"Skreeeeeetch,” the old dusty blue bus’ breaks screamed as the city vehicle grinded to a halt.
“Oi oi,” a large, older, green-skinned man sporting an ill-fitting, worn out bus driver's cap atop his dusty silver and purple hair grumbled, “last stop! ‘et on then, out! you lot!”
The weary few stragglers remaining on the rickety old bus slowly rose and shuffled into the cold, concrete bus terminal.
An old were-grizzly with a simple wooden cane began to strenuously make his way to his feet. However, in an unfortunate testament to the unfeeling grip of old age, his knees gave out, sending the elderly man crashing down to the cold dirty bus floor, riddled with various puddles of questionable liquids.
The man shut his eyes, anticipating the pain and suffering he would have to bear for the next few weeks, while he slowly recovered, the privilege of being far too poor to pay for efficient healing salves or medicines.
Yet, the pain never came.
A scruffy, medium height woman with a mess of large, curly black hair and hexagonal glasses, draped in an old large, black hooded cloak, had somehow manifested next to him, bracing the elderly were-grizzly from falling.
“Oh!” he mumbled, rife with surprise and embarrassment, “bless you, child.”
The woman said nothing, instead choosing to respond by simply smiling in return.
“OI!” the increasingly annoyed bus driver screamed, “off the damn bus, you lot!”
The woman’s smiling face slowly faded into a blank look. Slowly, as if creeping through molasses, yet also bearing the smoothness of a well oiled hinge, she turned to face the old orc.
Though the elderly were-grizzly couldn’t see the woman’s expression, especially due to the thick hood she wore, he knew there had to be something in the way she looked at the bus driver. Especially, because in mere moments the incredibly irate Orc seemed to remember that there were many other, much better things he could be doing with his time, like not antagonizing the hooded woman any further. Promptly, the bus driver chose to turn around, twiddling his thumbs and whistling softly to himself after pulling his hat down slightly to cover his eyes.
The short woman turned back to the were-grizzly, and again she was all smiles.
The old man nervously chuckled and accepted her aid to disembark the bus. As the two finally stepped onto the frigid concrete of the city sidewalk, safely away from the large vehicle, the doors immediately slammed shut and the bus took off, speeding off into the distance.
The pair were left with a small crowd watching the bus haul ass. The onlookers wondered about the bus driver’s weird antics, but chalked it up to a side effect of the area being New York City. They figured, sometimes city bus drivers apparently just had to speed away praying for their lives… or something. Happens to everyone eventually, right?
The biting winter air of South Brooklyn was a challenge, the old were-grizzly believed, that could fell even the strongest of gods. Gingerly, the grizzly tucked his cane into the crook of his armpit, and slowly unfurled a simple green and purple blanket that he always traveled with. The blanket was old and worn, but it was thick and incredibly warm. Not only had it allowed him to survive many, many horrible winters, but it had also long since paid back the $40 he’d spent on it. A not small part of the reason why was due to the simple but incredibly efficient network of heating runes embroidered into the blanket with silver polyester string.
As he turned around to thank the hooded woman, a gracious remark ready, the old mage’s words sputtered into silence. She was gone. There was no retreating figure, no clue pointing to wherever she’d went. She was just, gone.
A few stragglers gazed wirily at the old man, but eventually averted their gazes and kept moving. It was the law of the city, don’t attract any magic or mayhem to yourself that you weren’t ready or willing to deal with.
The old man pursed his lips. Now that he was alone, thoughts that he’d anxiously kept hidden, lest the woman was some kind of empath or psychic, came rushing back to him. It had been many decades since the old were-grizzly had last had to wield his magic in battle, and it had been many more decades since he could rely on his body not to fail out somehow while he was casting. An event like that would open himself to the chance of his own, aged, magical backlash rebounding upon the old grizzly, killing him before any of the many random ailments in his long lived body, wasn’t something the old man was very keen on.
However, there was still one thing he could do. Coincidentally, it was the same one thing every mage eventually learnt how to do as reliably and easily as dying, reading aura.
The woman that had helped him, had none. Not a single drop. At least, none that he could feel…
Fixing his cane properly and tightening his enchanted blanket around his overcoat, the old man slowly pondered the conclusion his mind was screaming at him.
Firstly, his memory kept returning to how strangely the bus driver had acted. But strange couldn’t begin to explain what he’d seen, that was the look and actions of someone fearing for their life. But from what? The small woman?
“Now… unless I’m a racist, and me eyes are also failin’ me,” the old were-grizzly muttered to himself, “I could’ve sworn that driver fella was an orc. Definitely smelt like one, and me sniffer ain’t that aged.”
What felt like ancient memories, like whispers through the veil of reincarnation, of a life long forgotten, began to flow back into the aged mage’s mind. Memories of a much younger man, bearing a face eerily similar to the old man’s while fighting desperately alongside his squadron in one of countless harrowing battles he’d survived in his time as a UWM Captain 7th class, resurfaced.
“If I’m not mistaken,” he muttered to himself again, wheezing with every careful step and clunk of his cane, “I’ve not only fought alongside many an orc, but I’ve also had to kill a great many of them.”
One fact kept bothering the retired vet, orcs did not run, ever. If they perceived even the slightest possibility of victory, they would fight till hell itself froze over. Even if the entire army of orcs knew they were fighting a losing battle, no orc he’d ever seen would even consider retreat. It wasn’t even a choice. They couldn’t help it, the urge to fight was hardwired in their very DNA and powering their Orc racial magic, aura and abilities.
The few times he’d ever seen an orc retreat, could be counted on the elderly soldier’s two hands, with room to spare. Those sparingly few moments were seared into the old grizzly’s brain forever. Not because the orcs were running, but because of what they were running from. Whenever an orc army had run from him, the old man reminisced, it was usually during the sparingly few times the UWM was able to deploy a mage at least on the level of a Tiger Class Lancer. But even those powerful sages paled in comparison to even the minor gods of the UWM, the Kraken Class Lancers, that sometimes joined the fray.
