World of Darkness - Time of Judgement - Mage

by Judgement Day

  I turn the next comer in the grand road and realize I’ll have to change my plans. It looks like a bomb went off in the palace. Several bombs, rather, because the whole complex, spread across multiple square kilometers, lies in ruins. The jade roofs and jeweled halls lie open to the raw fury of the maelstrom, and obviously have done so for years. The destruction isn’t just from the storm, though. There’s been more purposeful attack on the structures’ integrity. Gates haven’t just been broken down; they’ve been broken opart and scattered. The sculptures I can see from here have all been deliberately defaced. Holes have been cut into the foundations, letting the chill winds from deepest yin blow through without interruption. Someone or something worked very hard on this. Given the number of enemies the Emperor amassed in his long rule, I could spend weeks trying to guess which of them perpetrated all of this.

  Fatigue catches up with me and I sob wet ectoplasmic tears. I have always hoped, somewhere I seldom acknowledged it, that one day the palace might become the capital of a better state of the dead. It’s the same hope, really, that so many of us vest in the decision of the living government to use the Forbidden City: it testifies to the transformation of tyranny into justice. Even when the practice is not yet anywhere close to perfect, we can look at the physical home of the state and think to ourselves, “Someday the rulers will be worthy of the rituals and aspirations vested in this place. ” So with the lands of the dead, because ghosts need just and wise government just as much as the living, so that they can pursue their individual duties and fulfill their obligations to each other and to their still-breathing descendants. But now all that is in ruins. There is nothing here to redeem, only to bury.

  My tears don’t altogether spoil my alertness. Something moves on the road, faster than I did and less noisily. It’s like a black shadow drifting along against the wind. Black shadow. I remember the thing that struck not long after I left Beijing. Has one of my stalkers found me?

  Hiding is not an option. The ruins are too dangerous: anyone willing to wreak that much damage must have taken the possibility of later exploration or restoration into account. The void is not an option. I can only face whatever comes. I stand up, dry my tears as best I can, and concentrate on remembering everything the Wu Keng taught me about self-defense.

  Something pale flaps around the shadow. Gradually I realize that it’s the skin of that old man who tried to claim me himself, and any uncertainty I may have felt about the shadow’s identity evaporates. I wish I knew more about what it was, since “angry hungry ghost” still leaves a great deal unknown, but the basics are clear. I concentrate on drawing on the new yang power within me, reinforcing my sense of self and the definition of my ghostly form. In a moment the shadow stands on the last landing of the imperial road and has drawn itself up into its full demon warrior form, swords at the ready.

  Feeling that I have nothing to lose, I open our exchange. “Begone. You have no authority in this place or over me. You are none of my ancestors, for I honor the traditional rites and know who receives my bounty. You are no servant of the Emperor or the great hierarchy, for you display none of the blessed jade marks of office. You are an opportunist, and you owe it to whatever scrap of virtue you may still possess to depart as quickly as possible. Take your foul trophy with you and contemplate how much worse you have made your standing in the eyes in heaven. ”

  The thing’s voice emerges with a deep bass rumble. “Heaven granted me relief from hell itself. You are the one who profanes by your very existence. You are of the lightning people, with power heaven intended only for its anointed heirs. You stumbled onto it by luck or theft and have never had the prudence to give it up, let alone the temperance to let it pass from you. Now you carry a double portion of heaven’s power, and are doubly at fault. I come to set the power free and end your blasphemy. ” The black swords strike sparks against the jade road as it makes ceremonial flourishes intended to intimidate me. And indeed I am fairly intimidated.

  I brace myself for a lengthy fight, or at least a lengthy skirmish and pursuit, but it doesn’t go that way at all. I adopt a simple, flexible defensive posture. The hungry ghost lunges forward, and the swords fall, one, two, three. I feel an intense agony, and then I am aware of my consciousness drawing in on itself. I cannot see my ghost-body, but I can feel it cut off from my essential awareness. The fourth sword falls, and I feel even my thoughts cut one from another. That stroke must have passed straight into my mind.

  I die.

