Sometimes we don't know all the details in a situation until it's too late. Sometimes we know the details but don't understand their importance. Sometimes.. Sometimes we can misjudge so much without even realising it? It's called being human sadly. Events unfold including but not limited to: Eris going for help. John going to bed (reluctantly) and Hannah making progress for once!

 

“Comfortable?”

Eris didn’t really answer.
Her little head lolled back lazily and she splayed herself out on top of me as I settled into the chair I’d spent most of this afternoon sitting in while working with John.
She tends to get a bit sleepy after eating and I’m kind of reluctant to stop her, she’s so cute like this.

For a moment I think John thought he could get out of explaining his little ‘glamor’ enchantment as I got settled with the Eris-ball on my chest but a look from me killed that hope in an instant luckily.
I may be holding a now stuffed and sleepy Eris but I am NOT missing out on a chance at breaking down and reworking his glamor necklace into MY new ‘selective suppressors’!

He’s been pretty quiet and self-conscious since dinner honestly?
It probably didn’t help that his Mum seemed entirely too smug at seeing his brand out in the open or that Eris seemed to be amazed by it to a point where she actually poked his cheek tentatively while he was distracted multiple times as we ate..

Still, priority’s first!
He owes me enough at this point that I am NOT letting the Rune master’s ‘holy grail’ slip through my fingers just because he’s feeling a bit embarrassed over a mark I gave him!

He gave me a bloody TRAMP STAMP!
At least his one looks kind of cool in a ‘well you either made a stupid mistake or you’ve spent time in prison’ kind of way, tramp stamps are exactly what they sound like, stamp markings inked onto the lower back of a girl of loose morals!

Just thinking about it annoys me even NOW!
If I didn’t need him to be my source of unlimited rune-casting glory and power right now I’d be tempted to get revenge for the ‘back tattoo’ he gave me in all its indignity instead!

“Well?..”
He flinched and glanced around nervously for a moment before finally giving in to my sharp demanding eyes.
His shoulders slumped a little but he moved over to the table with a huff and started sketching out lines on the paper.

I couldn’t get a good view of what he was doing from this angle.
I’d be tempted to lean forward but I doubt the sleepy brown-haired Eris-ball in my lap would appreciate the movement.

Instead I had to sit through an almost painfully long twenty minute wait as John set to scribbling numbers and diagrams out on spare paper.

I wonder if this is what Sarah feels like when I start working?
It’s kind of annoying not being able to tell what he’s up to honestly.

Eventually he seemed to slow his pace down and the pen in his hand stopped moving against the paper.
He shot me a cautious glance upwards before huffing heavily, shuffling the papers together and handing them over to me.

I had to squint a little to read his handwriting at first but it got easier the further in I got.
So far so good, the math is adding up if nothing else?

When I got to the first diagram my mouth dropped open a little.
I practically don’t need the rest of the papers just from the diagram alone!

I guess to a normal person it would just look like a confusing jumbled mess but to a rune master, to ME, it was practically a work of ART!

Charging rune, Storage rune.. so THAT must be the front of the necklace..
..huh?.. I never noticed the little ‘Esti’ runes on the corner of each chain link?..
They must be like.. a cheap and dirty way to copy the main rune effects across each link?

I guess that works.. ‘Esti’ is Latin for ‘to be’, I’ve never seen the rune for it used in this way before though..

There are a few ‘aestus’ runes dotted around on the chain too but I can’t really see their purpose at the moment?.. kind of random really..

It looks like the chain is pretty much being used as an amplifier for the main stuff carved on the little metal symbol hanging from the necklace?
That’s ingenious all on its own!
Crude as all hell and I can think of better ways to pull it off but as a force multiplier you can’t deny that using a basic novice level Latin rune on all the little metal links of a roughly twenty-two inch long necklace is an almost scarily effective way of doing things?!

Okay..
..okay, the metal symbol..
Storage runes.. why so many storage runes?..
That looks more like a..

My eyes shot up to meet John’s in surprise.
He actually seemed to have lost a lot of his nervousness at this point.
If I’m not mistaken he’s starting to get a bit smug and taking enjoyment from the mild awe on my face?

Looking at it now I’m pretty surprised no-one else has done this sort of thing before?
I mean.. I kind of did it first, a long time ago, but I never thought of applying the principle into something so small or just.. I’m more surprised he thought of it than anything else?!

The chain of ‘Esti’ runes is more impressive than this little trick he’s got going on a technical level in all honesty, but the fact he managed to condense it down to such a small size is pretty impressive too I guess.

From what I know of how terrible he is at drawing runes properly he must have expanded the size of the chain and ‘symbol’ to a stupid degree before being able to write them out clearly enough for them to actually.. ya know.. WORK!

“Don’t get too big headed John-boy. I’ll give you you’re due, I’m amazed you managed it but your still a few years too late to teach me something new.”
He seemed to almost deflate at my little jibe.

Good, smugness isn’t good for his health.. especially when I’m around.

After a long second he shifted his face back up with a curious twinkle to his eyes.
Instead of answering his obvious unspoken question about WHEN I beat him to the idea I turned back to the diagram instead.