Reminiscing on the chance few times he’d gotten to witness those glorious mighty mages in action, the old man begrudgingly recalled what had set off his alarm bells in the first place. Her hands, he recalled, were very bony and strangely cold, but the Old man had paid them no heed. After all, if he were to count how many perfectly normal vampires or fae he’d met in his life that had similar hands, he’d never leave. But in grabbing the old veteran, one of his old, densely haired, large, half paw half hands grazed one of hers. The were-grizzly hadn’t met any disrespect by reaching out to search her aura in the moment their hands touched, but his ancient extensive experience fighting all manner of horrors, physical and metaphysical while constantly watching his soldiers get torn apart, had made the action a basic instinct for the old vet.
Nothing could’ve prepared him for the vast chasm of emptiness that occupied the space her aura was supposed to.
The old man’s breath began to quicken. His old and frayed nerves began to flare up. The old grizzly’s long cold aura engine sputtered and groaned, but still roared to life defensively, as his aura swelled and began to burn. Despite the frigid, biting winds compounding with the fog of the densely humid midwinter day, beads of anxious sweat began to drip down the head of the old man’s brow.
It couldn’t be.
To meet a sage was incredibly rare. There were only a few tens of thousand of them within the entire Mortal Realms, and even then, most sages chose to spend their time in the Divine Realms, training their magic and advancing towards godhood, or basking in celebrity stardom in their private abodes.
To meet a god however…
The old man had to stop. His arms were shaking too badly to hold himself up anymore, any attempt to walk now could result in a slip of his cane and a bad fall. He was almost to the curb’s stop light, silently beaconing his right of way to cross, but the old man could not progress any further. A ripple of pain and fear shot through him, causing the old mage to grip his aching heart.
A few high school students walking by turned to look at the old, shaking man, with varying looks of concern, but the old grizzly paid them no mention.
The abyss would not leave his mind. The distant look of detached amusement to reality that the old grizzly now realized was evident in the younger woman’s eyes, haunted him.
“T’was a goddess,” he huffed, struggling to regain his composure, “but, what is a goddess even doing here? I- huf, huf.”
The old grizzly leaned against a store window as his body slowly recovered, wracked with guilt. He wanted to run, or hobble, or whatever he could do, but the urge to flee was overpowering.
Something… wrong, often happened to folks who ascended, at least that was what the general public agreed. Sages were generally agreed to still be able to feel mortal emotions, as they were still somewhat mortal, but mortals that became gods and goddesses tended to forget entirely how things like compassion or empathy worked, frighteningly often.
But even that didn’t explain the sheer feeling of extreme yet playful malice he’d remembered feeling leaking from the woman. The face the Orc bus driver had made for a split second, compounded by his actions of complete subservience just moments after roaring in anger, kept replaying in the old grizzly’s head. The old vet happened to catch a glimpse of himself in the glass of the store. A long moment passed as the elderly mage studied himself, and for the first time in a long time, truly let himself remember all that he’d been, and all that he’d done.
A resigned sigh eventually passed his lips.
This wasn’t his fight anymore. It shouldn’t be his fight anymore. It had been many decades since the old were-grizzly had put up his armor, unclasped his badges and cast his last war spell. He’d paid his service to society, to the Mortal Realms. The old grizzly could barely get his VA benefits to cover his PTSD medications, much less the vast medley of other meds he needed just to keep walking until something finally killed him. He’d paid a staggering debt in an uncountable amount of lives of friends and allies, battle brothers and sisters, he was done with war.
But, the old soldier’s soul wouldn’t be shaken, it couldn’t. That woman was definitely evil, and powerful. Very powerful. There was no way he could just let her walk around at least unchecked, the memories of the countless recruits that had died under his command would never let him rest again if he did.
The old grizzly knew what he had to do, looking up to the sky and praying silently to The Howling One, he resigned himself to his fate.
He might not be able to fight worth a damn anymore, but as long as he was alive, he could at least alert someone to what he’d seen.
Slowly the old were-grizzly pushed himself off the cold glass and looked around once more, eerily watching for any sign of the woman, the goddess he’d met.
“The nearest UWM base is too far away from here, I need to find a Centrys Tower,” he huffed, “I need to alert a Chief Sentinel, and fast.”
***
“Go become a Sentinel they said,” a disgruntled, middle aged man mimed sourly and sarcastically, squatting in the tiny bathroom of his studio apartment agitatedly dumping and refilling two buckets of heavily dark, dirty water.
He scrubbed and scrubbed at the navy blue robes, attempting, and failing for the third day that week, to get the blood and gore off from the silver frills.
“You’ll have job security, they said, a great starting paycheck they promised,” he continued to mime angrily, before screaming in rage and throwing the uniform and brush into the pool of brackish, soapy water caused by the long since backed up drain in his broken and chipped bathtub. A burst of cold, dirty soap water splashed up from where the brush struck the water, directly into the man’s face.
“SEE?!” he roared incredulously, to no one in particular, grabbing at his hair in manic frustration, “its always fucking something creeping up on you with this damn job! If it’s not some cracked out weirdo or the nth fucking demon cultist, its the $300K of fucking school and training debt you have to incur to even become a basic fucking Sentinel keeping me just poor enough to constantly hope I die in the field!”
The man sank to the dirty bathroom floor, weeping silently and wretchedly.
“What’s even the point of making $130K a year if I have so much debt and taxes that I’m still living paycheck to paycheck, 6 years out of the fucking academy! I can just barely even afford this fucking studio!”
Slowly, the man eventually got back to his feet, and looked at his reflection in his grimy and chipped bathroom mirror. A slightly stained white undershirt and blue striped boxers hung from his emaciated frame, his hollow sunken eyes and dusty salt and pepper hair accented his dead gaze.
“Behold! The Great Sage!” he mimed, sarcastically jeering at himself, “Jerry Roberts! Sage of the Centrys Tower of Greater New York! He who awakened the Golden Ears, at only 33!”
The heavily depressed man, Jerry Roberts, eventually allowed himself to gaze at his two elvish ears, some of his few outward physical features hinting at his family’s deep and diverse background. However now, as his list of epithets alluded, both of his elvish ears were completely golden. They had been that way since Jerry had recently awakened to sagehood a few years ago.