  * * *

  WILLIAM

  Naturally I have no way of telling how long I spend in this barely existing state. Terry stops talking to me, and after that there’s only internal phenomena, which I know better than to trust in an environment that’s being heavily manipulated. Part of me really hopes that this is all a good complex simulation being fed to me by routine electrochemical stimulation, with my body stored in some Bosnian bam or anti-Technocratic installation just about anywhere. The rest of me knows that’s a form of escapism, a luxury I can’t afford right now. I don’t begin to understand what Terry is doing or how he’s doing it, but he is doing it and I have to deal with it: I have to find a way to do something he hasn’t prepared for.

  The Technocratic Union inherited a lot of good ideas from its predecessor organization, the Order of Reason. One of them was a set of refinements to the medieval notion of the memory palace, a mnemonic scheme for associating memories with a real or imagined structure. This alcove holds memories of meals, for instance, and this niche holds the dinner memories and that pedestal next to it holds the memories of ceremonial banquets, and so on. I spend some time (what time? who knows? ) organizing all my memories associated with Terry, and then more time searching for any possibly relevant information. Here it is, at last, in the form of a lecture given to Ragnarok members as part of our preparation for millennial madness, about “rechromed” old ideas souped up for Y2K panic possibilities.

  The lecturer was one of the ugliest women I’ve ever known, with an amazingly sexy speaking voice. She described the cults devoted to entities with names like “Lords of the Outer Dark, ” with a great digression about just how much harm that young fool H. P. Lovecraft did in attracting would-be cosmic nihilist magicians to a bundle of ideas just screwy enough to work sometimes, what with psionic triggers and psycho-noetic resonance effects. Terry hadn’t had any interest in entities of the ultimate void back when we were both Adepts, but then people do change. What he’s talking about is a close enough match that my threat assessment programs would put it at or near the top of the list. I decide to assume that it’s true.

  Developing a threat response on the basis of that admittedly contingent assessment, I recall that worshippers of void gods imagine themselves making or inhabiting vast labyrinths in extra-dimensional realms. Their language is bullshit, of course, but there are a number of ways that they can have experiences that they can interpret that way without being any stupider than they have to be to worship void gods in the first place, starting with transverse passages through folded dimensions and getting esoteric from there. I should be able to move myself as a bundle of neural activity even if I’ve been separated from my usual physical form, and interact with whatever barriers there may be to this anti-space____

  Slowly I develop a suitable awareness, drawing on yoga and trauma medicine in equal measure. Suddenly it all clicks and I can tumble and stretch.

  With more effort, I can move forward in a rather tricky set of oscillations. Then there’s a thud, or its neurological equivalent. Here’s a wall. I spread all my limbs against it to find an opening, and eventually do. Curl and oscillate, run into another. Do it again. If Terry comes by, he’ll notice this immediately. I decide not to let myself think about that right now.

  Without warning, I’m at the end of it. I notice this because all my senses come back at once. It’s dark and cold and smells of rot, but all of that is much more enjoyable than not being able to sense anything. As I gain back my tangible self, I fa
ll to the ground, since my legs are useless, but that’s okay—I can manage to deal with that, too. I see that I’m resting on a ledge overlooking a huge shaft, miles wide, made of some veined rock that’s hard to look at, a tangle of red and black and what I suspect are ultraviolet hues at the limits of my perception. I look up and see a sky larger than any possible on earth, possibly larger than any that can exist in my normal continuum. It goes on a long way, full of lightning-ridden storm clouds and things hard to understand. Upside-down oceans? Floating mountains? Winged dust? Something flashing up and down beyond the speed of light? I don’t know.

  I look down in hopes of further answers. That proves unwise. Down there is something that sucks, pulling out all the energy stored in my mind and body. I’m aware of chilling, of freezing up, of crumbling. My thoughts flow out and down along with scraps of skin and tissue, too. My memory palace falls apart, swept away in a sort of psychic gale. Bit by bit, all of me falls into the deepest void.

  I die.