It’s been so long since I thought about it, I really do have a problem of starting things and then just kind of.. forgetting about them, don’t I?
Come to think about it. I HAD planned on making another one before my awakening kind of drove most rational thought out of my head practically overnight at least..

John’s little ‘eternal glamor/forget this exists’ necklace is theoretically the same as the ‘Bad JuJu stick’ I made in Sarah’s car as we made our way to the docks chasing after the group who’d kidnapped Mum back when we were in our late teens.

I never really got to use the blood-rune encrusted resonant rod with mounted casting rings for its original purpose, having to make it overload and blow up in Dante’s lich-y face and all.

While the application’s different the process is the same.

The rings on my ‘Bad JuJu stick’ had spell patterns stored into them.
They are designed so that low skilled mages, either the weak or just the young like Eris, can cast useful spells by pumping magic into the ring and aiming it.
John’s used that technique to ‘bottle’ a specifically designed glamor spell into a pretty basic rune-cluster and hooked the whole thing up to a few triggers!

Surely that couldn’t work?
He’d hit the same problem most glamor based enchantments have eventually, like the choker I made so I could pretend to still look like my passport, he’d run out of power eventually and burn out the enchantment pretty badly at the same time?

There’s got to be something I’m missing here.. follow the lines, it’s all just math.. what am I missin-
THE ‘AESTUS’ RUNES ON THE NECKLACE!

..okay, now I’m impressed again..

Heat or ‘Aestus’ runes, their dotted around on the necklace links in odd points!
I couldn’t work out what they were for before but if he’s chaining the enchantment through the necklace then he can chain the burn out effects too!

It’s like.. it’s like he’s spreading the load?
Normally a glamor enchantment runs low on power and practically eats itself to keep going, in the end it tends to ruin whatever it’s inscribed on in the process.. often with HEAT..

By spreading the effects of the enchantment out across so many little chain links he’s not just boosting the power levels, he’s spreading the load across all of them!
The ‘Aestus’ runes are being used as vents for excess power, they push out a small amount of concentrated heat instead of allowing the pressure to build and destroy the whole system!

Pair that with some charging runes touching his skin and a storage rune for a renewable power supply and you have a pretty much permanent glamor enchantment that only needs some excess power taken from the magic naturally leaked out from around the wearer’s body..

Holy crap, that’s GENIUS!
I can’t take away from it this time, I’d never have thought of doing that to sustain things!
This.. this is huge?..

..wait a minute..
No?..maybe?..
Oh.. you ASSHOLE!..

“Give me the necklace.”
I practically growled the words out.
Eris flinched a little against me in her sleepy daze but John flinched harder.

You KNOW why I’m angry John.
Don’t make me wait!

Reluctantly he slid the necklace off and passed it across the table to me.

I took a moment to study it before slipping it over my head delicately.
A little tap of a magic infused finger on the activation rune turned the whole thing on again.
The skin on my cheek feels a little weird, obviously the glamor is in place even though I don’t have anything to hide there.

“I’m perfectly happy with you right now John, in fact I think your just perfect and you don’t deserve to be kicked in the balls for holding out on me for so long like this in the slightest..”
My tone wouldn’t convince anyone, the clenching of my teeth probably didn’t help matters but that’s not the important bit.

I just lied!
I just lied about my BLOODY feelings and my brand didn’t burn me for it in the slightest!

The necklace draws a constant but tiny amount of magic from the lines near your throat.
The brand uses the emotions in my core magic and compares them to the magic in the air leaving my mouth when I speak.. the amount may be tiny but it’s enough to confuse the hell out of the old magic, enough that it can’t work out if it should burn me or not!

The brands.. John’s brand is still at the passive activation stage?
We never made a deal on his punishment so the initial brand is sitting there on his cheek just waiting for me to decide what form my revenge should take.

One feature that often gets skipped over with brands is that during this ‘passive activation’ stage the person being branded can’t actively work against the person they harmed.

Back in the temple I got warning burns just for THINKING about hurting John.
He just had to simply ‘suggest’ that I come sit down at the table and my body practically dragged me over to follow his command!

“Go stand at the window for five seconds then come back over here and sit in the chair next to me.”

John winced and seemed to almost fight it for a second but inevitably he couldn’t win.
With slightly stilted steps he walked over to the window, paused for a few seconds, then wandered back over to land heavily in the chair next to me with an indignant grunt.

“You clever son of a bitch..”

Don’t get me wrong, I like his Mum, this isn’t about her.
This is about John.

He’s had this on since before he even reached Klamath Falls!

“When did you add the glamor?”
He cringed but, as it should have from the very start, the brand wouldn’t let him hold back information from me for long.

“I already had one on, I just tweaked it. I finished working on the glamor part while you were apparently busy covering your house in anti-me blood wards.”

The dinner party? The first day we officially ‘met’ as neighbours?
The one with Aunt Lily and Uncle Jim, where he rubbed my leg under the table!

He must have had it active even then, to be able to taunt me like that?.. but it would be partly disassembled at the time if he’s right?
What changed?..
What could he have been covering with a glamor before that time?

HIS AGE!

I thought he was mocking me a bit at the time.
I completely forgot about it after a while, I’ve just kind of gotten used to John looking like this nineteen year old version of himself?!

