Strangers In Boston: Tales from a Strange World Book 1 (The Strange World Series)

by T. S. Mann

  “I don’t have a shot! Electra!” The doll laughed and laughed, so loudly that it never even heard the gun hammer as it was cocked next to its head.

  “Pop goes the weasel!” said Electra just before she opened fire. The doll’s head was not protected by the coat, and her bullets tore through it like tissue paper. There was a loud pop that echoed through the room, but after it died, there was silence. The remains of the possessed doll quickly deflated and sank to the ground next to the visibly relieved Widget.

  Bryce rushed over and helped his wife up before turning to Electra. “Pop goes the weasel? Seriously?”

  Electra shrugged. “Morbid humor lets me do more damage.” She looked down at the now headless doll. “What went wrong?”

  Widget knelt to inspect the remains of the doll.

  “Unfocused chaos magic. We managed to get a brief interface with your missing boy. Unfortunately, he’s currently under the effects of some kind of chaos spell which fed back through the connection to us. Could have been worse, though – I don’t even think this was intentional on Lindsay’s part. If it had been, God knows what sort of nightmare she could have sent through.”

  Carefully, she peeled the coat off the remains of the doll.

  “Tell Doc that we did our best and we’ll keep studying the coat, but if there’s this much chaos magic floating around the kid, we’re not scrying for him again. There’s too much risk of the Beyond breaking in through our defenses, and I’m not risking the security of whole College for this kid.”

  Electra nodded. “Understood.” She thought for a moment. “Oh, Doc also said to ask you one other thing. Do you think that any of the Commies might be able to help us?”

  Bryce nearly laughed. “The Cult of Mammon? Well, at this point, I guess we probably are that desperate. Yeah, there’s a few who might offer some help without asking for our eternal souls or something. We’ll make some calls and get back to you.”

  “Thanks.”

  As she turned to go, Widget spoke again.

  “Electra, I understand that Doc may have a personal interest in this boy’s situation, but you should make sure he understands what’s happened. My guess is, right now, the kid’s being tortured through some form of chaos-magic insanity effect. If you do find him, you might not like what you discover.”

  She nodded, turned and exited the lab. Privately, she thought to herself, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

  CHAPTER 8:

  INTRO TO SPELLCASTING 101

  Back at Doc’s house ...

  “What is it with magic and candles, anyway?" Matt asked. "Lindsay had the church covered with them.”

  Doc brought the candles back to the table with him.

  “Well personally, I keep candles around in case the power goes out. As for Lindsay, that was just ritual magic. Strangers use rituals to facilitate our spells. There are basically three types: short-form, long-form and ingrained.

  “Short-form rituals take just a few seconds to cast but are also weaker and don’t last a long. Long-form rituals take several minutes to several hours to cast but are more powerful and longer lasting.

  “Ingrained rituals are very complicated long-form rituals which are so powerful that they sort of burn an imprint of their effect into the Infrastructure. Kind of like how an image will get burned into a monitor if you don’t use a screen-saver. Ingrained rituals are difficult to execute because they must be done with exact precision, but they draw so readily upon magic that even dedicated mundanes can perform them.

  “The Catholic exorcism ceremony, for instance, started off as a set of long-form rituals used by Catholic Strangers back in the Middle Ages. Over time, they got formalized and eventually adopted by the Church for general use.”

  “What kind was Lindsay using?” Matt asked.

  “From your memories, it looked like an informal long-form ritual. Not very structured, but she did spend several months working with her cult using tropes associated with some bastardized Satanism-Wicca hybrid as preparation for her final ceremony.”

  “Bastardized? So that wasn’t really witchcraft?”

  “Oh, Good Lord, no! I’ve known plenty of Wiccans in my time, Gardnerian and Alexandrian alike. And they all would have probably laughed at what Lindsay was calling witchcraft. I’ve seen Chick Tracts that are more authentic.

