spirit on his own. That has to be his Avatar. Brazen, Yuri thought as he crossed to the front door without any outward sign of what he was thinking, knowing that I am one of the experts in this coterie concerning Spirit Magic. What an idiot, making it easy for any mage to take away the source of his magic without using a spell to track the spirit pulse.
He got to his car and as he unlocked the door with the fob, he reached into his small change pocket and pulled out the polished citrine crystal. Yuri smiled as he climbed into the car and closed the door, Without an enclosed space this is currently useless. However, once I get the linking spell cast on the belt I can use it anywhere. If nothing else, having a Demesne belt will surely grab the attention of the Eye of Ra. He placed the key in the ignition and started the car with a press of a button, that idiot gave me some new information. I will have to look up Forces and Prime Force magic at some point in the future. I am sure if I know where I am looking for, I can use my blood mage pass to access the Eye of Ra library here in town.
Yuri drove, instead of heading where he knew the library was, he headed home. While knowing what elements the Rogues he hunted was important, it was something that would have to be shelved for another time. It had been ten years since the disaster involving one of the Eye of Ra’s very own mages. It was possible that the local library didn’t have the information or if they did, it was in a section restricted to those of the Eye of Ra and not in the portion of the library their blood mage allies could access. What was important was creating the Demesne belt with the ultimate goal of creating the backlash funnel and get started on the important work. Work he could do in the time being without interference from Rich and his own private cabal of mages.
It took him longer to get home than it did to drive there. Traffic was starting to get heavy, and the clouds were hanging heavy in the sky. It looked like it could open up and let down one major downpour at that moment. Even close to forty years after the hurricane ravaged the area, some of the residents there still feared another super hurricane would blow through the area and leave the city as nothing more than a lake in its wake.
He got home as the clouds darkened, threatening to release the balance of moisture they accumulated. He unlocked the door and entered, feeling a large drop of water hit his head as he entered. He closed the door and heard a lightning strike nearby. The LEDs in the house letting him know that the modern technology inside the rather old and drab structure flickered for a moment. He sighed heavily, “Great. That is only going to slow down progress.” He muttered as he walked through the house to the garage, lamenting the interference it seemed he was receiving from nature itself. He shook off the thought the moment he crossed into the garage and flicked the light switch on, illuminating the garage in a drab artificial light.
He walked to the back where a bookshelf was bolted against a wall at the top. He held his hands out by his side, channeling his physical energy through both his physical and his limited meta pathways inside his body. The result was a flight spell that carried him just high enough for him to access the textured bolt he installed at the top along the wall. Unscrewing the nut, he rested the knurled bit on the top before floating back down to the ground.
Next, Yuri funneled more physical energy through his blood pathway again, making his muscles seem slightly larger as he cast a strength spell. He easily picked up the oak bookcase by placing one hand on each side and lifting up before walking back several steps. He sat the bookcase down and walked over to see the secret cache of old notebooks in a bookcase built into the wall.
Yuri’s grandfather, Dunn, had trained Yuri to be a mage, something he didn’t do with any of his daughters; none of them had a connection to an Avatar spirit that would allow them to cast magic and being an Anti-Ascensionist, he didn’t want to risk exposing his children to magical training in fear it would cause a cascade reaction. Yuri had formed his own opinion about the classic Magi argument between Anti-Ascension and Pro-Ascension. He figured that the argument was moot and had taken a more modern neutral approach to the argument.
He walked up to the books, each of them had a title in his grandfather’s handwriting in black permanent marker. It was his grandfather’s most prized research. He could have taken any of the books within and after re transcribing them into a fresh notebook and thus gaining some understanding he could turn them in to the Eye of Ra and get the recognition he desired as well as make a successful petition for membership.
That wasn’t Yuri’s style, he only used them for reference, a point he reminded himself as he went through the books his grandfather had written until he came to one that was marked, “Enchantments.” He took the notebook out and walked to the workbench on the exterior wall. He opened it up and started looking through it for spells. Eventually reaching one page that was marked “touchstones” at the top of the page.