It’s a bit more comfortable that way honestly.
He reminds me less of ‘Max’ now that he looks younger too.

With actual care this time I eased the necklace over my head and passed it back to John.
He winced at the pity in my eyes but slipped the necklace back on anyway causing his brand to disappear almost instantly as the glamor took hold.

He’s already stopped aging..
It happens, like with Gran looking forty rather than her actual four-hundred years of age..

“How long have you known?”
He grimaced again and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Since the rat thing, when you came into my office to ask if you and Sarah could borrow a room for the week, you were taller than me?”
..ouch..
“Not that I’m proud of it or anything but.. it may have at least partly been the reason why the old magic made you so much younger when it changed you too, my subconscious wanting you to not be older than me again..”

Oh John..
It was awkward with Eris in my lap but I managed to reach out a hand to rest on his shoulder in commiseration.

Aging.. aging’s an awkward thing for mages..

I never really considered it a problem as Al.
I hit my peak and kept going without problems.
I’d been scared before that of course, I didn’t want to age slower than Sarah after all?

Imagine having a life all set up but not being able to stick around for too long in case people start noticing that you don’t seem to have aged a day in the last twenty years?
Imagine.. imagine falling in love, having a family.. having to watch them all grow old and die while you stand by helpless?..

A few tears escaped from my eyes before I could squeeze them back.
With a nervous huff I pulled my hand back from John’s shoulder and wiped away at them quickly to hide the evidence.

The runes on the necklace are rough but the design overall is well thought out.
This is why they are so well done.. John’s had a long time to work on them?..

He wasn’t holding out on me for petty reasons or just to be an ass, he was embarrassed?

Embarrassed to admit that he’d faked aging, even when we were at each other’s throats with him as my sworn enemy..
Embarrassed to admit that he pretended to be normal still so I wouldn’t notice..
Embarrassed to admit that when I became a teenaged Arista-clone he stopped hiding it so we could be closer in age again..

‘I love you.. Hannah’
I blinked furiously as his mumbled words came back to the surface of my mind.

That phrase, why can’t I just let it go?
Every time I get past it something happens to bring his words back to the center of things!

John you stupid.. you stupid soppy idiot!
Al wouldn’t have cared if you stayed young while he got older!
Al.. I wouldn’t have held it against you..

“..stupid John..”
We fell into a quiet reverie as that statement rolled between us awkwardly.
I didn’t really mean to say it like that, it just kinda slipped out.
“..sorry..”

He shrugged slightly but leaned back into his chair with a sigh.

======

“NO! That wouldn’t work, you can’t just-”

“It would TOTALLY work! You just don’t get it, look if you just move th-”
He’s refusing to look at the bloody paper!
He didn’t say as much, he didn’t have to, I can SEE him doing it!

I’m right!
I KNOW I’m bloody right!

We’ve been going around in circles for almost an hour now on this one.
I’m kind of glad we got past the awkwardness at least, work and magic are always a good way to get past real life problems.. but on the other hand it’s BLOODY FRUSTRATING!!

“Will you just LISTEN to yourself?! You can’t put an ‘Estis’ rune next to an ‘Esti’ rune and a ‘toto’ rune!”

Who’s the rune master here?!
I KNOW what does and doesn’t work with Latin runes!
I can write Latin runes practically in my SLEEP!

How does he think his opinion even matters on this?!
HE CAN BARELY WRITE A BASIC RUNE OUT!

I’m the expert here!
I’m the one who knows what he’s doing!
I’m the one who’s dedicated years of my life to learning this crap!!

My fingers twitched.
I was SO tempted to just reach out and snatch the necklace from around his neck.
If I get it off of him then he’ll listen to me, he’d HAVE to listen to me!

It took a few seconds for that idea to filter through my brain before I realised just how wrong it would be.

That’s not the sort of thing you do to a friend..
John’s my friend, that’s not changed, right?
..my head hurts..

Things have gotten a bit out of hand.
They always do in situations like this, we’re both a bit emotionally raw at the moment for various reasons and it’s making us more likely to snap as we go on.

Before I could do much more than get my hand up to the bridge of my nose and rub at my headache the door slammed open.

“Okay, ENOUGH the PAIR of you! It’s getting late, your both getting too worked up over this and you’re scaring Eris.”
I turned guilty eyes over to John’s Mum from her position by the now open door, hands on hips and a determined look on her face.

My eyes drifted slightly lower to see Eris hiding behind her.
She must have run off to get help at some point.. Did we really get that bad?

So bad that Eris would rather find help from a relative stranger than ask us to stop?

A little puddle of guilt settled heavily in my stomach.
I grimaced but my eyes softened the longer I looked at Eris’s worried little face.

“..sorry sweetie..”
The moment the words left my lips she seemed to let out a long held breath of relief and practically broke into a sprint, crashing into my arms for a tight hug.

I really didn’t mean to scare her.

It’s just.. me and John?..
We work well together and we bring out the best in each other’s work but we tend to argue, a LOT, in the process.

It was always that way in school.
We’d practically reach the stage of having fist-fights over Geography homework at times because we were both too bloody stubborn to give ground on our points until one of us was proven right on it all.

