A Practical Guide to Sorcery

Chapter 281: Surfacing from the Depths

Siobhan

Month 9, Day 26, Sunday 5:00 p.m.

Siobhan was ripped out of her lost memories—out of her thirteen-year-old self—with such abrupt violence that it felt like something inside her almost tore. She had no time to react to the shock and pain before a crushing ocean of darkness collapsed on her. It was bitterly cold and more viscous than any water should be, restricting her movements and squeezing the air out of her so hard that she couldn’t even try to take a breath.

Siobhan flailed, her instinctive panic overwhelming any chance at conscious thought. Her clawed fingers slashed through something bright within the darkness, and as it burst, a childhood memory of staring into the window of a shop full of bright pastries flowered in her mind, almost as if she were re-living it.

Another movement resulted in another burst of light, and for a split moment, she was walking over a plank between two buildings made of white stone.

The strangeness was enough to confuse her, and in her confusion, her panic lessened. These surroundings were somehow familiar, and as if the very idea brought understanding, she knew she was back in the strange space she’d seen behind her own eyes—the place that was all empty space and galaxies of light, which housed the Aberrant’s seal.

However, the space in between had turned into the crushing depths of an endless ocean, and with no buildup or warning, it spun violently. The whirlpool tried to rip her head and limbs from her body, to twist her like dough until she pipped and ripped. It was killing her.

But her response to desperation had never been to panic miserably, but to reach for control. And there was only one thing she could truly control. As she applied her Will and focus to herself, clarifying her thoughts, the whirlpool also settled, faster than any normal phenomenon could have quelled.

‘Ah,’ she realized. This was an ocean, but it was also an almost limitless expanse, and need not have any weight or apply any crushing pressure. She only needed to match it in repelling force, in the density of her existence. She only needed to apply her Will.

But as she floated in that place of darkness and light that housed all of her memories, she looked into the distance and saw the Aberrant’s seal in the form of a stone box. It was broken open, a jagged crack of stone with several protruding bands of torn metal. It looked as if some monstrous force had broken free with sheer force, and then another thousand years had passed.And hanging in the darkness between them, the being Grandfather had sealed away was free.

It did not look like Claudio. As it had while traveling with her through the spirit realm, the creature was fracturing and settling with every slight movement, as if whatever force within keeping it together had barely enough power to keep it from shattering entirely. Every time the creature resettled, its appearance shifted slightly.

But it also had a weight that was new—a solidity that contrasted with the cube-shaped seal behind it, which was crumbling and washed out, like a watercolor painting that had been left in the sun too long.

Remembering had broken the seal and made the being stronger.

It grinned at her with a terrifying, gleeful fondness, tilting its head to the side and lifting one hand to wave cutely. Its movements left afterimages that hurt her eyes, starved and ravenous and pulling at the surrounding light.

Now that she knew what Claudio looked like and also had a fresh reminder of her own face at thirteen in the mirror, it was obvious that this thing trapped in her mind was not, in fact, him. Or not totally him. It looked a little too much like Siobhan.

Siobhan was drenched in a savage dread. She swayed from a wooziness born of panic with nowhere to expend the resulting energy, and her fingertips trembled. But the emotions did not pull her back to her physical body. She gathered her Will together even tighter, coalescing all of her authority over this space. Ironically, this helped to calm her physical responses in a way it never would have in the real world, and her mind followed suit. ‘I suppose it’s because this is not my physical body. This is probably how shamans walk in the spirit realm.’

“I can keep you here forever,” the being called across the distance between them. Its voice sounded closer than it should have, and its tone was almost conversational.

Siobhan tried to make out its expression, and they grew closer together—not as if either of them were moving, but as if the emptiness between them was shrinking. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and looked around again. ‘This is my mind,’ she reminded herself. The thought settled her further, and she smiled back at the creature, baring her teeth malevolently. “We may both be here, but it’s still undecided which one of us is trapped,” she said coldly.

The being flinched, and when it fractured and resettled, its face triggered a faint bell of recollection in the back of her mind. The features didn’t remind her of Claudio, except for the tawny skin that all versions of it had, but neither did it remind her of herself, exactly.

Whatever connection allowed her to sense the being’s emotions, now she tasted its hunger, but also a bruised, tender melancholy.

For some reason, this frightened her even more. Siobhan wanted to look away, and every cell in her body was urging her to escape. But she forced herself to face the being defiantly as its excitement surged.

“How long has it been?” it asked. “Months since we last met? Do you know how impatiently I’ve been waiting for this moment?”

“Seven years since you’ve been infesting my mind,” she countered. “About one-third of my life.”

It laughed humorlessly. “It’s been all of my life, or close to it.” It smiled back at her savagely, showing off slightly-too-pointy teeth, and a mouth that seemed to have too many of them, all lined up in little rows like poisonous thorns. “A lifetime, trapped in a tiny little room, constantly going insane, falling apart and putting myself back together, forcing the shattered puzzle pieces to fit, only to go insane once more. Can you imagine what it’s like to be trapped in a lightless cell with only yourself for company?”