Upon becoming a sage, a random part of the mage’s body would be added as or upgraded to a living divine artifact, allowing the mage to properly synthesize the fundamental energy of divine dharma from the universe and their surroundings. These esoteric artifacts, of which much was still unknown, were known as sage gifts. Each came with a specific ability or set of abilities depending on how rare the sage gift that was manifested. No matter what a mage tried to do to influence the sage gift they would manifest, if they could even make it to sagehood in their lifetimes, the gift always held some amount of unknown randomness as to which one would actually manifest. The Golden Ears were a relatively common, generally well respected sage gift that manifested mostly amongst the were-beings and the races of elves. The gift came with an absolutely absurd ability to allow Jerry and other sage rank mages with the same gift, to hear the equational breakdown of any spell they could comprehend, and auditorily detect any residual energy in the area. The fact that his sage gift also allowed Jerry natural physical hearing far greater than some of his were-being cohorts, leading to the record number of cases he’d been able to solve at breakneck pace, could not be understated in why he’d eventually skyrocketed to the rank of Sentinel Sergeant.
“Oh yeah,” he muttered, suddenly remembering the reason he’d been pointlessly scrubbing his only uniform for days, “the promotion… the ceremony’s today…”
The sage’s eyes slowly fell to the unfinished, still stained uniform pieces floating peacefully in the dirty, soapy water.
Jerry sighed, wiped his tear stained cheeks, and got back to scrubbing. Retaking his place atop a tiny pink and purple, plastic flower bucket he’d been using as a seat, Jerry fished the brush out of the water, muttered a quick soap spell to reinvigorate the brush with fresh soap, and returned to his soul crushing work.
“Plus, that bitch will be here any moment now,” he muttered, shuddering as he remembered his new Co-Sergeant, Elyria Flowers. They’d only gone on a few missions together to acclimate to each other before their official promotions, but already the Fairy had shown to have a mouth that would cow even the saltiest of grizzled sailors and wasn’t afraid to let it loose on anyone that even minorly ticked her off. The fact that Jerry was only ? elf, was also something Elyria seemed to take as a personal insult for some reason, choosing to annoy him with constant reminders that he was technically a “lesser-fae,” since the elf side of his family hadn’t been in the Fae Forest in hundreds of years.
“Who would even want to go to the land of perpetual DMT tripping anyway?” Jerry scoffed incredulously, scrubbing fiercely, “fucking, fairy.”
“At least the fucking fairy knows how to dodge the exploding brain chunks,” an unamused voice said from behind him.
Jerry screamed in fright, his powerful sage aura instinctively flared out as a titanic sea of power bearing down upon the intruder, only to be met and slammed down by her own, incredibly powerful sage aura.
Elyria snickered at him, twirling a finger at his cleaning station and his boxers and undershirt. “This some kinda lesser-fae ritual or something?”
“HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KEEP GETTING IN HERE?!” Jerry screamed in rage.
“I broke in,” Elyria said, rolling her eyes and shrugging.
“But howww?” Jerry whined in anguish, “I keep changing the locks, I added protection wards, I lined every window and doorway with salt, and I even bought some vaguely shady Russian warding runes! How do you keep getting in?!”
“Well if I told you silly,” she said mockingly, “then it would be harder for me to continue breaking in.”
In her wild, bell-like laugher, for a brief moment, through her light green bob haircut, her deep purple teeth flashed.
Jerry’s eyes narrowed, those purple teeth were her sage gift, The Teeth of Shadows. The gift allowed her and those with the gift, the ability to talk to any naturally cast shadow from inanimate objects, and compel it to do her bidding. The secondary ability to walk through the shadow realms and reappear anywhere a natural shadow from an inanimate object was cast, was likely how she kept breaking in.
‘I need more light bulbs,’ Jerry thought to himself surely, ‘and mage lights. Definitely more mage lights.’
“Honestly with those big ol’ golden flappers you got there, I would’ve thought they would pick up on me by now,” Elyria went on, chuckling as Jerry wrapped her in a bubble of green energy.
With a swift push, the Sentinel shoved his partner from the small bathroom, slamming the door shut. Layers of scripts and magic circles flashed across the surface of the door for a brief moment before vanishing.
“Finally,” Jerry groaned, taking a moment to look at his watch, “fun, she’s wasted 10 whole minutes. Urrrrgh!”
“Ok fine then,” Elyria muttered, slightly offended, “don’t take the brand new uniform set I graciously came here to give you, I even made sure it was in your size.”
For a moment, no noise came from behind the bathroom door. Then slowly, the wards came undone, and Jerry meekly stuck a hand out a small hologram reading, ‘I’m Sorry,’ floated atop the sage’s open palm.
“Hmph,” Elyria replied, turning her nose up, but still tossing a dimensional ring into Jerry’s open palm.
30 minutes later, a much more dressed, and much more annoyed and conflicted Jerry emerged from the bathroom to two plates of waffles and eggs sitting atop his small coffee table. Two mugs had coffee steaming gently, and Elyria was sitting in front of one of them, on Jerry’s old and faded blue couch, tapping away endlessly at her laptop.
His anger slowly began to chip away with the growling of his stomach. As Jerry took a seat, plopping himself beside Elyria on his couch. Confusion was all that stood where his ire had been.
“Took you long enough, lesser fae,” the fairy greeted warmly, finishing whatever she was typing before swiftly shutting the computer, “you gave me nearly enough time to finish this report, and these things take ages. I almost thought you got lost in there, or maybe forgot how dimensional rings worked.”
“What’s all this?” Jerry asked suspiciously, gesturing cautiously at the entire spread with his fork.
“Mmmh,” Elyria hummed, deep in thought. “Call it, an acknowledgment of Jerry’s possibly hurt feelings for my multiple alleged home invasions,” she said wistfully, swinging her hand through the sky.
“Alleged?” Jerry asked incredulously, picking up a warm cup of coffee, “you quite literally broke into my house 40 minutes ago!”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“Eeeeeeeeegh, shut up,” the fairy sage replied, shoveling a spoonful of eggs into her mouth, while ignoring her partner’s annoyed face, and audibly gushing over her sauteed mushrooms and bourbon sausages. Eagerly she beckoned Jerry to also try his.
