Waking up to the sound of her mother’s deprecations was never a pleasant experience and ranked somewhere in the top ten reasons why she had left home in the manner that she did. It was certainly unwanted to have to go through it again now, mostly because Morgana wasn’t supposed to be asleep at the moment and the fact that she was meant that something had gone wrong.
Well, Morgana had to commend who came up with that sleeping spell for its efficacy. The wards built into her hat were designed to protect against a wide range of sensory or mind altering effects and warn against several more, but she was always limited by the surface area she had available and had to make concessions; somnatic effects were one that she didn’t often deal with in the lab and were usually slow acting and obvious enough not to be an issue, and as such were one of those concessions.
This one had taken out everyone, even an
android which was… concerning, in a matter of seconds. Morgana was begrudgingly impressed.
Credit where it was due she supposed.
Back to the matter at hand. Her mother chastised her for sleeping in the hall despite being the person to both put her to sleep
and put her in the hall, which was just like her on all accounts, and while Morgana liked to believe she was above sniping back at such comments she frankly wasn’t and was irritable from the sudden bout of unconsciousness and equally sudden waking.
“God, did you just refer to yourself in the third person and call yourself great in the same sentence? Did whatever sense of decorum you possessed up and leave when you started trading trinkets to third-rate cults or did it flee this place the same time I did?”Pushing herself to her feet and brushing imaginary dust off of her skirt, just to vex her mother at the implication that the floor was dirty, Morgana took a moment to survey the room and take stock of her situation before her mother could respond.
She was indeed in a hall;
the hall in fact, which meant things were about to be more difficult than she had hoped. The rest of the team, Amanda, Faye and Michael were bound and restrained in various ways and though she didn’t have time to do a proper analysis she was certain that each was being held in a way matched to their abilities; cold iron for the fae-blooded girl, something to jam the android’s ability to radio for help, something to contain the shaman’s friends for a while. Unless one of them could pull something, she was on her own.
Her mother was not. Beyond the centre of the hall several dozen witches sat at tables and chairs as if what was going on was nothing more than a show put on for their entertainment. They were not all Faiths of course, even her entire extended family wouldn’t fill all of those seats, but they would all be affiliated with her mother’s faction in some way; members of lesser families sworn to hers, individuals of high standing and so on. All her to see her mother’s supposed moment of triumph no doubt, at her invitation, though more than a few would be hoping to see her downfall instead.
“Yes, yes; I do remember some of your silly traditions. How about you explain to our audience anyway? Some of them haven’t had the pleasure before.”
Angelica could only sigh at the quips her daughter gave to her. A shred of pity and perhaps, sadness envelops Angelica as she shakes her head.
“Dearest Morgana. You and I well know that witches nowadays are becoming less and less important in this new world our ‘dearest’ deific overlords are creating. And a not insignificant amount of witches all across Britain are in agreement that something has to change. For too long we have been victims of persecution and hypocrisy! For too long have we’ve been put onto the sidelines. NO MORE! Our benefactor has shown the way for us at the Faith family… nay! All witches throughout the world, to regain our prominence on the world stage!”She knew that convincing some of the witches in her cause would make it harder for Morgana to rescue the rest of the group even if she wins. A bit of manoeuvring and insurance if she loses.
“Do we need to bow down to this initiative formed by far away Americans and Russians? Do we need to bow down to an organisation that has finished its mandate of killing the Abomination? I say NO fellow witches.”“We have been pushed to the fringes of society. Had to pretend to be mere folk healers and wise women and meet under cover of night like criminals to keep the authorities that be happy. And what has that given us? Persecutions? Burnings? Nearly killing the tradition of witchcraft entirely? Why must we stalk in the shadows any longer sisters? It is time for all of us to come to the light! Freedom at last! From the Kings and Emperors of yore, and to the stifling bureaucracy of the OMR. I chant Freedom my fellow witches!”She cleared her throat, her conclusion was coming fast.