I shot John an awkward, apologetic look over Eris’s little head.

He seemed to only just be working out what had happened as well.
It’s pretty easy to see how bad things got just by the finger shaped burn marks his hands have left in the arm of the chair he’s sitting on.
..I’ll have to fix that later I guess?..

“Sorry Mum.”
I gave him an awkward little smile of approval but let it go a second later to turn back to his Mum.

“Sorry Mrs Jones.”
She offered me a weak smile in return but I think it was more out of worry than anything else.

It’s been pretty well established that John, Max, Me, ‘Ari’ AND ‘Arista’ can all have pretty volatile tempers at times.
I’m not surprised she was worried we’d go completely off the rails honestly.

My head dipped down and I nudged my nose next to Eris’s ear.
She flinched slightly but giggled at the same time, she’s always been ticklish around her ears.

“Sorry sweetie, we didn’t mean to scare you.”
I’m not sure if anyone but Eris heard me but it was only meant for her to hear anyway.
Her head rose slowly and she fixed me with a weak smile which seemed to gain strength the longer she looked at my face.

I twisted my body slightly making her little legs swing up as she spun which had the added benefit of setting her off in another quick peel of giggles.
Just for the fun of it I did it a few more times getting the same reaction each time until finally her little head settled on my chest, just above my heart as always.

“I think it’s past someone’s bedtime..”
Eris groaned a little but didn’t argue thankfully.

I shot a questioning look at John’s Mum.
She nodded in understanding and led the way out of the room.

======

It took about ten minutes to get Eris settled down in a suspiciously ‘child-orientated’ room down the hall that I’m tempted to guess was once John’s bedroom back when he was a kid, possibly even before his awakening?

She didn’t like when I went to leave but with some coaxing, a conjured teddy bear or two and several rounds of her ‘lullaby’ she drifted off with surprising ease.

That damn lullaby still has me worried honestly.
I get that it’s been in our family for a while and I get that our family has been around for a while too..
I know that the story John told me about ‘Christian’s kin’ and ‘Arista of the red moon’ basically guarantee’s there was a connection between my family and that Arista incarnation as well..

Having LIVED it though, not her life, not her memories but that short intense burst just before her death..

I’ve hummed that lullaby to Eris twice now.
Once with Mum leading in on it and just now.. I sung it ‘right’ both times though?

I’d never heard the ‘original’ version of the lullaby before.
It’s changed over the years, probably been miss-remembered as it was passed on from generation to generation.

The first time I sung it to her I thought I’d just remembered it wrong but the ‘vision’ of that incarnation tells a different story.. it’s Mum who remembered it wrong, I remembered the original?..

How can I remember the original version of a lullaby instinctively without having the memories to go with it at the time?!
How many things do I do instinctively without truly noticing how worryingly CONNECTED to my past-lives they all are?

The hair clips for ‘Dite?
The conjured bears and calling one of them ‘Agatha’?
Settling Eris on my hip so easily every damn time!

Something’s happening to me.
Something new, something different?

..Theodora..
Whatever that crazy bitch triggered when she took over my body to give her stupid ‘prophecy’?
Something in my head’s changed and I have no idea how to stop it.
I barely even know that there’s something TO stop?!

“Are you okay Hannah?”

With a jolt I was back in the hallway outside John’s childhood bedroom.
Mrs Jones was watching me with no small amount of worry on her face but I offered her a weak smile and shrugged it off as nothing important for her sake if nothing else.

I’ve got time to sort through things, who knows, maybe it’s just some kind of side-effect from me integrating a Seer personality into my mind?
Powers know I’ve had enough OTHER side-effects because of that mess!

I’ve never really looked into prophets and their ilk, I’m not normally very good at the whole ‘future predicting’ skillset so as usual when I find something I suck at I ignored it, more out of frustration than anything else.
..I don’t tend to handle being bad at something very well sadly..

“Let’s go grab a nightcap shall we? Coffee?”
Mrs Jones smiled at me warmly and nodded, leading the way back down the hall towards her kitchen.

I wonder if she’s got hot chocolate?
I LOVE hot chocolate!

======

“Are you going to sleep tonight?”

Reluctantly I pulled my nose out of my book and shot John a withering look.
Does he even need to ask?

Mrs Jones is helping me with the vision problem tomorrow.
I’m NOT going to chance going to sleep again before it’s sorted out.

One glance into the abyss of the future was enough thank-you-very-much!

It’s not so much the visions that are the problem, it’s the paradox’s involved.
I’ve spent about half an hour flicking through one of the books Edith gave me which JUST so happened to be titled ‘Future sight, looking past your present’..
How she knew I’d need this one is something ELSE I’m going to ignore for now, for my own sanity’s sake if nothing else!

The book basically boils everything down to one key point.
‘The future is what we make of it’

It’s not some set, immutable thing.
A Seer ‘sees’ a set of possibilities, when they aren’t busy seeing the past or ‘back-stepping’ as it’s apparently called.. or seeing the present which is often called ‘projecting’..

The main thing though is that the Seer SEEING these ‘possibilities’ usually changes the very thing they see!
The best example I can think of is the vision I had about Sarah arguing with Mum.
In that one she received a text message from ME claiming that I’d been a brat or something?