  “No, she was just riffing off the beliefs of poorly informed teenagers combined with a few pop culture references to fuel her magic. She sits among a coven of sexually-charged, half-naked young people surrounded by lots of candles and incense in the middle of a desecrated church, and she quotes some H.P. Lovecraft, and then – voila! She can punch a whole clean through the Superstructure and summon a beyonder.”

  Matt laughed. “Man, when we get Luke back, am I gonna rag him about getting taken in by that stuff.” Doc’s right eye twitched slightly at the idea of rescuing Luke so casually, but Matt didn’t notice. "So, what is a beyonder exactly?"

  "Something that defies easy explanation. The short answer is that it's a concept from a different universe that has no meaning here but is summoned anyway and given a physical form. Everything that comes here from the Beyond needs to be wrapped up in a physical form to survive. Otherwise, the impossibilities inherent in their nature eventually cause Reality to notice them and destroy them ... assuming a Stranger doesn't get to them first.

  “And believe me, it's a lot better for a Stranger to engage and destroy an intruder from the Beyond than to rely on Reality to do if for us. We can exercise judgment and restraint and use our tactical advantages to handle it as safely as possible. Reality tends to use things like volcanoes."

  “Volcanoes?” Matt asked dubiously.

  “Let’s just say Mount St. Helens wasn’t entirely a natural phenomenon and leave it at that,” Doc answered. “But we're drifting off topic. Lindsay is quite powerful, but she’d never have been able to summon the beyonder so easily had she not spent months preparing for it by brainwashing her dupes into providing spiritual support. Unfortunately, we don’t have months, so today, we’re going to focus on simple short-form rituals.”

  He put one candle in the holder and set it in the middle of the table. The rest, he put off to one side.

  “For starters, we’re going to see if you can light a candle through magic alone without any sort of ritual at all. Now, the first requirement for any spell is an act of will on the part of the Stranger. For the untrained, strong desire can substitute for will, so you must always be aware of your emotions or you risk casting spells without meaning to.

  “Once you get a feel for the flow of juice through you, that will be less of a problem, but even if you never ‘accidentally’ cast a spell again, you might cast a spell with unintentional side effects if your attention is distracted or your mind unfocused. With that in mind, I want you to focus your full attention on this candle. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Just concentrate on it and think about your connection to your magic.

  “You're a luminor, so this should be easy for you. Not just because luminors are associated with light, but more importantly, because giving off light is what candles are meant to do, and empyreal magic functions by driving things to fulfill their potential. Just think about that golden glow and imagine it lighting the candle for you.”

  Matt nodded and put his hands down to rest on his knees. Then, he focused his eyes on the candle, willing it to light. He tried to imagine a golden light around the wick, creating friction and then flame, making the candle do what it was meant to do.

  At first nothing happened, so he furrowed his brow and gritted his teeth, and after a several minutes, his body began to shake with mental exertion. Finally, he felt a sudden rush of ... something, a force passing through him. It reminded him of the rush he experienced when the light entered his body after his vision in the church, though much less intense. And then, almost anticlimactically, the candle wick gave off a tiny flame. He sat back, exhausted but pleased.

  “D
amn, Doc! Will I have to do that for every spell! I thought I was going to pop a blood vessel or something!”

  “No, no. I just made you do it the hard way so you’d know what it felt like. You live an exciting life now, Matthew. You never know when you’re going to wake up and find yourself hog-tied and gagged, and you’ll need to be able to cast ‘hands free.’ Now, did you feel the sensation of something passing through you just as the candle lit?”

  “Yeah, it felt like...” Matt struggled to find words. “Like I was taking a really deep breath. Only I wasn’t breathing air but ... light, I guess. And then, I breathed it out and the candle lit up.”

  “That light was...” Doc’s face assumed an oddly distasteful expression.

