A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Chapter 277: A Scream into the Void

Siobhan

Month 5, Day 17, Saturday 7:00 a.m.

“I’m Siobhan,” she repeated, her heart beginning to pound. “What’s going on? What are you doing to me?” She tried to sit up again, and this time had more success until Grandfather forcefully pushed her back down.

He reached behind himself and drew a battle wand from somewhere, which he leveled at her face. “What is my nickname for you?”

“Hazelnut? Grandfather, please, you’re scaring me.”

His grip on the wand’s baton-like base shifted, but he did not relent. “What is the most ill-mannered thing you have ever done in the presence of company?”

Siobhan grimaced. “Really? I guess it’s probably that time I swallowed most of a really long noodle but kept the end in my mouth, then pulled the whole thing back out again?”

“What magic are you capable of?”

“Umm, the float spell, glow, vexing tone…” She ticked off spells on her fingers, trying to remember everything he’d taught her.

“Can you cast the mending spell for stone, wood, or copper?”Siobhan lifted her hands helplessly. “I can’t cast the mending spell at all. But I’m sure I could learn it if you taught me!”

He hesitated, glancing from the floating light field to her, and then back again. “You have Will-strain, or I would make you prove it by casting something, but…I think you may be telling the truth.” He lowered the battle wand.

“About my name?

” she asked, barely refraining from screeching in frustration.“Yes. And I surely would have noticed a break event. Siobhan is asleep. But you also seem to be Siobhan. Can you think of any other way to prove your identity?”

She sat up, spread her palms wide, and looked down at herself, then back up at him, dumbfounded. Finally, she realized what was happening. “This is a dream. I’m dreaming.” She pinched her thigh, then winced and hunched over the leg at the sharp pain. “I thought you couldn’t feel pain in dreams!”

“That is a myth,” Grandfather said, the edges of his mouth twitching in amusement. He looked reluctantly back at the floating light field. “If only…” He sighed. “I can only curse fate that I will have no chance to study this anomaly. But as long as you are safe, that is what matters most.”

He walked away and returned with a potion that he shoved into her mouth. She tried to take the vial from him, but he slapped her hands away. “An echoed identity? I must double-check that nothing has been missed…” he was muttering to himself when she slumped backward, returning to unconsciousness.

Siobhan woke up feeling distinctly strange in a way that left her distracted for a moment, but her surroundings quickly drew her attention. ‘Where am I?’

She sat up and looked around, too afraid to call out. It took her an embarrassingly long time to match her surroundings to the glimpses of Grandfather’s workshop that she’d seen from the doorway over the years. Tentatively, she called out for him.

He didn’t respond, and after a few minutes passed, Siobhan climbed to her feet and tried to move around. Her limbs were stiff and weak, as if she were recovering from some terrible fever, and it felt like her mind’s model of her body and how it responded to her thoughts was somehow off. Her steps were either too large or too small, and when she tried to push her hair out of her eyes, she ended up hitting herself in the face. Only with careful attention did she become able to move to the stairs and walk down them without injury. ‘Have I been horribly sick, on the verge of death?’ she wondered. It would explain why she was here and why she felt like this. Grandfather might have wanted to keep her nearby so he could tend to her while he worked.

She’d made it almost all the way down, her legs shaking like a newborn fawn’s, when he came through the door. His hair was still wet from bathing, yet he looked anything but refreshed. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin rough and sallow, and before he clenched his fist to stop it, his fingers had been trembling. “You’re awake. It’s been two days, and I was beginning to worry. What do you remember?” he asked, guiding her over to one of the worktables and beginning to use a variety of what she assumed were diagnostic artifacts on her.

“I don’t…know? I went to sleep and woke up here.”

“What did Aimee make for breakfast yesterday?”

“Creamy potato soup and fluffy moon roll things. You complained because there weren’t any beans, and she used too much butter.”

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“Protein is important,” he justified, unashamed. “A healthy diet supports a healthy mind and Will.” He asked a few more, increasingly alarming questions to test her memory, and then set aside the last of the diagnostic artifacts and nodded with satisfaction. “It seems the procedure was a success.”

“What happened?” she cried, aggrieved.

“An Aberrant attacked the village,” he said, leading her over to the window. He released the locking ward, then pushed the pane open so she could lean out.

Siobhan gasped. A huge, shimmering dome covered the entirety of the village, stretching up high enough to swallow the sky and glowing slightly against the night. Within, the village itself looked like some kind of sick ruin. She tore her eyes away as her stomach threatened nausea.

“It is no sundered zone, but it will be enough to make a difference without…” He cleared his throat. “Without the Aberrant still around to make things worse.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Do not worry. I have already killed the Aberrant. But it was a Nightmare-type with some Blight-type aspects. It had been infecting the villagers through dreams, and though it couldn’t defeat me, it did manage to imprison me for a time.”