  * * *

  ROBERT THE THIRD DAY OF UNWANTED ORDER IS MUCH WORSE. THE SYNCHRONIZATION LASTS FOR hours this time, and it takes substantial effort on my part to avoid being swept up by it. The Rubbishes can’t manifest at all while it lasts: it’s just too orderly for anything like my totem. I want to go hunt down Mike and Louie and make them aware of their responsibility, but I decide to wait for a while. I take this wave of synchronization literally lying down, stretched out on my bed until the damn thing goes away.

  Eventually, sometime around noon, it lets up enough that I can move and feel only fatigued when I try to choose my own actions, rather than utterly dazed and disoriented. My totem remains cut off from me, and I can see that the only spirits active in the building are the ones that thrive on geometric precision. It’s a great day for the spirits of angles and walls, of regulated voltage and regular time. The rest of us make do as we can. I don’t ask any questions of my neighbors; I just listen to their conversations, and it’s clear that none of them is consciously aware of more than a general uneasiness. They speculate about tornado weather, sewer leaks, and other mundane explanations. For the time being I let them do it.

  I ask around about the unwitting magicians, but nobody seems to have seen them since the morning. They might have a job somewhere today. I sigh and head out to make a semi-random canvas of the neighborhood, just in case they’re somewhere closer to home. Sure enough, as I go east, I notice the order reestablishing itself. Cars don’t straggle through on yellow lights here, and nobody jaywalks. There’s no litter in the streets. Nobody bumps into each other. Mostly, the affected people seem unaware of it, but I make out a few haunted looks that suggest at least a few of them are aware of acting in ways they didn’t choose and can’t stop. I press on through the spiritual resistance to the order-makers.

  They’re in a Laundromat, washing big bags full of clothes. They look pretty glazed themselves. Possibly this is the result of their own ongoing refusal to see what’s up. I notice that every single machine in the place is running in perfect synchronization, and so do some of the other patrons. They’d like to leave, but they can’t, not until they’ve washed and dried and neatly folded their clothes. Once that’s done, they can’t run, but they can proceed in an orderly manner out the door and to wherever it is they’re going. Anytime the place seems close to emptying out, in come more locals, many of them looking somewhat bewildered, and many of the clothes they’ve brought are “dirty” only in the sense that they’re not absolutely pristine clean. Doesn’t matter; they get to their washing, too.

  I finally manage to get to Mike and Louie, overcoming all the urges to throw the clothes I’m now wearing into the nearest empty machine. It’s hard going. Even the spirits of precision don’t much like this, because it’s not their precision but someone else’s creation. I haven’t felt so alone since my awakening apart from that ghastly time after the red eye. “Guys, ” I tell them as calmly as I can, “you’ve got a problem. ”

  They continue folding clothes as they look up at me. “It’s like I told you, ” Louie says with a snarl, “it’s happening more and more, man. Everywhere we go. ”

  “That’s just it, ” I answer with a nod. “Everywhere you and Mike go. It’s not the world at large, guys, it’s you. ”

  “What do you mean? ” they demand in perfect unison.

  “Look, you have to know that the maids call me el brujo. We all know the gossip about each other, and you’ve been around the building a while. ” They nod at that, in perfect unison. “Tbey do that because I know a few things. And I’m telling you that this unnatural order is your own doing. ”

  “That can’t be, ” they insist, calmly, in perfect unison. “We’re the ones fighting against it. We tell everyone about how they have to free themselves. We fight the good fight ourselves. We throw the monkey wrenches and get the flash crowd going. This is what we hate. ”

  “Still. ” I think about how to continue. “It’s like junkies, in a way, ” I try to explain. “Maybe you like the rush of newly made chaos so much that you make that much more order to overthrow. Maybe it’s basic self-loathing at work, like you don’t feel worthy of enjoying freedom. I don’t have to know all the details right now, not when the starting place is just for you to recognize that I might be right. ”

  “I’m sorry, Robert, " they tell me, in perfect unison, “but there’s just no way. And since you keep persisting in this, we have to figure that you’re part of the problem. We don’t think we need to hear any more from you. " Then they turn back to their laundry.