Jerry just shook his head and began to eat. After all, it was always easier to deal with random bullshit on a full stomach.
“Damn,” he whispered to himself after his first mouthful, despite his still semi hurt feelings, “this shit is good.”
***
“Gods that took ages,” Jerry groaned as he slid into a metal cafeteria bench, taking off his officer’s hat and removing his gloves.
“You’re telling me,” Elyria said, exhaling as she took the bench seat across from Jerry. She splayed out her fingers and a purple shroud of energy briefly wrapped around her gloves. In the next moment, they rose from her hands, revealing the fairy’s pale green fingers, and neatly folded themselves on the metal lunch table in front of her. “My cousin’s the tree nymph but I thought I was going to start growing roots myself from all the sheer fucking boredom.”
“You know,” Jerry mentioned offhandedly with an open palm supporting his chin, “magic should have far greater purposes than just being used to save 3 seconds of work.”
“1,” Elyria replied, manifesting a bottle of water, “I didn’t ask. 2. There are literally hundreds of companies that make enchanted clothing, I literally had a pair of Lyon Helm gloves that did the same thing in High School. It's honestly criminal that Centrys HQ doesn’t just enchant these, there’s more than enough deities and sages on the board council to figure it out.”
Elyria held up a third finger while pausing to take a swig of her water.
“And three, my dear Jerold, you’ve quite literally just became a Sage, at the ripe old age of 33 no less, and you’re still a sore loser! I’m literally 300 years old. 300! Chill my guy, you have time to enjoy yourself a little. You’re now in the top 30% of all humanity, of course I’m in the top 5% of all fae, but that’s just cause we’re just so much better than you humans and halfies… and cause fae babies die, kinda a lot. We don’t have very many kids to begin with ‘cause of the long natural lifespans,” she smirked, sitting back in her chair and shrugged her hands, “eh what can ya do? Besides now that you’re a sage and you’re no longer bound by the breakneck aging speed your pitiful halfling genes provided you, you might actually live long enough to learn to enjoy your magic.”
Jerry just raised an eyebrow and grunted, looking off to the side with a huff, he sadly had to admit the fairy was right.
“It's called human aging thank you very much,” he retorted, sticking his tongue out at her, “and they were doing just fine with it for millennia even before widespread magic became a thing.”
Elyria laughed her signature bell like laughter, “bullshit.”
Jerry gave a resigned smirk, “fine, fine, it was a reach I know.”
His expression fell as he looked down at his cap, “but seriously? We’re getting assigned to the Albany Tower? Nothing even ever happens in Albany, plus it’s so cold up there most of the year!”
Two rookie Sentinels were on the far end of the cafeteria, whispering and laughing to each other. Jerry, in his desire to find anything to alleviate his depressed mood, focused some mana into his golden ears, activating his sage gift. Suddenly the conversation of the two rookies was as crystal clear to the sage as if he were standing right next to them.
“So apparently some grey beard hobbles into the Deputy Chief’s office, waving a crusty, last gen, UWM Captain’s badge, demanding to see the Chief immediately, and get this, he was claiming that an evil dark goddess or whatever, just recently helped him off a city bus somewhere downtown in Brooklyn and now we had to scramble everyone to try and find her, effective immediately!”
“Oh that’s rich,” the other officer laughed, “while the Dreaded Queen of Bus Hospitality is once again keeping the youths off the streets of Brooklyn, and helping demented vets off buses, menacingly, the rest of the city watches on fearfully. However shall we sleep at night? We can only pray that hopefully, The Dark Lord of Flooded Toilets doesn’t come knocking by Queens again, we barely beat him off the last time.”
The junior officer clutched a fist to his chest.
“So much clogging… so much, flooding…” his whispered painfully, a single tear falling from his eye.
“Hey!” the first officer said, slapping his friend in the chest, hard, “that’s not funny! The Dark Lord of Flooded Toilets killed my grandma!”
The two officers silently looked at each other a while before simultaneously breaking out in cackling laughter.
“Riveting conversation they’re having, truly they are the brightest of us. Come Jerold, quickly, post haste, we’re really missing out on so much,” Elyria remarked, passively rolling her eyes, having used her naturally gifted fae hearing to also eavesdrop on the two officer’s riffing.
“Yeah but at least stuff happens here to joke about,” Jerry lamented, deactivating his sage gift, tuning his hearing back down to his normally heightened half fae hearing. “All we’ll get to hee hee about up there is some wasted druid trying to speak to random forest animals again. Or a harassment call about yet another bum trying to explain why creatures with natural born water affinities are the most fuckable to yet another very unwilling water nymph or pond dryad.”
“That may be true, and yes the endless valley of restraining orders may be hilarious and simultaneously soul-crushingly tedious and repetitive, but someone’s gotta do it,” Elyria admitted with a sigh of her own, dropping her chin to her upturned palms as her arms rested on the cold cafeteria table. “But hey, look at it this way, at least whenever something does eventually happen up north, be it every one or two hundred years, it's usually some sort of uber-demon or devil worshiping cult hiding in the mountains, summoning something they really shouldn’t have. Or it could be yet another Divine Realm rupture and now some crazed D-Realmer deity is running amok again. Or better yet, one of our very own M-Realmer deities or sages finally fucking lost it, yet again, and started killing innocent people wholesale. Again.”
An overly faked polite smile was now taunting Jerry as the fairy sage went on with her daydreaming.
“And then the world’s gonna be real glad they at least had 2 more sages up there to deal with it. Especially before it spreads to god knows how far.”
Jerry’s dismissive face slowly had to melt under the inarguable truth of Elyria’s words, no matter how much it hurt him to credit her for anything.
He gave a long, resigned sigh. Sitting back in his chair, Jerry undid his hair bindings. Softly, his soft, long golden brown locks mixed with stress grayed, salt and pepper hair fell back over his chair. Silently Jerry gazed down at his chests, at all of his badges and stripes that he’d gained over his long career that sat there silently.