He turned her around to face him and closed the window behind her. “Siobhan, you were infected before I could save you.”

She could feel the blood drain from her face, and if not for his quick grip on her shoulders, she might have fallen.

“Hope is not lost,” he quickly reassured her. “I was able to develop a complex working of magic to isolate its influence in your mind. This required that I erase all of your related memories. You might be slightly…unstable for a while, but as long as you do not unravel the seal—as long as you do not remember anything that happened—you will live.” He squeezed her shoulders uncomfortably tight and shook her slightly. “Do not go searching for clues. Do not think on it incessantly. Do not pick at the edges of the hole. Remembering will allow trace remnants of the Aberrant’s effect to seep out, and I will not be able to save you again.”

“I—I won’t,” she promised.

“We will do a blood-based compulsion to help you keep your vow,” he said, and though this extreme measure only frightened Siobhan more, she acquiesced silently. She had so many questions, but she wasn’t sure what she could safely ask.

He had barely finished binding her with the vow when he stood up and began to pace. His hands were trembling again, and he kept palming and then pocketing his Conduit, only to take it out again. “You must leave before the Red Guard arrives. Several of the Aberrant-affected villagers escaped before I could finish raising the barrier around the village, and the Red Guard agents might mistake you for one of them. Do not return.”

“Where will we go? And what about Father?”

“Your useless sire can fend for himself!” Grandfather snapped. He took a few deep breaths to calm down, walked away, and returned with a nourishing draught that he pressed on her. When she was already drinking, he added, “I must clarify. I will not be going with you.”

Siobhan gulped down the dregs of the draught, shuddering at the unpleasant taste. “Are we splitting up? I don’t want to go by myself! You come with me, or I’ll stay here, and you can hide me somewhere so the Red Guard don’t find me.”

“You misunderstand. I cannot go with you because it is too late for me.”

“Were you infected, too?” She hurried forward and grabbed his hand, holding it between both of hers. “It’s okay. We’ll save you the same way you saved me. I probably can’t cast that spell myself, but if you just write down the instructions, and we can get to a competent sorcerer—”

“Siobhan,” his voice was soft but final. “I have not been infected by the Aberrant. I cast through my own flesh.”

The lights of the workshop seemed to flicker as her blood rushed in her ears. Her knees buckled. “No.”

Grandfather knelt to meet her. “I was forced to do so to survive. I have cast through my own flesh for some time, and with great power. I am barely keeping a grasp on my self-control right now. I do not think I will manage much longer.”

“No!” she screamed, scrabbling at his pocket-lined vest. “Please, no! Just hold on. You can stop. You can stay with me. I know you can, please.”

He pressed one large palm to her cheek, thumbing away a line of streaming tears. “Unfortunately, no matter how strong the Will, it is ineffective at stopping one from doing something that they dearly want to do. I can think of nothing else but the next moment I will be able to cast magic. I wish I could change things, but it was already too late from the first moment that I channeled magic through my own flesh.”

Siobhan hung her head, fisting her hands in the fabric of his vest and sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. “Please,” she gasped.

He acted as if he hadn’t heard her. “You are safe to be around, and not an inherent danger to anyone as long as the seal remains intact—and possibly even afterward. I am unsure of the exact effects you might experience if you fail. However, you should not speak of what’s happened here, and never admit where you are from. You should travel at least several days away. You might find your father, if he hasn’t run all the way to the East. Better yet, apprentice yourself to a competent thaumaturge, if you can find one.”

The old man looked away, his eyes going distant and his face twitching with several aborted expressions. There was a strange sensation in the air, as if his Will were brushing the surrounding space in agitation. It prickled along her skin as if examining her with needle-like claws.

Grandfather gently but firmly tore her hands away from his vest. “It is a shame for everything to end like this, after so long. But there is still you, at least. You will be my legacy.” He patted her on the head, shaking her back and forth slightly. “I believe in you. But you will not survive against an Aberrant formed from my flesh, and I do not wish to die that way.” He stood, evading her desperate lunge, and moved beneath the mezzanine, where he pulled up a trap door hidden in the floor.

Siobhan watched in mute, unbelieving astonishment as he descended without a backward glance.

When he was gone, she remained kneeling on the stone, staring out at nothing as tears streamed down her face.

She heard a bang and felt the impact through the stone beneath her feet. She flinched so hard it hurt. It might have been her imagination, but she thought she could also feel the secondary impact of Grandfather’s body collapsing to the floor, and the split-second flash of his Will evaporating like fog beneath the sun.

She screamed—one long, keening cry of rage and grief that went on until her lungs ran empty, and then continued silently into the void. There was no one left to listen.