He laid it out and started cutting a length of leather cord as well as grabbing some gold wire and a small drill from the tools in the tool drawer when he heard a familiar feminine voice behind him, “What are you going to make?”
“It occurred to me that I never made a touchstone before so before I enchant those 18650 batteries, I will try making myself a touchstone I can store physical energy in.” Yuri responded. He opened a few drawers and glanced back behind him, “Want to help me pick out a crystal to use?” he said as he opened the craft drawers that stored all his cut quartz crystals.
The ethereal image of Magenta walked forward stopping at the perimeter of the table, “Why not go with a red one?”
“Because I am tired of the Blood Mage motif and having to make all my enchantments in red or black,” Yuri answered and closed the drawers which had the red quartz crystals and the ones that housed them colored in black.
“Got any pink crystals?” Magenta questioned which received a narrow-eyed leer from Yuri. She shrugged and added, “What, not your favorite color?”
“Pink being the new black is so 2012,” Yuri shook his head, “Plus that is a rare form of aura quartz. I found some natural aura quartz, but they are blue.” He held up a blue crystal that had subtle inclusions inside of it, “This is blue aura quartz. Also hard to find so I don’t have a lot of them.”
“So, do you not want to use the blue one?” Magenta asked as he reached to drop the crystal delicately in the clear plastic drawer.
Yuri glanced over his shoulder at the eyes of the ethereal avatar with elven features. Her magenta eyes were locked onto the crystal, “Do you want me to us the blue crystal?” He held it up and away from the drawer, allowing her to see the inclusions in the clear piece of borosilicate.
Magenta nodded, “What better way to differentiate yourself from the meme in question?”
He nodded and sat the crystal down. He looked at the drill for a moment before shaking his head and going over to a drill press across from the garage. He placed the crystal there and clamped it down with some wood and pressure clamps before taking the chuck key and pulling out the old large bit that was left in place. He found a jeweler’s bit and managed to get it in the chuck and locked tight before lowering the drill to its lowest rpm setting.
He also grabbed water, the base of the drill was water resistant so oil and water could be used on metal objects to keep them from overheating. He knew that too fast or too hard of a push from the press and the crystal would shatter. It would also shatter if it was overheated so water would be used to cool it while he bored a hole into the crystal. However, too slow of a speed and not enough pressure from the press and the crystal would be scratched but nothing beyond a circle shaped blemish in the crystal. Water would also catch the free silicates released from the drill and prevent him from breathing in the caustic particles.
He turned on the drill and lowered the spinning bit against the polished surface of the stone. He sprayed water on the cerulean surface as he slowly drilled through, making millimeter progress as he sprayed it down with the spray bottle. Each heavy sprits from the bottle cooled down and captured the silicates while he studied the hole, making sure that the hole ran true. Several minutes later, the hole pierced the other side and one final pass to complete the hole. He unclamped the crystal, rinsed it and dried it off before heading back to the workbench.
He sat the cerulean crystal on the work bench and reached up to the wall to grab a couple of spools off the peg board. One was a spool of cut leather string and the other was a spool of gold wiring. He took a length of each and grabbed a cutter cutting off a run of leather cord and a longer length of gold wire. He folded the wire in half and captured the ends in the end of the drill chuck. He captured the loop with a pair of pliers and pulled the wire taught before pressing the trigger slowly, twisting the wire into a tighter bundle.
He took the bundle of hardened wire and bent it in half before bending it where the top half started to look like a loop for a necklace to go through then pushed the wire through the bored-out hole he created in the light blue crystal. Once it was situated with the triangular bends he made in the middle, he bent the wire where it held onto the sides of the necklace loop, finishing the mount.