  “I... ” That’s as far as I get. I’ve felt a lot of pain in my time, but this is the worst ever. It’s physical, mental and spiritual all at once. Unseen weights push at my skeleton to make it precisely the average height for a man my age, and unseen hands pull my skin out to the volume typical for a man my age, since I’m a little taller and a little skinnier than the norm. It’s far worse in my soul, though. Memories catch on fire... and the heat I feel across the top of my head suggests that that may not be just a metaphor. My awareness of the spirit world dims, and flashes in and out like a strobe light. My pulse normally runs fast, since like most shamans I’m putting more stress on my body than most folks. Now it’s forcibly slowed to the average. The shocks of repeated stoppage of excess beats leave me so dizzy I’d like to fall over, but I can’t because of the twisting that my skeleton is trying to do.

  I die.

  * * *

  DANTE THE TRIUNE SOUL LOOMS IN FRONT OF ME AGAIN, FORCING ITS WAY INTO THE MATRIX I’VE BEEN CONSIDERING. I SEE AT ONCE THAT IT’S MORTALLY WOUNDED, EACH OF ITS FACETS DYING IN SOME NASTY WAY. IT’S AT ONCE DYING OF TOO MUCH ORDER, TOO MUCH CHAOS, AND THE DISORDERLY MIX OF THE TWO. TYPICAL. THESE HYBRIDS THAT EXIST AS EMERGENT PROPERTIES OF INDIVIDUAL SOULS TEND TOWARD THAT SORT OF IRONIC “LET’S COVER ALL THE BASES” STATEMENT.

  I set my other work aside for this particular experience and wrap my arms around the bleeding soul. I probe it directly and conceptually for signs of wounding, performing an impromptu triage. The attacks are very deep in each of the people expressed here, with assaults on their identities as well as their physical and astral forms. That makes it harder. I’ve helped assaulted souls before by just taking the spiritual component out of the attack zone and into a physical host removed in time or space. But trying to move these now would be like dragging around someone with a broken back: it’d make matters that much worse.

  In fact, by myself I can't think of anything I can actually do to help these people. With that realization, I find myself surrounded by a crowd of future versions of myself. We’ve been known to have conferences this way to work on particularly thorny problems, but this time they don’t stay to talk. They just pop in, make sure I notice them, and pop out. They do this in waves, coming in over a stretch of what I’d think of in linear time as maybe thirty seconds and out again about as fast. Then a minute goes by and they do it again. And again. I go from holding the injured soul in a near-empty pocket of sp
ace to being surrounded by my own soul writ trans-temporally and back... and the clue strikes me. I must be on the right track, since there aren’t any more of those self-visitation waves.

  For most of us, when your soul is split apart, that’s it. Whether it’s the normal, unawakened human soul or the awakened version with its attached oversoul, there’s just so much of it to go around, and it will break if you push it wrong. But the members of this triad, they’ve all got a second oversoul. It’s what attracted hostile attention to each of them. And it can save them, if I can do this right.

  There’s no point in my going into too many details of the surgery itself. There aren’t words for it. I have to construct a whole set of maps showing me the current flow of dependencies between the divided souls and the body wrapped around each, and then use those to redraw the connections themselves, then update the maps, and bind the whole thing together in a quick-setting semiotic cement. It’s unlike anything I’ve done before, and would leave most magicians who glory in their symbolic power gasping for breath. Certainly I’m awfully tired by the time I’m done.

  The key thing is that it works. I’ve redirected all the damage to self for each soul to the new oversoul I helped steer them toward not so long ago. Tough break for the oversoul, but then it’s a harsh universe, and the ease of the final steps tells me that I’m working in accordance with these oversouls’ innate meanings even though I don’t feel altogether happy about it. When that’s done I can break off the damage-carrying entities and give them a gaudy, flashy version of the triune soul’s true names. Nearly true names, as it were—merchandising names, perhaps. The hostile forces around each component soul go to work on that while I carry off the real trine to safety and healing. At first we drift through ethereal gulfs, but then I think of the right place to drop them, and do.