Suddenly, Jerry remembered his brother’s funeral.
***
At only 6, Jerry had to come to terms with the fact that his family’s rising star in the UWM, had finally bitten off more than he could chew.
His older brother had been a paragon of virtue, not just for Jerry, but for everyone around him. Even Jerry’s incredibly dysfunctional parents almost seemed like normal, rational, loving people whenever his older brother would return home from a campaign.
Almost.
Though his parents tried, their inability to not try to kill each other for longer than 3 days at a time, made childhood a time Jerry tried very hard to largely forget. The only moments from his childhood however, that the half-elf sage would never allow to leave him, were the times when his much older brother would return from war campaigns for a brief month or two at a time.
Jereni, his name was.
Jerry’s parents weren’t very creative. His father barely appearing at either son’s birth a smidge less than completely shitfaced, to an exhausted and enraged wife who’d recently spent the last 8 months while pregnant, trying to kill anything that got within 3 feet of her, spouse and doctors included, certainly couldn’t have helped things.
Yet still, it baffled Jerry to no end, even as a young boy, that such dysfunctional people could produce someone not just as functional, but as pure and noble as Jereni.
And powerful.
Jereni had always been Jerry’s idol, his hero. When his older brother was listed on the 2012 Mortal Realms Top 30 under 30 to reach sagehood, though it would be a while before Jereni could achieve true godhood, he would become cemented as a true deity in the mind of his younger brother.
His older brother couldn’t fall. After all, with the size of the monsters and the depth of the depravities Jereni would tell to their village’s people, huddled around hushed fires as the young sage’s voice boomed, how could Jereni ever fall?
So when he approached his brother’s closed casket, single white rose in hand, Jerry couldn’t understand how reality had manifested such a scene. What sick, depraved individual was responsible for what 6 year old Jerry was seeing? All that remained of his idol, his hero, was a casket, magically sealed to grant Jereni’s loved ones and fellow villagers blessed protection from the unshakable traumas of what seeing the state their hero’s body had been turned to would do to them during the funeral.
Jerry recalled a beautiful hawthorn casket, a painstakingly crafted masterpiece, carved from the trunk of the tallest hawthorn tree in the forest of their village, an ancient burial custom of their mother’s elf people. It was reserved for only those who’d achieved the highest of honors their village could bestow. It lay atop a single, thick marble column. It was adorned with carvings of the first five animals Jereni had ever met in his life as a young boy. Their family’s golden retriever Buster, a dove, a squirrel, and a massive golden stag that had suddenly appeared before Jereni one day. It was an ancient burial custom of their father’s people, the Irish Druids. Jerry remembered emotionlessly, it was also the day his career alcoholic father turned stone sober.
As for his mother? Well, mix already unstable mental health with the loss of not only her singular pride and joy in the entire world, but also the loss of her own flesh and blood, her first baby…
When the entire village gathered again, three months later for Jerry’s mother’s own funeral, they were somehow much more broken and shaken than at Jereni’s, and yet, many knew it was an inevitability.
Jerry emptily recalled the deafening silence as his newly 7 year old self yet again, on his birthday no less, walked a long purple carpet, through the forest gathering, chrysanthemum petals raining upon the boy as a single white rose was yet again, held in his small clammy palms. Somehow, the world, no the entire Mortal Realms, seemed even more silent than the young boy could ever imagine. The only thing that dared to break the silence, was the ugly weeping of his father.
‘At least that proves he actually loved her,’ Jerry remembered thinking to himself.
Two things had happened then.
Jerry had sworn, in front of his mother’s casket, to do anything he could to uphold the spirit of his brother, to live as a testament against the constant failures of his parents, and to do whatever he could for the betterment of the Mortal Realms.
He’d also become so incredibly traumatized of ever joining the UWM, that for 4 solid years he never used his magic again. But moving to New York in his early teens with his father, had proved to not only be Jerry’s first time in a city of any kind, but also where he would eventually learn to deal with his traumas and for the first time in years, reach out to his magic again.
School had been a struggle for him, but eventually Jerry would not only graduate highschool and college with honors, but he’d become the youngest ever officer to join the high prestigious Bureau of Magical Regulation (BMR) under their highly specialized Paranormal Investigation Unit (PIU). His time spent diligently and fervently solving any and every case he could get his hands on and his growing reputation as a true servant and protector of the public had eventually earned him no less than 7 direct letters of recommendation to the Sentinel Academy, in hopes of eventually joining the Centrys Towers as a Sentinel.
The Centrys Towers were a global organization geared to the protection of Earth and her inhabitants from the rest of the mages of the Mortal Realms from whatever world or realm they may originate, and from itself. Though the Towers served as the planet’s 2nd largest line of defense behind the UWM, the United World Military was focused on the stability of the entire Mortal Realms, and so were often mostly off homeworld, venturing far out into the universe looking for trouble. The Centrys Towers, on the other hand, only dealt with problems that brought themselves to Earth, especially when UWM protection of Earth was at its lowest capacity.
Though the Centrys Tower was generally considered easier to progress in, mainly because newbies and rising stars died much less often than in the UWM, it wasn’t by much. Yet still, it was in these towers that Jerry cut his teeth. Strengthened his body and his magic, and hardened his resolve. And eventually through extreme blood, sweat and tears, just like his hero, just like Jereni, Jerry had also finally risen to sagehood.
The person who’d punched the long awaited ribbons and badges awarded to Sergeant Sentinels into Jerry’s chest guard, was his own aged, but extremely proud father.
Though it had been a while since the bitter sage had ever felt it, passion, hope, duty, the same kind that used to be commonplace within him listening to Jereni, began to well up again.
For the first time in many years, Jerry felt it grow in him, the will to protect the innocent, no matter the cost.
Elyria was right, though the northern towers were by far the most boring, when action happened, when shit got real, they were also by far, the most dangerous.
***
Jerry emerged from his soul searching to Elyria’s self satisfied, shit eating grin. Though the fairy didn’t know what her words had done to him, even a blind person could see it had a profound effect on Jerry. Intended or not, Elyria was deeply enjoying it.