It’s a very real possibility that I’d have said that at some point if we were arguing and I wanted to apologise, but now that I’ve SEEN it happen.. I’m not going to bloody do it!

There are loads of stories around about Seer’s suffering from the ‘Cassandra complex’, basically they get to see things that are coming but nothing they do can change the outcome?
The book agrees with me that those are just stories though.

I’ve never met someone stuck in one of these ‘no win’ situations because of a vision, all you ever hear is at best third-hand accounts of something POSSIBLY happening.
There’s no PROOF!

Without proof there’s no point in listening to them all.
As weird as it seems to say considering all my past-lives and magic, I’m a product of my generation.

In short, SCIENCE!

Magic’s all well and good but if it doesn’t fit with the scientific method then what’s the POINT of it all?
If you can’t test something repeatedly and get the same result then there’s obviously something you’re missing!

Maybe it’s just my inner ‘rune mistress’ talking but science fits so WELL with my favored brands of magic so it’s not too strange that I’d want to apply it’s logic across all fields?
Sympathetic magic was practically BUILT with scientific method at its core, Rune’s are all about precision and repeatable results from set formula too!

Sympathetic magic is like Physics, one action causes another and everything is connected to produce a final desired reaction.
With that logic.. then Runes is practically Chemistry, using precise measurements and known quantity’s to get the reaction you want.

When you boil it down.. all of science is just applied math?
Magic’s the same, MATHS or GLORY!

Take two things that have a common ancestor and it starts to become easy to see things they have in common.
No-one’s ever DONE it of course.
A MAGE play with that silly new non-magical ‘scientific’ JUNK?
The whole idea’s preposterous.. mages are stubborn and set in their ways after all!

They’re also PEOPLE.. so add ‘stupid’ to that laundry list of character flaws too..

I’m not saying I’m going native or anything but as time’s gone on magic’s kind of lost it’s ‘sparkle’ for me?
All it ever seems to do is breed problems.

Sure, magic helps fix those problems most of the time but without it there wouldn’t BE a problem to start with!

Only new magic, only INTERESTING magic gives me that happy little glow anymore?
Back when I first started all of this stuff as a wide eyed teenager everything that seemed to break the laws of science left me gaping at it and clamouring to find out HOW it worked, but as time’s gone on it’s getting harder and harder to find new things to explain.

Most of magic falls into one of three category’s sadly ‘power, augmentation and design’.

Some spells work just by sheer POWER, they can force the world to do their bidding by pouring more of this ‘force’ within our cores out then the universe as a whole can handle.
..my ‘spell’ bringing John back to life being a useful example of that one..

Other spells work WITH the universe, coaxing it, taking things that happen naturally and just.. just pushing them to the extreme?
My modified ‘hair’ spell falls into that category.

‘The hair’s going to grow anyway, it grows naturally this way.. why can’t it just go a bit faster?’
The magic augments what it’s trying to effect instead of forcing it.
When my hair grew out it was sudden and unnatural but it didn’t just HAPPEN, my hair GREW naturally, just at a vastly sped up pace..

The last one, the type I tend to gravitate towards the most, tends to be more difficult to pull off but it’s also a lot more effective when it DOES work.

Runes work by trapping the universe by its own rules.
That’s why there’s so much math involved in new runes, you have to work out every aspect involved in what you’re trying to do, then make a ‘Gordian knot’ of logic and counter-logic with strategic applications of magic at JUST the right points to make the world do what you want!

My ‘fresh-air’ doormat design is probably the easiest example of it in action?
I didn’t ‘create’ the wind that blew away the bad smells.
My magic doesn’t ‘tell’ the universe that the person stepping on the mat MUST have a constant gentle breeze around themselves to clear things away either.

It SUGGESTS, it gathers just a small amount of ambient air and gives it a marker to follow.
The way the marker is designed means that the air can’t ever settle properly so it constantly moves to try and get close to the marker and in doing so it creates a breeze as a by-product.

There’s no getting away from the fact that magic is cheating.
It breaks the rules all the time.. but if you look deep enough, if you know what you’re looking at, then despite how WRONG the outcomes are, the results are actually kind of natural?
Everything’s just cause and effect in the end, magic jus-

“OWW!”
I glared at John hard.

He looked mildly amused and watched on as my hand came up to rub at my now sore wrist.
The bastard PINCHED me!

“I take it I have your attention again now?”
His lips pulled up into a slightly smug look that still doesn’t suit him, even if it isn’t as annoying or sharp anymore.

“Screw you, asshole”
His eyebrow popped up in surprise but his smirk shifted into more of a smile so that’s something I guess.
“What did you want? Can’t you see I was busy?”

I wasn’t exactly busy doing much more than zoning out and talking to myself but HE doesn’t need to know that!

“I’m going to bed, I wanted to see if you actually planned on sleeping tonight or not?”
oh.. yeah.. he did kinda ask about that before didn’t he?..

..oops?..

“I’m going to stay up and read. Sorry John, I’ve got a lot on my mind at the moment.”
He shifted awkwardly at my apology but nodded in understanding and turned back towards the door after a moment’s hesitation.
“Night John-boy.”

