If you have your Crest on your hand, and then you lose that hand, what happens? Is there any consequence for your Craft? Does that Crest reappear elsewhere?
The Baskervilles, a great Family seeped in Obscurity, knew this. And their heir, Casimir Baskerville, was just arrogant enough, just callous enough, just Machiavellian enough, to abuse this. After all, all Houses end up having the problem of an incestuous relationship with their magecraft. Spread their ties too wide, and their Family Secrets became public knowledge. Confine themselves for too long, and they stagnate, becoming inbred buffoons with no practical capabilities. They needed fresh blood and fresh perspectives, strangers who were nevertheless willing to divulge their own understandings of the arcane craft properly.
Strangers, who knew not that such knowledge was meant to be safeguarded with their life.
So Casimir looked for those who wanted purpose, who wanted to be special. Those has-beens, those drifters, those deluded of their own capability, who just wanted an opportunity to become who they once were. He took his time, of course. Scattered a few spells as miracles, promised those mundanes that he would reveal the truth of the world. Built up House Baskerville as the only justice in a cruel world. Armed them with a faith born from deception, roused their spirits, offered them that singular chance to truly be a part of something special!
And then plunged them headlong into the Dungeon.
Those that survive were drowning still, and the only lifeline they could grasp upon was House Baskerville. They gained the Craft and the Crest, the qualifications to walk the reverse side of the world, but with neither knowledge nor the ability to learn, all they could do was become subservient to the Baskervilles, to Casimir. To continue to plunge into Dungeons, continue to face great terrors, continue to mine for magecraft, in exchange for the shelter of Obscurity, for they knew not how to survive alone in a realm that defied one’s understanding of reality.
It was a successful program! After some delegation, after some showing of favors, it became a self-propagating program!
…
People disappeared, never to be seen or heard of again, but society forgot them.
Amaya, however, couldn't.
Before 15, her life had been fairly normal. Her parents weren’t excessively loving, but they weren’t abusive either. She went through public school, excelling in some subjects but never to the point of becoming extraordinary. She had her friends, her extracurriculars, and she was her class’s student representative. Perhaps she had a dream job, but she was realistic enough not to toss away safe options. Perhaps she had a crush or two, but it was easy enough to make excuses to never ask them out. It was a small town, a small school. Peacefully in the middle of nowhere in particular.
She thought it was a bit weird when the school brought in a guest speaker who looked like a bit of a loony, but his magic tricks were cool. It was some Oriental traditional practice thing, and after the speech and demonstration, they handed out pamphlets to another meeting they were having later on that week. Her friend, Renee, wanted to go, but didn’t want to go alone, so Amaya tagged along as her plus one. Renee liked that kinda stuff, after all. Magic and superstitions and such. Apparently one of her ancestors was a witch.
The meeting wasn’t anything that really stuck out to Amaya either. The group’s members were all cheerful sorts, though it gave off the impression of a bunch introverts and nerds with bad hygiene. Renee called it ‘aura’ though. Amaya didn’t think she’d have a BO fetish like that, but her friend seemed to be getting along with the others, so she hung around for a while longer and then excused herself. It was a gradual thing.
If she didn’t know about the meeting, she’d have thought her friend had gotten a boyfriend.
Hard to imagine a boyfriend would be enough to get you to drop school altogether though.
Harder to imagine that a boyfriend would be enough to get you to disappear from your own house in the middle of the night, without even leaving behind a note, without even bringing her wallet.
The school worried about it for a bit, but ultimately, the administration were tight-lipped. The police worked on it for a bit, but they soon delegated the case to some other department, and no one seemed to know who really worked at that department. The parents grieved, worried, and yet there wasn’t any sense of urgency or desperation. People disappeared. It simply happened. What was there to worry about?
Amaya wondered if there was something in the water.
Then, with the arrogance of teenager who thought herself as a young adult, she decided to take matters to her own hands, because that cult had to be responsible.