Jerry scoffed at her and rolled his eyes. Closing off his emotions, but holding tightly onto the feelings they had inspired within him. Adopting an annoyed tone to not let the asshole fae believe he’d conceded, he asked in a manufactured, bored tone.
“Yeah yeah, whatever, but doesn’t the Great Witch of Pestilence also reside somewhere near or around Albany? I bet she’d take care of whatever would appear anyway, just because it offended her by existing near her home, way before we ever arrived.”
“Oh yeah, the Great Disaster Lady 5th lives up there,” Elyria recalled slowly. Suddenly she bolted upright, a huge and giddy smile on her face. “You’re a genius, Jerold! Well as much as a lesser fae could be, but you’re really trying! Getting an autograph from Lady 5th would be so cool! Now we’ve gotta go to Albany!”
The newly minted Sargent Notary then immediately stood atop the cafeteria table and yelled aloud, with green skinned fist raised to the heavens, “I WILL HEAR NO OBJECTIONS!”
She then sprung from the tabletop and ran off to the Sargent’s dorms to grab her things, leaving behind a cavalcade of hushed whispers and remarks from their fellow Sentinels of various ranks in her wake.
Jerry sighed deeply, hanging his head in embarrassed shame and shaking his head but a hidden smile tugged at his lips. Deftly, he hid it with his cap as the Sargent Sentinel also rose from his seat and went to join his partner.
***
Horrifying cries, eerily echoed throughout the night, lost amid the cascading crescendos cast by the gentle pitter patter of the wintertime rain falling through GravesEnd. A small figure in a large, hooded coat walked alone through the fog. Taking her time, rushed by none.
Gently she swayed and skipped, tiptoed and hopped throughout the empty streets, crossing city blocks, her hums echoing off the apartments and store buildings. Stopping in a late night deli, the hooded figure fished in her grubby, damp pocket for a treasure she’d procured earlier that night. It was a mangled, but still legible, $10 dollar bill. One she’d spotted on the lonely, dirty floor of a Brooklyn city bus, right before she’d met the cute old grizzly.
A few minutes later, and after much woeful deliberation and some gentle prodding from the deli owner, the short, hooded woman skipped out of the deli happily with a magnificent haul of goodies and treats. A whirl of her pale hand created a bubble of energy around her, stopping any rainwater from soiling her food as she walked through the snow.
The crunches of her boots, echoing through the night as she continued her journey through the snow slush, matched the crunches of the woman’s teeth as she telepathically levied chips, cookies and chocolate pieces into her mouth. Periodic slurping noises of iced tea and water broke her symphony of peculiar noises, giving her a blessed break from manically devouring her snacks.
She knew she didn’t care what any of the few stragglers thought of her depraved eating. But even if she did, there was a very sound reasoning for her actions.
After all, not just anyone spent the past few weeks hunting down a particular deity elf throughout a massive Divine Realms realm where even a single misstep would immediately kill either of them. On top of that, the realm, like most in the Divine Realms, had a severe time dilation with any of the Mortal Realms, especially the one Earth resided in.
Time passed between the Milky Way realm, or Eratus, as it was known throughout the Mortal Realm and Divine Realms, and the realm Nāhui-Quiyahuitl at a rate of 1,000 years per a week’s time on Earth. Thus resulting in the multi thousand year fast she was currently breaking.
But for a goddess, eating wasn’t even a necessity. Being as any mage throughout the Mortal Realms would all become completely composed of energy, shedding any and every mortal organ they had upon ascending to godhood, eating was something that was done largely for the sentiment.
The hooded lady smiled to herself, wiping the crumbs off her face and continuing her rabid snacking.
In a weird way, manic eating helped normalize her, helped allow her… to remember what being mortal was like.
Technically, her body was only 32 years old. She’d stepped from Sagehood to Demigodhood when she was 29, ranking her as a one in 10 million talent. And when she finally fully ascended to Goddesshood just a year ago at 31 years of age, she’d joined the ranks of the one in 100 million talented mages. She’d only been venturing the Divine Realms for roughly 7 actual earth years, but in terms of the time she’d spent in the Divine Realms by their time…
She was absolutely ancient.
Tens of thousands of years old. Well, at least her soul was.
Whatever realm she would end up in, for whatever job, or reason that would bring her there, if she was lucky, she would only experience a mild time dilation, displacing her for a few weeks or months out of Earth time at most.
If she was unlucky, she could find herself anywhere from a few years dilated, to a few millennia or more.
She’d found that through her animalistic eating, though unbecoming for a mage of her caliber or station, it allowed her to stave off the deep, incurable insanity that usually set in the minds of Mortal Realm Gods and sages when they unfortunately spent too much time in the severely time dilated realms of the Divine Realms. The time dilation insanity was the usual common suspect in wild, inconsolable, unreasonable, rampaging mages killing everything around them. Usually leading to the UWM being immediately deployed to end said crippled mage.
With extreme prejudice.
And they always sent either a never ending wave of suicidal sages to subdue the time touched mage, or one of their overly ego inflated, shiny deities. Each sporting a chip on their divine shoulders the size of the entire Mortal Realms themselves.
No.
What a waste, what a bore, what a bother.
‘And if a strong enough UWM deity like a Lancer or something shows up, my fatass might actually be cooked,’ she thought to herself, with a small giggle.
Definitely, firmly, no.
Shoving her face with more junk food until sanity returned, was far easier, and far more enjoyable than a brutal fight to the death. Well, it would still definitely be her death. The most annoying thing about the UWM, to its uncountable number of enemies, was that they never seemed to run out of willing bodies.
Their motto, “As many recruits as our foes,” was one they bore with pride, after all it’d cost them every single dead soldier.
The woman crossed the street as the walk light finally turned white, rounding the corner of the city block, she came upon a dingy set of apartments. Scanning down the rainy, dark street, the woman saw a basement apartment with a single lily etched into the wood of the door.
‘Bingo,’ she thought to herself, proceeding to walk towards the unit.