Siobhan lifted a hand to her chest, her fingers clawing at the skin over her heart. Even her faint sense of the being’s emotions felt like it might drive her to tear at her own hair and scream madly in an attempt to escape this pain. This was not something that could be faked. It had been living in torture, a life almost worse than death. ‘I must be even warier. A trapped animal may chew off its own leg to escape. I cannot expect it to have any kind of common sense. It is mad.’

Its features twisted in hatred as it fractured again, the light from a nearby galaxy flaring and throwing stark shadows across its features that made it look even more inhuman. “Can you imagine what it’s like to not be yourself?”

Siobhan’s legs began to tremble with fear, and not even reminding herself to apply her Will was enough to stop them.

“But by this point, I’m all that’s left,” it said, slapping a hand to its chest. “Whatever I am,” it added softly with a humorless, breathless laugh. It took a step forward, and the space between them shrank again, until she could see her own reflection in the shine of its eyes. “Can you imagine what it’s like to be a warbled echo, an impression—a memory that the only person alive who could remember refuses to recall?”

Some part of what it was saying was just a new tactic, an attempt to play on her pity with a hint of devious cunning, but everything it was saying was also true. Just staring at it like this, really seeing it, she felt she understood it, if only a little. It needed both freedom and stability, but any attempt to achieve either was stymied again and again until the only way out was to claw at itself. But even that led to no release.

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The being grew suddenly wild, and she flinched, instinctively believing it meant to attack her, or perhaps itself.

But its arms spread wide, its maw opening wide and sucking in. It pulled at the surroundings as if it had nothing inside but a vast expanse of complete emptiness, a hunger that would never be sated, and the lights and dark space between both began to flow into it.

Siobhan reached out to try to tear them back. Those were her memories, and if it was eating them… What had it said while she was casting the crown of madness spell, before it pulled her down into forced understanding? ‘I will eat your soul and wear your body like a fine garment.’

Her grasping hands did stymie the flow of herself into the being’s mouth, but did not stop it entirely, and she noticed what seemed to be small grains of sand the color of her skin falling off of her and catching in the invisible wind it created. That seemed even more ominous, but she’d long ago learned the lesson she needed to deal with this situation. She spoke softly and calmly. “I control my body. I control my mind. They don’t control me.”

And as if saying it made it true, the flow of herself into the being stopped. The thing that looked a bit like her, a bit like Claudio, and a bit like someone else choked and gagged as some of what it had swallowed forcibly came back up.

After the fight with Thaddeus, she’d been so hurt, and under so much pressure, that she hadn’t had time to really examine everything that had happened during her attempt to escape. But now, she recalled that eldritch sensation she had touched, something likely originating from the consciousness of this thing who was trying to eat her.

She recalled the void, and everything that the being had eaten spewed back up out of it, along with several tiny, sharp fragments of its flesh. This place responded to her Will in a way that the real world never could. In a way, this was truer magic than anything she had ever cast.

The being stared into her eyes, shocked, and she watched vindictively as a piece of its sclera broke away, revealing a roiling, turbid darkness behind the shell—behind the facade of a person. In panic, it made a sudden decision, and before she could register the change, it had lunged forward and somehow leapt into her eyes.

Siobhan woke with her body already flexed into a convulsive arch that made her spine scream out in pain. There was blood in her mouth, and as she collapsed onto the thin mattress, she choked and groaned. She hurt like she’d been run over by a whole street full of high-stepping erythreans pulling carriages.

Oliver was leaning over her, trying to tip some potion into her mouth, eyes bloodshot with worry and carrying a faint sheen of tears.

She spat out the potion and flopped over to lean on her side, where she coughed violently and spat up blood, foam, and bile onto the floor at his feet.

Before she could orient herself, the thing that had come out through her pupils sunk into her shadow. It wrapped the darkness around itself and tried to tear it away, right out from under her.

Oliver flinched back as her shadow jerked out between them, straining in his direction.

Siobhan reacted instinctively. She had learned how to control her shadow many years ago, and lately had been holding the spell for all of her waking moments. She had perfected a control and expanded the limits of what she could do with her shadow beyond what she had once thought possible. And so now, she grabbed hold of it in a way that had become second nature.

The drain was heavy, the struggle so intense that if she had been holding on with her fingers, they might have snapped away from the strain.

But she was holding on with her Will, and that had never been as weak as her flesh. Though her shadow was not entirely under her control, it could not escape her.

The being’s form, wrapped in her darkness, writhed and struggled to escape from her, stretching out the part of the shadow between them like cold taffy as it tried to reach the edge of the warded cell.

Oliver had one hand on his battle wand and the other stretched out toward her, as if to grab or shield her. “What is that? Is that the Aberrant? What should I do?” She had never heard him so panicked.