  “Well, it has many names, but for now, we’ll call it juice, which is a commonly-used casual term for it. It’s the raw magical energy of the Superstructure using you as a conduit into our physical universe. The reason it was so tiring for you is that by relying on concentration alone you had to pull down a large quantity of juice at once. There are limits to how much of it your body can channel, and while that limit will increase with time and experience, you must still be cautious to not overextend yourself.

  “Last night, for instance, all those empyreal fireballs had a very high juice cost. You fired off several of them in quick succession. Then, you dispelled the last one before it could harm your brother, but canceling a spell after it’s cast costs a lot of juice as well. That’s why you ran out of power and could no longer defend yourself. Now, feel like you’re ready to try again?”

  Matt nodded. Doc leaned over and blew out the burning candle.

  “Good. This time, though, we’ll try it the easy way. I want you to focus on the candle again, but this time, point at it forcefully.”

  Doc demonstrated, pointing his finger firmly at the candle as if giving it a harsh lecture.

  “As you do so, I want you to say ‘Light!’ Bark it out, like you’re ordering the candle to light itself.”

  Matt rubbed his hands and looked intently the candle. He raised his right hand, took a deep breath and did as Doc instructed.

  “Light!” As with his fireball attack from the night before, he once again had the sensation of something powerful and alien undergirding and modulating his voice. This time, the candle instantly lit up with an audible whoosh, and its light was even brighter than before. The rush of power, of juice, passing through is body was still present, but not nearly as intense or distracting.

  “I see what you mean. That was much easier!”

  “Exactly. You can cast magic just through concentration, and sometimes you’ll need to if you’re in a situation where you need to be discrete or if you’re bound in some way. Also, practicing that way is a good way to increase the amount of juice you can channel. Think of it as spiritual weight training.

  “Generally, though, you will want to cast magic with a ritual, which is simply some type of external action done as a focus for your magic. A word or phrase combined with some type of gesture works best in pinch. It doesn’t really matter what, but the simple act of doing something tangible in the real world helps to bring across the magic.”

  Again, Doc blew out the candle. “Now, try it again, only this time say something different.”

  “Like what?”

  Doc shrugged. “Anything. Say ‘light’ in a foreign language if you know how. Make a bad pun or a pop culture reference. Say it in Pig Latin. It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that you use creativity and imagination to frame your intent for what you want to happen and then you manifest that creativity and imagination through some ritual action.”

  “As I recall from your memories, saying ‘Fuck you, bitch’ while pointing in Lindsay’s direction was enough to hurl a fire ball at her, though I think we can probably come up with something both more creative and more dignified than that.”

  Matt thought for a moment as he stared at the still-smoldering candle. Then, with a slight smile, he brought up both hands and pointed his index fingers at the candle while sticking his thumbs up in the air. As he did so, he said “Aaayyyy!” just like Fonzie on the old Happy Days TV show. Again, the candle lit itself, but that time, he felt no resistance at all and sensed very little juice flowing through him.

  Doc stared in surprise. “How the hell are you old enough remember The Fonz?!?”

  “Nick at Night. My mom used to stay up and watch Happy Days all the time when I was a kid. She said she had a crush on Fonzie when she was a little girl.”

  He looked down at the candle somewhat proudly. “So that’s magic, then? Just some kinda gesture and a smart-ass comment?”

  “Basically. The physical movement is called a mudra, after a Hindu term for a gesture with holy significance. The words are an incantation, which can be any kind of verbal utterance. Just try to mix it up some; using the same simple incantations repeatedly sometimes wears down their effectiveness. It’s also boring, and since it's your natural creativity that makes the magic flow, boring is bad. In addition to mudras and incantations, there are other potential elements.

  “If you write down words, phrases or symbols and work them into the ritual somehow, they’re called as sigils. Occasionally, urban Strangers will hide sigils in gang tags or other graffiti. If you use a physical object that represents what effect you want, that’s called a fetish. Clutching a rabbit’s foot for luck or staring into a pool of water to see the future, for instance, or just burning a lot of candles to help set the mood.