…
It took two years of digging around the internet. It took a part-time job to buy a decent road bike and tickets for buses and trains. It took effort and relationships, and at times, Amaya herself wasn’t certain what she was doing, spending her high school life like this. Did she even care about Renee, about other students, that much? Or was it simply a curiosity, an obsession, triggered by the behavior of others, who thought that none of it really mattered?
Before she reached that point, she got her breakthrough. Left on a bike, with a flashlight, a camera, a stun gun, and a sandwich all stuffed in a fanny pack. Didn’t know what to expect, but she was used to groping in the dark. Whatever it was, she’d know by the end of the week.
Darkness was replaced by nightmares.
A shadow-beast great enough to swallow the moon, a horde of ghouls rising from the walls, an abyssal quagmire, swallowing whole bursts of light and flame, the feeble resistance of those same members of that cult she had been tracking. Cries of the betrayed sounded, but mercy wasn’t a possibility, and in three minutes, all that remained was a vacant lot.
A vacant lot, and a man dressed like he hadn’t left the 19th century.
He was young in an ageless way. His eyes were as black as the night sky. Purple veins wriggled beneath his translucent skin. His hands were gloved. His shadow stretched out in a way that defied the streetlamps around him.
He smiled at her, and in that moment, Amaya could not remember what had been in that vacant lot before.
“Best to forget this, young lady.”
He passed by her, and Amaya forgot whether she had even brought anything with her on that night.
The clouds obscured the moon. The forecast spoke of rain tomorrow.
…
But while she had forgotten what was there, she knew that something had been there. Something that she wanted to see, something that she wanted to know. Something had dug into her mind itself, snipping away the bits that seemed to matter so much for her.
And when she returned home, that something had erased all traces of those who had disappeared. There was no notice in the school. There was no case in the department. There was no son or daughter who had disappeared. She couldn’t recall any faces, couldn’t find any photos, couldn’t do anything but scratch at that itch in the back of her head!
As blood collected beneath her nails, she had to wonder.
If her memories were so suspect, how could she be so sure that Renee was just some friend? Just another face in the classroom? How could she be certain, when she was only on one side of the coin?
What was missing?
Three years passed. Six years passed. Ten years passed.
Amaya earned her Crest. She stepped deep into the Dark City. She delved into the Labyrinth. She formed connections as a courier. She learned of the Houses, of the Manifestations, of the innumerable ways with which the movements of the shadow could affect the status of the corporeal. She had become unrecognizable to her teenage self, stray beast with a gleaming fang, having so neatly cleaved herself from her realspace relationships.
But she held no regrets.
You can't know what you don't learn, and she was never smart enough to earn a scholarship.
The first thing mages note about Amaya is her sword, a spiritual construct imbued with a simple tenet: “What can be perceived is material.” With that understanding of the world, that blade of white light becomes capable of slicing through curses and maladies, of parting barriers and seals, of rendering the incomprehensible simple. It cleaves the unknown, parting darkness to reveal the true nature of the night: that there is nothing in darkness that isn’t there in day.
It has earned her the reputation of ‘Demonsbane’.
But that’s the thing about a sword. It draws attention away from the gleam in Amaya’s eyes. Eyes that see through deception, a sovereign capable of passing down divine judgment. Eyes that transfix her prey, a tyrant that allows for nothing less that absolute stillness. Eyes that, at times, offers solace amidst chaos as well, soothing the howling of the mind, pulling away the psychological afflictions that far too many spells and curses. One sees heaven in her gaze, and heaven can be blinding or beautiful, depending on the sins they bear.
A litany of other crafts assists Amaya in her work as a freelancer in the magical world, of course. Ways of folding and traversing space. Ways of finding a safehouse night. Ways of generating warmth without flame. Ways of cleaning clothing without needing to remove them.
Kronshi,
Sky Blue,
Majoraa,
High Moon,
Emberdawn2,
VirgoDrago,
ppppppppp,
CitrusArms,
Soldat Elf,
Estylwen