But he was inside the cell with her, and that meant that he couldn’t activate the most powerful measures built into the wards, even if she were willing to put herself at such risk to keep the fractured being from escaping.

Oliver took a shuffling step forward, his center of gravity low, and tried to stomp on the being. But it had no real form, and his foot passed through and hit the floor futilely.

Her shadow bumped up against the door and scrabbled at the handle and its edges, but had no effect other than causing the wards to flare brighter.

Siobhan wasn’t sure if they would still hold the being without her efforts to restrain it, but at least they weren’t useless. She sat up painfully, and Oliver sidestepped forward and placed a hand on her back to steady her.

Her chapped lips had split in several places. She spat out blood again, feeling the wounds where she had bitten her tongue and cheek. Her words were slightly clumsy, her voice hoarse as if she had been screaming. “I’ve been doing a lot of research recently. The restricted knowledge seems to be the most interesting. Did you know that people have done experiments on spirits…and specifically, what happens when a spirit is bound into a foreign body? If I remember correctly, one author described it as trying to force one’s entire foot into a hollow cube, pressing and bending until the flesh fit, no matter how it was mangled to do so. Most often, it drove the spirit into insanity. My shadow doesn’t belong to you, and without me, it has nothing to cast it.” This wasn’t exactly what she’d read, as that research had been done not on spirits, but on people, but this thing didn’t seem to be able to tell when she was lying.

“How long do you think you will survive wearing something that doesn’t belong to you, even if you do manage to tear yourself free and somehow get past the wards?”

It stilled. “I’m not a spirit.” Its voice was slightly warped, as it always seemed to be when it spoke in the real world.

Siobhan tilted her head to the side, allowing her gaze to rove skeptically over its form. “Really? What’s the difference between you and a spirit, except for the fact that you live in my mind and not the spirit realm?” She remembered something it had once said to her, the first time it had taken her shadow, when she had run as far away from it and the Red Guard agent who had attacked her as possible. “What happens if you run out of energy while you’re away from me?”

She sensed its fear and pressed the attack. “You’re not even a coherent being. Are you sure you can survive outside of the seal? It might have confined you, but it also kept you from scattering completely.”

“If I would have died anyway, then why did Raaz lock me in there?”

“Because you could still have killed me. I was young and weak back then.” Siobhan slid her legs off the edge of the narrow bed and allowed her feet to touch the floor, but didn’t try to stand. Her legs would probably collapse immediately, and negate any impression of strength or control she was trying to build. “But even if you could survive without the seal, and without me…I think the Red Guard would be very interested to understand how. Don’t you know that they’ve been watching me? That I’m working with them?”

The fractured being hesitated and its hold on her shadow weakened as its confusion and fear caused it to lose coherence for a bit.

Siobhan brought her hands up to her mouth and cast the shadow-familiar spell faster than she ever had before. Immediately, her grip on her shadow firmed.

With every single thaum at her command and all three branches of her Will, she ripped her shadow back.

The being was left behind, naked, nothing more than a distortion in the air, a shivering, fragmenting thing.

“Where did it go?” Oliver asked, raising his wand and stepping closer, so that his thigh pressed against hers.

She spared him a confused glance, but looked back toward the door with a tiny smirk. “See? This man can’t even see you.”

It tried to slip through the wards once again, and this time they glowed brighter, but still didn’t fail. Desperate, it turned and lunged back toward her, trying to grab at her shadow, but she held it still and impenetrable beneath her body, where it was meant to be. “Let me in!” it screamed, shocked, angry, and full of blame, as if she was the one at fault. “I’ll die! I’ll die!”

“Do you mind dying so much? At least you wouldn’t be trapped.”

It wavered for a moment of sheer longing fighting with a soul-deep fatigue. “But I never got to live. I haven’t done any of the things I’m meant to do,” it muttered to itself, so low that she almost couldn’t hear it despite how close they were. It lunged toward Oliver then, but he didn’t even realize it was trying to attack him, and his eyes were like mirrors, repelling its attempt to enter them easily.

“He’s a Null,” she said, letting her head loll to the side as she looked up at his confused face.

The being lunged at her next, but she was prepared, and closed her eyes before it could try to enter them. She could still sense it, and the room, through her shadow.

Siobhan laughed and reached up to run her fingers through her hair, but grimaced when her hand got stuck on knots only a few inches in. Her eyes stung with tears that she hoped wouldn’t slip free. “If only I had known all along it was this easy to get rid of you, I wouldn’t have been so frightened.”

As if those words had broken something inside it, the being collapsed into a vague kneeling posture on the floor in front of her feet. “If you let me live…I’ll help you. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll listen to you.”

She stared at it for a long moment, tasting its emotions, then leaned forward and pushed her fingers into the area where its head would be. She could barely feel anything with her fingers, but there was still some sensation of touching something, felt instead as a shiver on the back of her neck.

Siobhan dug her fingers in and with an effort that was more Will than muscle, forced its head up. Looking into the warped space where its eyes should have been, she asked, “What can you do for me?”