He pulled a face at me for that comment but I could tell that he saw the humor in it even if he didn’t appreciate being the butt of the joke.

“Night Hannah, I’m just down the hall if you need me.”
Without another word he slipped out the door and silently slid it shut behind himself.

I huffed to myself loudly, feeling a little stupid for having spaced out mid-conversation AGAIN, but eventually I turned back to my book instead of sinking too heavily back into the whole annoying problem.

======

“..it’ll have to do I guess?..”

The book got dull quickly, so sue me, I got to work on the ‘selective suppressors’ a bit early instead.
I figure they might come in handy if things go wrong when we sort out this ‘seer’ stuff tomorr..
uh.. today, I mean today I suppose?..

Wow, is it dawn already?
How long have I been WORKING on these bloody things?!

I’m a bit lucid at this point honestly..
Doing runes always makes me a bit ‘spacey’ and disconnected from reality after a while, the fact that these ones were so in-depth and I may have had to use a bit of blood just to finish off a few key areas probably isn’t helping either.

Of course sleep-deprivation is a factor too, I’ve not had a peaceful night’s sleep in days and now I’m pulling an all-nighter to avoid more ‘visions’.

I didn’t really know where to start on the suppressors at first.
It wasn’t until I went diving into my expanded bag for a new book that things got a rather abrupt kick-start honestly?

I don’t know HOW she did it but I can guess.. and if I’m right then I’m kind of scared because sitting in the bag, tucked in with the incense sticks and other junk Edith decided to apparently shove in there at random, were several lengths of thick chain necklaces along with some leather strips and little metal symbols!

I’m slowly building up a case for Edith being a SEER of all things and that scares me a HELL of a lot more than anything else could right about now!
The little Yoda’s bad enough NORMALLY, the last thing I need is her knowing the FUTURE too..

She even knew my preferred focus talismans!
I’ve got three Ankh’s, just like the paper ones she showed me how to make back when I was learning to control my fire magic, along with a few that look like lopsided ‘Wicca stars’ and some ‘yin-yang’ symbols thrown in for good measure!

I know that a mage wearing things like ‘Gothic’ Ankh’s, ‘Wicca’ stars and ‘Taoist’ circles is so VERY cliché but it’s cliché for a REASON.

The Ankh is powerful in symbolic magic for multiple reasons but mostly it’s used in connection with ‘life’, considering these suppressors are going to be blocking my past-LIVES that’s probably a VERY good thing to add into the equations power-wise!

The Wicca five-point star is actually a pretty new concept but it’s based on a much older concept which developed a bad name during the rise of Christianity, the ‘Pentagram’.

An original mage five-point star is slightly blunted at one point, the same one that’s a little off center, but it doesn’t matter too much.
The Pentagram itself is about balance and harmony, most Wicca’s these days consider the five points to cover five ‘key’ elements, thanks to a certain smug Greek philosopher.
They refer to them as ‘Water, Earth, Fire, Air and Spirit’.

The whole things a bit ‘pre-schoolers first spell book’ for my liking but the symbol itself is no joke, having a much older, much deeper meaning for real mages.

The points are connected to the four building blocks of any spell ‘The Flow, A Base, Willpower and The Push’.. the shorter point is ‘The Core’, it’s short to show it’s deeper connection to us in general.
I shouldn’t have to explain things at this point with magic but it’s probably easiest to give a recognisable example, it tends to help me usually at least..

When you cast a spell you start with ‘A Base’, the thing you’re trying to cast at?
You dip into your lines, or ‘The Flow’ as it was once called, then you give your desires shape in your mind, ‘The Push’, and finish it all off with a burst of magic from your core, ‘Willpower’.

I wasn’t joking when I said that wands are stupid!
People have known about their lines LONG before wand’s were created but over time people started to forget the real meaning behind the symbols we all hold so close to ourselves.
Wand’s are practically a step backwards from using your lines but I guess even magic can’t cure ‘stupid’ no matter how useful it would be if it could.

ANYWAY, compared to the complex mess around the ‘Wicca’ star the Taoist yin-yang is practically beautiful in its simplicity.
The duality of nature, the light within the dark, the dark within the light..

I’m not a philosopher or a religious person in general but even I can appreciate the perfect design of the symbol, just simple enough to be memorable while having a deeper meaning right out there for anyone to see.

With mages we tend to associate the yin-yang with our reincarnation cycles, the awakenings to be exact, the positives and the negatives that come from our existence with the fusion that happens, forming our new-selves at each new incarnation.

I’m proud of these three symbols.
As a user of sympathetic magic, symbols are important in everything I do.
These three sum up who I am as a mage.. who I’d like to be?..

======

“..Uggg..”
My hand came up to pinch between my aching eyes for a moment.

I NEED to sleep but I really can’t.
My brains all over the place, it’s bad enough I drift off so much now but it’s even worse when I start rambling to myself!

“Just a bit more and you can stop, come on Hannah get it together.”
My fingers let go of the bridge of my nose and with one sharp twist I gave myself a relatively light slap across the cheek.

It worked for what I needed it to do, the short burst of pain woke me up a bit and let me focus properly on the task at hand.