A few minutes later, a quick set of rapping knocks upon the door, greeted the short, hooded woman with a much taller black woman. She wore a green turtleneck, faded skinny jeans and a thick peach cardigan. A wand was in her hand and it was pointed directly in the chest of the hooded woman. The tip of the wand burned with an angry deep purple energy, her other hand, was fashioned into a sky seal.
The shorter woman raised an amused eyebrow.
Earth seals, fashioned with two hands close together, allowed spells to be cast with the least amount of energy possible, resulting in weaker but more efficient spellcasting. Sky seals however, fashioned with just one hand, were the complete opposite. They gave a mage’s spells the ability to be cast with a boundless energy ceiling. Allowing the mage to cast big, bombastic spells at the risk of burning themselves out or emptying their energy reserves much faster.
Whatever spell or series of spells the woman was ready to cast, she was going to make a show of it. In the middle of a densely populated city…
“I felt your aura pulse, you were clearly trying to hide, so why are you now at my damn door?” she barked, sharply and dismissively at the shorter woman, leering as her wand’s tip began to shine with greater purple intensity. “Who are you?”
Shock rung out on the shorter woman’s face.
“Hide? Me?” she gasped, horrified at the accusation, “I was broadcasting the standard protected aura signature since I was cold, and tired of walking, and I’m pretty sure I got lost cause all these buildings look the same, and I just wanted someone to come get me!.” She flapped her heavily sleeved arms angrily, genuine whining frustration pouring from her intent while the taller woman simply looked on, dumbfounded.
“Wait a minute!” the hooded woman gasped, “how didn’t you feel my aura signature? How weak are you?”
The taller woman’s face contorted in anger. In the moment before she unloaded her angry cataclysm of spells at the shorter woman, as an answer to the strange girl’s question, the hooded woman smiled. Her hair’s thick, black curls that had been heavily obscuring her glasses-covered eyes, were brushed aside with a single, small pale hand. She wanted the taller woman to see her eyes.
Fear and shock gripped the taller woman’s eyes. Her mouth hung agape in disbelief and shock, and her primed aura slammed to a halt, dying down and unraveling the spells she’d almost sealed her fate by casting. Immediately the taller woman fell to her knees in a low bow, her wand quickly vanished, and her brow crashed into the porch boards as she prostrated herself in clear subservience to the shorter woman . Even before the hooded woman spoke, the taller woman was already silently, fervently praying that she wasn’t going to die soon. Horribly.
“In the garden of glass lilies,” the shorter woman began with a giggle.
“Where laughing jackals lie,” the taller woman whispered in reply, her raspy dry voice quivering.
“Rise,” the shorter woman said simply.
“Priestess!” the woman shouted reverently as she rose, “Please! Forgiveness! I meant no disrespect, had I known it was y-”
She stopped immediately as the shorter, hooded woman held up an open palm. The taller woman then snapped to attention, not daring to even make the slightest of movements. The last thing she could afford, was to offend the priestess any more than she already had.
The shorter, hooded woman, the priestess, was silently eating chips that were lazily floating into her mouth, munching absentmindedly while studying the taller woman.
After no more than three minutes that felt to the taller woman like centuries, the priestess dropped her hand.
“Are you the Imo’tkepp of this coven?” she asked the taller woman.
“Yes, priestess!” the woman replied reverently, bending over to bow again, missing the brief, disgusted look that flashed across the priestess’ face.
“Where is your High Priestess? Why didn’t they greet me? Why’d they just send a sage? One that can’t even pick up on a simple aura signature?” the hooded woman asked, cocking her head to the side and looking the taller woman up and down. “Not to be rude, but you don’t even look like a very good sage either. What even are you? You an Early?” she asked in an innocent, inquisitive tone, thinking as she tapped her chin, “I mean, it makes sense, your aura’s a mess, but you still have time to fix it before you get to Outer rank.”
The taller woman gulped, tugging at her green turtleneck, hoping to at least ease some of the extreme nervous tension building in her neck. In a quiet, mousy voice she responded.
“I uh, um,” she gulped, “actually priestess, I uh, am an Outer Sage. And, uh.. Um… High Priestess is uh, in the basement with the… um… problem.”
“Oh you’re an Outer?! Wait seriously?” the hooded woman gasped, surprised and horrified.
For a moment, an awkward silence hung heavily between them as the two silently stared at each other. For a painfully long while, neither mage spoke.
“Um, well,” the hooded woman suddenly said, faking a cheerful smile, “just keep on cultivating and don't lose hope!”
She put a hand on the taller woman’s shoulder, patting it while giving her a thumbs up with her other hand, “you won't be so bad for long if you just practice a little harder! Now let’s go see the High Priestess!”
She marched on through the doorway, past the dumbfounded, mind blown taller woman.
“Don’t lose hope?” the taller woman eked out with a whimper, “but I’m already 77 years old…”
With a small sigh she turned to follow the priestess. The taller woman gave a defeated whirl of her hand and the front door slammed shut, magically sealed. Inside the apartment that was far larger on the inside, expanded with dimensional magic, it was dark and dimly lit. Within the shadows, witches, warlocks, and wiccans froze while going about their duties. Some had only been passively paying attention to the conversation happening at the doorway, but when the small hooded woman walked inside, every last person immediately froze in place.
The priestess casually removed her hood while nonchalantly strolling through the dumbfounded crowd. Her giant mass of dark, swirly curling hair popped out in full glory. She took a worn out piece of string she usually kept tied on her thin, small wrist, and tied her unruly sea of hair back into a tight bun. As the short priestess did so, the taller witch noticed, the priestess seemed to almost undergo a sort of …”shift.”
Her bubbly attitude was gone. Her floating snacks, all crashed to the cold, carpet floor of the small apartment, forgotten. The priestess’ smile died instantly, turning into a blank, unfeeling face, and her aura began emanating an eerily dangerous feeling through her intent.
The priestess’ hand swirled, and a black, wooden mask resembling the head of a jackal appeared.
Gasps suddenly rang out amongst the crowd, but they were silenced almost as immediately. None wanted to be the next one unlucky enough to gain the priestess’ undivided attention. The taller woman made an instinctive, unconscious croaking noise as soon as she spotted the mask.