  “More complicated rituals can incorporate what we call auspicious elements to boost their power even more. Wear certain clothing appropriate to the effect you want to create. Or cast the spell at a ritually significant time or place. That’s why Lindsay attempted her summoning at midnight on Halloween. Halloween is auspicious for most forms of magic anyway, but it’s ideal for magical effects intended to take advantage of mundane fears about the supernatural. So is the Day of the Dead, which is a Vodun holy day that starts tomorrow.

  “For the same reason, it aided her to cast the spell in a desecrated church, because the sensation you all had of transgressing against moral and spiritual boundaries further weakened the barriers between our world and the Beyond.”

  Doc rose from his chair and moved to the center of the room, beckoning Matt to follow.

  “But that’s enough book larnin’,” he said with a mock redneck accent. “Now, let’s commence to fightin’.”

  Matt laughed. “Cool!”

  “Now, magical combat, as you might expect, turns on two things, defense and offense. Defense takes the form of shield spells. Any Axiom can be called upon to generate a personal shield against anything that falls under that Axiom’s purview. As a luminor, you can easily create an empyreal shield about yourself, which is very useful and a good place to start. Such shields have the property of maintaining things in their default, idealized state.

  “In other words, it can protect you from most mundane damage but also from attack spells cast against you. However, it tends to burn out more quickly than less generalized shields. If you called on the Bodhisattva, instead, you could create a psychic shield which can protect you from any supernatural effects of any kind which can alter your mind or personality and make it easier for you to see through mundane deceptions, but it wouldn’t help against a physical attack. With kinetic magic, you could cast a shield which can protect you from any form of harm that arises from motion: bullets, falling damage, punches, extreme heat, even loud noises.

  “But remember – while these shields can protect you from all relevant harm, they degrade in effectiveness over time, and every time a shield protects you from harm, it degrades a little faster. When the shield is used up, you have to recast it or do without.”

  “Sort of like the health bar in a video game?”

  “Sure, why not,” Doc said. “You forget. I am a grumpy old man who hasn’t played any video games since Pac-Man. But I digress. Now, you can cast a shield spell with a ritu
al, just like any other spell. So, stand up, pick a shield, and fire one off. I’d recommend a kinetic shield.”

  Matt rose from the table and moved to the center of the room. He looked down at his body for few seconds as he tried to come up with a witty incantation. Then, he cleared his mind, raised his hands and spoke. “Armor All.”

  There was a slight flash, and suddenly, Matt noticed that his whole body was enveloped in a soft golden nimbus. He looked up at Doc in surprise.

  “Hey, is everybody going to be able to see this glow?”

  “Only other Strangers, and only if they use magic to specifically look for it, though more powerful Strangers can do so automatically without casting a spell for it. Now, let’s see how you did.”

  He held up a finger and lightly tapped the boy on the shoulder. “Taste test.” Then, he stuck the finger in his mouth.

  “Hmm. Not bad. You’ll get a feel for how strong your shields are and how strong they can be if you max them out. Right now, you’re maintaining about a four- or five-point empyreal shield. It will probably last for the better part of the day, but during that time, it will lose integrity whenever it protects you from damage of any kind.”

  Matt nodded. Then, with a little hesitation, held up his own index finger. Doc shrugged and nodded, and then Matt tapped him on the shoulder in the same way and repeated the same ritual. After he pulled the finger from his mouth, he reeled slightly.

  “Whoa. That’s a lot of info to take in there, Doc!”

  “I’m a complicated man. What’s your assessment?”

  Matt thought for a moment.

  “Three shields in all. A empyreal shield. I don’t know how many points it is, but it feels really tough. Then, there’s a psychic shield, I think. And ... I’m not sure what that last one is. Wait, don’t tell me.”

  Matt struggled to remember the older man’s lectures about magic and colors and the names of the Axioms.

  “It looks ... pale-orange. That was dimensional, right?”