I’ve finished the leather choker with a chain threaded through it to add in John’s new additions to the project AND it gives me somewhere to hook the little Ankh symbol without much fuss too.
The choker handles a lot of the hard work, while connecting with the other pieces for feedback purposes through a little hidden blood magic on the back of the leather.

I managed to simplify my design a fair bit with the addition of John’s necklace’s ‘design’.
Essentially the choker messes up the magic in my voice so the ‘don’t tell lies’ brand can’t work out if it should shock me or not, just like his glamor necklace did.

On top of that I’ve added a few fun little add-on’s, including a voice changing glyph, a fresh air rune-set which should theoretically let me swim underwater longer by giving me a bubble to breath as I go and best of all a selection of illusion charms, the main one based on my old ‘Al’ face which will hopefully give me some much needed anonymity in public from now on!

Admittedly the illusion’s not perfect, I couldn’t really get a clear enough image of ‘my’ face when casting so I kinda cheated and visualised Sarah’s face instead, it was so much easier to think about her than me for some reason?
It was much easier the second time when I set the other illusions, including one of my current ‘Arista’ face because you never know when having an instant ‘hide anything wrong with your face’ button could come in handy after all!

The leather ‘bracelets’ are finished too, with more chain threaded through them and an Ankh embedded into the leather each.

They’re designed to cut off access to my lines when the ‘signals’ from the ‘choker’ and my soon to be finished ‘belt’ don’t match up.
Luckily the Ankh on the choker sit’s low enough to feel the magic in my throat as I form words BEFORE the chocker itself messes with the output.

The comparison system should be pretty good at covering things.
Your voice is the purest ‘sample’ of your current magic you can get and the belt is designed to specifically imitate MY magic.

If I have another personality shift, getting taken over by Theodora or anyone else in general, my magic will change with their presence.
It’s only slight, the tiniest of shifts, but runes are MADE for the little stuff!

My magical signature changes in some way and BOOM no more external magic from my body!

That’s where the anklets come into things.
One of them is built to do what John’s cuff’s did before, dump my magic out as fast as possible through my foot.
The other one is built to do the opposite and DRAW IN magic.

It’s a weird concept but the math works so hopefully it will as well.

There are two ways to ruin someone’s magic control, you can flood their system like my second brand has done to me or you can get the user angry enough that their magic goes into chaos from their mixed up emotions.
By having one leg dump out my magic and the other one draw it BACK IN, with just a little bit of contamination from whatever I’m standing on, in theory at least my control should be less than ZERO!

Anyone trying to take over THIS body again is in for a NASTY surprise!
I’ve managed to regain some control over my magic with time and effort by having my system flooded for so long, humans are adaptable like that after all.
An invader on the other hand.. with a constantly changing flow of magic and fluctuating percentages of contamination, that’s going to be next to impossible for someone else to pull off!

I guess if you managed to stand DEAD still for a while to let your magic settle into some sort of ‘rhythm’ as it cycles, than it could work, but do you know what that makes you?
A SITTING DUCK!

As loopholes go, I’m happy with one that makes the body-snatcher have to freeze in place for ages before they can do even the tiniest of magic tricks!

EVERYTHING has a loophole somewhere, nothing in the real world is perfect and the best thing you can do is make the nearly inescapable loopholes as useless as possible most of the time.
The effect is subtle so hopefully even the much vaunted ‘Arista’ wouldn’t be able to figure it out before someone can stop her from doing anything stupid!

There’s more tricks added in to each item of course, it would just be a waste to do all this work for a simple suppression system AND the more runes thrown into the mix, the harder it will be for someone to work out just how these beauty’s work!

I added far too many little life improving enchantments to name at the moment.
Everything from elemental converters on the bracelets I can tap to activate, so casting multiple elements becomes easy as anything, to climate control runes on the belt and my old favorite ‘velox ped’ enchantment fitted into the anklets.

We had practically half a DAY to add features to my original basic design, between my devious little brain and John’s downright SCARY head we managed to chuck in way more enchantments than I would have thought possible even this morning!

No wonder I’m so tired.

All told I’ve probably enlarged, shrunk and activated more things in the last few hours than I have EVER before.
It’s been fun obviously but still REALLY tiring!

Now I just need to finish off the belt and this thing’s ready for field testing!
I LOVE magic sometimes!

..now where did I put that inscribing blade?..

======

“Just one more anddd... done!”
Well.. no, hold on..

My fingers settled gently on the belt’s metal buckle.
I used the big wide interlocking-disk shaped belt I got in the mail last week to save time and effort.. plus it looks nice too, better than all the leather on the other bits at least.

A dip and a shove had the belt practically glowing in runes as they all set themselves properly.
A quick turn of the belt in my fingers confirmed that there were no mistakes, not that I needed to check really, I don’t make mistakes when it comes to runes!

“Can’t believe I actually got it d-”
My proud mumble stalled out as it was interrupted by a jaw achingly big yawn.
“-done at last. John’s going to be so jealous that I did it without him!”