‘A Black Jackal,’ she thought to herself horrified, her mind disconnected while her feet robotically trailed after the shorter woman. ‘A real Black Jackal… and I almost attacked her… She’s even stronger than High Priestess, and I almost attacked her…’ the taller woman rubbed her aching head through her thick afro. ‘Fuck,’ she silently, sorrowfully lamented, a pitiful groan escaping her lips.
Her fellows looked on in quiet sympathetic fear, but none dared to move a nanometer nearer to the two.
Finally, they entered the kitchen. A door had been bored into the floorboards, wrapped in hundreds of seals and paper talismans, ringed with 7 interlocking circles of salt and black iron powder. 13 large Black candles, alight with green flames, dripping hot wax that looked strangely like blood, sat in a larger circle around the door, and 4 shrunken heads were affixed to the ground with large silver spikes at the 4 cardinal directions.
“Wowie zowie,” the priestess murmured sarcastically, unimpressed from underneath her mask, “y’all really pulled out all the stops.”
Her aloof attitude heavily belied the priestess’ actual thoughts. What she was looking at was an extremely powerful binding ritual, reinforced dozens upon dozens of times with everything that was added to it, and flooded with a great amount of energy, including fundamental energies. But there was a point, for the creature that lay bound beneath the ritual, anything less potent wouldn’t even remotely work.
“Let me through,” she said simply.
The tall woman rushed to comply. With a flick of a wrist, she forcefully beckoned four members of her coven to join her. She positioned each of the 4 at each of the shrunken heads and began to get to work. As the Imo’tkepp of the coven, her job was to be second in command to the coven’s high priestess. The Imo’tkepp was tasked with not only managing the books and general upkeep of the coven, but they were also the bearer of all ritual and circle proceedings for the coven. Subsequently, the Imo’tkepp also guided their coven’s members through rituals, oversaw positioning of members and managed the flow of energies of every respective mage when the members were joined in a circle, both for small circles of 5-7 and large circles that sometimes included every member of the coven. Now was no different. The tall witch led the chants that the four coven mages took up. As she did so, with masterful precision, she also pushed and pulled the energies of the 4 as necessary to keep them perfectly synchronized. Ritual circles were powerful spells, often taking 5 or more mages to form, and so the potential magical backlash of even a small ritual, was cataclysmic, and thus it was beyond paramount for every coven worth their salt to have a capable Imo’tkepp. After all, with a coven’s high priest or high priestess often being at the central focal point of most ritual circles, they were largely unable to lead the rituals themselves while also being a part of the fragile, powerful spell.
After a few minutes of chanting and shifting power around. 7 of the 13 black candles instantly went out at the same time, causing the paper talismans to begin floating off from the trap door. Slowly, and with a heavy groan, the door, that was apparently a solid block of superdense tungsten swung open, revealing a deep dark path leading far deeper into the earth than should’ve been physically possible for the apartment’s structure.
Immediately the 4 members were blasted back with a heavy explosion of power, slamming violently into the walls of the apartment and crumpling to the floor. The tall witch flared her powerful sage rank aura, merging her feet into the floorboards as she braced against the onslaught of powerful energies bearing down on them. The priestess however, didn’t even bother reaching for her aura, she just stood silently processing as the same screams that had once been barely faint echos, were now thunderously loud, causing many coven members to bleed profusely from their eyes and ears.
“Pitiful,” she remarked, before beginning her descent, “truly pitiful, disgusting creatures.”
The dim, deep shadows of the basement area the masked priestess emerged into swallowed the many empty jail cells lining the area, all except one. It wasn’t the tall woman with a red jackal mask kneeling before the cell that drew the priestess’ attention to this particular cell, nor was it the streams of golden ichor streaming from the cell gates. It was the figure chained to the wall of the cell, disheveled, tortured, barely hanging onto life, pouring blood and yet still emitting powerful waves of thrashing energy, that held the priestess’ unbroken attention. After all, it wasn’t everyday when one held an angel as their prisoner.
The mage in the red jackal mask slowly turned around. Upon spotting the priestess with the black jackal mask she slowly bowed.
“Sister, I greet you,” she said formally, “are you the one sent to assist me?”
“I am,” the shorter woman responded, “well met sister of the brood.”
“In the garden of glass lilies, where laughing jackals lie,” the two of them repeated simultaneously.
The shorter woman noticed that a twinge of divine energy that the red jackal had been secretly molding, then promptly disappeared.
“Hmph,” she grunted, unamused, folding her arms before her, “first your Imo’tkepp and now you? This coven is very spells first, questions later. Sloppy work.” her tone became darker and a dangerous feeling began softly radiating from her intent, “junior sister.”
“Apologies senior sister, please don’t take your anger out on Helena. Her magic may be a tad bit weak, but she’s a very dutiful and loyal witch. But with the state of everything recently, we cannot afford to take chances,” the red jackal explained, “and with what has recently happened in Cairo…”
“True,” the black jackal admitted, allowing her aura to die down, “the Crystal Jackal was not very pleased. All of the white jackals have been recalled from their missions along with a good number of us black jackals.”
“Meanwhile, us red jackals are left trying to cover everything, with absolutely no hope of reinforcements if the UWM or the goddamn Sentinels of the Centrys Towers come knocking,” the red jackal muttered angrily, “all I have is this pitiful excuse of a coven I was assigned to, so can you blame me for instilling a kill first rule?”
“No, I guess not,” the black jackal admitted, “at least you’re not going to the hell the green and yellow jackals are currently going through.”
The red jackal gulped nervously. Rumors of what the Crystal Jackal, the leader of the massive terrorist organization known as the Jackal Brood, had done when they’d appeared in Cairo, Egypt and witnessed the epic failure of the green and yellow jackals, was only mentioned in the quietest of whispers. As if even retelling the events too loudly, would immediately summon the great Crystal Jackal to the gossiper’s very location.
The two jackals turned their masked gazes back to the chained up angel.
“Well then,” the black jackal said with a sigh, cracking her knuckles, “guess we’d better get back to work before our asses are next to receive a very strongly worded letter from the white jackals.”
“...Indeed,” the red jackal agreed.