He walked over to the corner of the table where a clamp was bolted to the table. He bolted the crystal there with the mount facing out. he placed a blank piece of scratch paper on the floor and then covered the mount he created with Epoxy. Not only would the mount be tight, but it would also be secured. He sighed, “Well that needs an hour or two.” He mentioned aloud, wondering if anyone was still watching him. In the intervening time it seemed the ethereal image of Magenta had evaporated.
He walked over with a smirk on his face and grabbed the red jasper crystal off the card table he was seated at days before. The enchanted citrine had sat next to it. He looked at the middle of the spell circle. All he needed to do was change a couple of symbols and the spell circle was again ready for his next ritual.
Grabbing on of the books, he flipped through it as he subconsciously walked over to the workbench, grabbing a chalkboard eraser and a piece of chalk before walking back. And sitting the book on the table. He knelt and erased the different symbols in his spell circle that wouldn’t match the new Demesne spell he prepared for. Yuri scrawled in the new symbols before putting the red jasper crystal in the middle. He repeated the process he used with the first crystal, focusing on the spell as he touched the outer circle and watched as crimson energy poured through the circle, saturating it and the symbols before it made its way to the crystal. As the hour dawned on, the crystal absorbed the energy, ending up with him sitting back, tired at the end of it, waiting for the crystal to absorb more.
He grabbed the crystal from the circle and placed it next to the citrine one. Depleted of energy, but not entirely, Yuri walked back to the other crystal he was working on, trapped in a mount with epoxy over the tightly wrapped mount. He touched the metal and felt that the epoxy had now finished curing. He took it out of the mount and dropped it on the table, “Surprising I never created a touchstone before.” He commented as he flipped through pages in his grandfather’s book to the spell, “Oh, only need apprentice knowledge of artifact magic for it. Cool.” He said as he read the instructions to cast the spell, “I won’t need to craft a spell circle for it, designed to work at just double potency…” He sat the book down.
With the crystal on the table, he placed his right hand above the blue crystal and touched the table with the tip of his fingers. He focused on the spell and directed the physical energy through the pathways in his hand. Pale yellow energy swirled around the crystal, slowly being absorbed into the crystal as the spell completed.
Yuri pulled his hand away at the end of the spell and picked up the crystal with his other hand. A yellow fog settled over his eyes for a moment as he used his artifice vision to examine the spell. It had sat in place and seemed to have formed like a cage within the lattice to hold the energy that would be funneled to it. He nodded in approval as he grabbed the length of leather cord he cut earlier and fished one end through the large triangular eyelet and knotted the length of cord where the necklace would sit under his shirt, pressed against his chest.
He put on the necklace as he walked into the kitchen from the garage door. He glanced out the back door and saw it was pouring rain. He sighed heavily, he wanted to test out the capabilities of the new touchstone he created; however, it was pouring outside, a mist hung in the air above the ground as heavy drops bounced and broke apart under the onslaught. He would be soaked if he attempted to activate the hallow now, but an empty touchstone is such a waste of a spell. He sighed heavily before grabbing the small pocketknife on the counter by the door and walking outside.
Within a few seconds of clearing the awning he was soaked from the torrential downpour. He saw a blinding flash as lightning struck somewhere close by, less than a second passed between the flash and a thunderous crack, it told him the worst of the storm was close by. If he hadn’t been soaked from the second, he had been exposed to the rain, he would have turned back. As it was, he was already drenched from head to toe.
He reached the edge of the hallow, the spot of ground in which no plant life grew. He flicked the blade out of the handle of his pocketknife and cut his hand, in the rain, the water diluted the blood that ran from the palm of his hand, but it was still enough to activate the hallow, a red mist filled the air. He breathed in and took the energy, directing it to the necklace with focused thoughts. At the end, when the mist was almost gone, he healed his hand and picked up the crystal with a hand, he could see it was full of energy, just as he was replenished, the crystal was now full of energy. He smiled and turned to go back inside, “time for a shower and sleep.” He said to no one in particular as he made it to the back door.