Slowly my fingers ran over the engraved runes on the belt as I considered my work for a second.
“’You can’t put an ‘Estis’ rune next an an ‘Esti’ rune Hannah, blah, blah, blah!’.. HA! Screw you and your third-rate knowledge of rune crafting John-boy!”

My smug little imitation of John’s voice ended with another cheek stretching-ly wide yawn.
Eyes slightly squinted, I turned to look at the sun slowly creeping its way into the sky outside the nearby window.

My hand moved up to play in the warm rays of light just peaking their way into the room.
..I’ve always liked sun-beams in the morning..

As my hand fiddled in and out of the light my head sank down to rest on my other arm lightly.
My eye’s REALLY ache for some reason, too much concentration probably.. that would explain the headache too, come to think of it..

I think I’ll just rest my eye’s a bit?
Not sleep, can’t sleep, but just.. rest my eyes, ya know?

Mmmm, the sun feels really nice..
..so nice..

======

“The girl comes, she sees, she knows!”
..huh?..

“..that the best you can do? I’ve heard better from Max when he’s drunk!”
That’s my voice isn’t it?.. how weird..

“You be wantin’ a prediction do ya? Be wantin’ to know what world waits for one of your kin?”
Is that.. Edith?..

“I wish to know what you see in our future Esti, do we rise to power as Max believes?.. does our family rule over all else?”

Esti?..
Not Edith then.. could have sworn that was Edith’s voice though?..

What’s going on anyway?
..my head hurts..

“Tellin’ ya would do ya no good. Ya need to SEE it, to FEEL ya future before ya will believe what must be done..”

“Oh? How do you propose to do that? I’ve never had the gift, you always did take after your father more than me Esti.”
Father?.. my voice.. Father.. ARISTA?!

Oh crap!
I fell asleep!!

“I be showin’ ya, set ya right on ya lines. Ya not be thankin’ me for this but I be showin’ ya exactly what ya need to be seein’!”

My vision started to clear, or should I say THE ‘vision’?
We were in a small hut of some kind.
A short but rather well built woman with long hair of the purest white was staring at me intensely.

Before I could take in more than the vaguely recognisable expression on her face her hands came up and slammed onto either side of my head.
It felt like it should have hurt, even thought I couldn’t feel anything in the slightest.
..visions are weird like that..

The white haired woman with Edith’s voice huffed in a large breath and squinted at me for just a moment.. then the world exploded.

Everything went into fast-forward.
I couldn’t tell what was going on, flashes of recognisable things disappeared almost as quickly as they came for what felt like ages!

I saw a flash of John with that stupid goatee beard he wore in my Victorian vision?
A flash of the Ice Queen’s ‘little darling’ ice constructs landing on her hand..
I saw Eris’s loving little smile staring up at me, quickly followed by an apple that seemed to almost glow in a golden hue as it fell through the air.

The pain in my head got worse and worse as things kept flashing by, to a point where I just stopped trying to focus on them.

One last flash caught me off guard when my own face came into view, wide scared eyes staring up at me from a rocky snow-covered mountain top, lying in a spreading patch of red?..

Is that.. a bleeding stump where my right hand should be?

The vision slowed down and seemed to almost jump into reality out of nowhere.
Suddenly I could feel the wind on my face, soft silk brushing my legs.

The version of me on the floor’s left hand was clutching tightly onto something metallic.. I recognise this scene?

Everything’s more focused this time..
I couldn’t make out many details before, in MY future vision, but the blood on the snow is almost vivid this time..

The version of me moved at last, with a stagger and a twitch she moved into an unsteady standing position.
Her remaining hand came out brandishing the metallic object in my direction, her stump tucked protectively to her chest.

“Do you know the difference between us Arista?”

My view.. the imposter’s view.. ARISTA’S view shifted slightly as if she’d cocked her head to the side.
The world got a bit smaller as she squinted her eyes down in anger.

“I’m the Mother of Magic, and you’re just a girl who won’t do as she’s told.. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for much longer though..”
The imposter’s arm moved up and the snow around us swirled, as if following her unspoken command.

------

With a jolt everything changed and I was suddenly staring up at the celling of a vaguely familiar hut?

“I be tellin’ ya.. you not be knowin’ what ya be askin’ for Mother.. power’s help us, but you asked for it..”
My view drifted down to follow a womans back, shrouded in pure white hair, as its owner left the hut without another word.

My body.. the body, Arista’s body.. shook violently?

After a painfully long delay a sob wrenched itself from her lips.
The body I was in rolled to the side and curled in on itself in obvious pain.

“..Alice..”
The word left her lips on the tail-end of another sob.
“My children.. I’m sorry..”

She broke down into more open sobs at that point, it hurt just to hear them honestly.
These aren’t the sobs of an evil woman?
The Arista I’ve seen in my visions.. she could never cry like this?..

I barely got a glimpse of the things she saw but whatever it all was it’s truly broken her?
..broken her to her very CORE..

‘What the hell is going on?’

As if that unspoken question was some kind of catalyst the world faded to black around me and moments later I felt a tugging in my chest that I normally associate with someone trying to pull me out of my mindscape by force.

Light started to fade back in again but before another vision could start up the tugging in my chest peaked, pulling a breath and a pained yelp from me as moments later I was thrown back into the waking world with a thump.