“And as we stand here. In this great hall of trials. I hereby challenge you! Morgana Faith, to a duel, a duel of honour and privilege, with all these Witches as witnesses. The victor of this duel shall be named head of the Faith family! And the loser? Well, that is up to the victor to decide wouldn’t it?” Not willing to wait any further. Angelica pulled out her wand and fired a burst of various magical bolts, from fireballs to ice arrows to pure holy light, and aimed it at her daughter. She is done playing games with her, and these multiple beams would serve as a test to see what kind of enchantments her daughter has made to the jacket she wore. Angelica knew that her clothing was enchanted to the brim, but she needed to know what kind of enchantment Morgana weaved into the fabric to find a way to counter them.
Let’s see if my daughter’s time in that wretched organisation has made her more adept in magic She thought as the various bolts whizz towards the Witch.
What a farce.
A duel for the head of the Faith family? Wasn’t the prize for winning supposed to be something you wanted? Or at least valued? Even if Morgana managed to win, it wasn’t like any of the witches present would just accept her edict to turn themselves in and stop this foolishness. It was either lose and most likely die, or win and then have to combat the vultures waiting in the wings.
Well, the latter was still better than the former, so it was in her best interests to win this.
So she said, but it wasn’t like besting her mother in single combat was going to be easy. For all that Morgana derided her, Angelica Faith was one of the most powerful witches in Britain, possibly all of Europe, while Morgana, as she continued to think to herself, was
not cut out for field work. She had made her preparations for a fight but had done so with the expectation that she would be standing
behind a military-grade android during said fight. All she had were her warded clothing, which had thankfully been left on her person, but that was not as reassuring as one might think.
It was a simple and unassailable fact that you couldn’t ward against everything. Oh you could try, as many had in the past, you may even get close, but there was no such thing as a
perfect ward; different types of spell and energies required different counter measures, something that would stop magically conjured fire would fail to stop a lightning bolt, a flung rock would pass straight through something designed to protect against something as esoteric as holy magic and curses from one continent were all but unrecognisable compared to curses from another.
Warding against one type of threat was simple, warding against two was more complicated but still well-trodden ground at this point while against three or four or five was something that was often the purview of specialists in the trade. You couldn’t just slap wards on top of each other and call it a day; they would conflict, interfere with each other and cancel each other out at best, turn against each other and create a feedback loop of cascading responses at worst. Each additional ward had to be carefully woven in with the rest, melding two separate and sometimes contradictory effects together, layering them with complimentary overlapping parts so that they worked together and built off of each other to greater effect rather than trying to eat each other. Like trying to write two stories onto the same page, the words of one written on top of the other, arranging them so that the page could be both of them and a new third story all at the same time, without making a single letter illegible.
Her mother fired at least four distinct magical effects at her with her first volley; fire and ice and lightning and holy light all at the same time. The wards on her coat could handle two of those; electricity was a common hazard even of the non-magical variety and warding herself against the coldest element just seemed sensible. The fire she caught with her hand, the shield that she had used to absorb and redirect the fireball of the cultist a couple days prior still present. The last she had to dodge, a less than graceful side-step taking her out of the path of the holy light that she had honestly never expected to be on the receiving end of.
Really, that just seemed like cheating. She knew for a fact her mother only attended church when appearances demanded it of her.
Morgana sent the fire back at her mother with a flick of her wrist, but didn’t even bother to hope that it would do anything. For what was likely meant to be a probing attack, it gave her mother far too much information about the kind of defences she had at her disposal; it exposed her lack of preparations towards holy magic for one, but Morgana was hedging her bets on her mother not being well versed in that kind of magic to begin with. Angelica was no saint after all.
“I’d prefer if you kept any talk about politics out of this duel; I’ve never had much interest in it.” Which may have been a mistake; perhaps she could have seen this coming if she had paid more attention to proceedings related to witchcraft and the wider actions of the OMR. Not that Morgana believed witches were really being intentionally marginalised or pushed aside, but the inexorable tide of progress wasn’t always kind of traditionalists, of which her mother was certainly one. It was certainly true that historically witches had suffered an undue amount of persecution at the hands of the powers that be, often in the form of churches and kings; it wouldn’t really be that hard to stir up trouble by latching on to existing tensions and resentment among their number. Still, for her mother to be leading the charge was surprising.
She’d thought the woman smart, if nothing else.
“I thought you’d know better than to listen to strange men who promised you the world if only you did something for them first. This ‘benefactor’ must have made quite the convincing argument.”
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