Part II

It had come to her suddenly, a deep wrenching in her gut, something had happened back home.  Without hesitation she broke into a full sprint, darting down the steps of Centre Hall toward the post where she’d left her horse.  Once untied, she quickly mounted him, securing her left foot in the stirrup before swinging over her right leg to straddle the beast.  As soon as she'd mounted, the horse took off fast down the dirt road that led out of campus. 

He can sense it too.

Allamae rode away from campus and through the city, toward her parent’s estate, which was just outside of town.  The hooves of her horse thumped hard and rapid on the solid red-clay boulevard.  She had ridden through this downtown hundreds if not thousands of times.  Usually, she took her time, trotting slowly past the shops, bars, brothels, and old wooden houses.  She liked watching the people carrying-on or going about their business in the streets.  If this were another night, she would have seen wide smiles and laughter on familiar faces.  Men and women would gather on various porches and balconies, trying to out-do one another with entertaining stories – the women fanning away the endless heat in rocking chairs, listening to the incredulous tales the men told them, with dark raised eyebrows and full pursed lips, only occasionally offering the story tellers an amused chuckle.  When she passed, some of the men would pause their tall tales to tip their straw boater hats, revealing dark coarse curls, damp and frizzy with sweat.  But not tonight.  Allamae had never seen the center of town this quiet – this dead.  As she rode, the sense of foreboding grew stronger.  Perhaps others felt it too.  She hoped they would be safe.  

She clutched the reins and lowered herself against the horse’s back, squeezing her thighs tight to steady herself against the horse’s heavy gallop.  Sephronian horses were not known for their speed, but they were twice as fast as any man and were beasts of strength and intelligence.  This versatility and their prevalence to this region meant that many of Sephronia’s attuned took horses as their umbra.  Flambeau had been Allamae’s umbra since she was a young girl, and he had an innate sense of her intensions. Indeed, it was rare that she even needed to steer his reins; he would come to her and take her were to go as if by instinct – as he had done tonight.  But, she pounded her heels into his flanks just the same.  She needed to get there fast.

When she was nearly to her parent’s home, she dismounted on the road, near a discreet path that ran through a tall field of switchgrass beside the large brick mansion.  She pulled free a long wooden STAFF that had been secured to Flambeau’s saddle.  It was her apparatus.  A staff was the traditional magical apparatus of the Vooduun.  Most were made from the Sacred Magnolia tree, which was common to the region.  Allamae's staff was nearly of a height with her.  The length of the dark, twisting wood had been sanded smooth, but was left unpolished. The top and heavier end of the staff was a spiraling oblong tangle of wood, twice as thick as the width of the shaft, it was the size of two men’s fists stacked one on top of the other.  The bottom of the apparatus, however, was thinner and came to a smooth, flat one-sided point, which had the look of a one-flue harpoon made of solid wood.  It was not sharp enough to pierce armor, but it could run through leather and flesh with enough force put behind it.

Moving along the path, she could sense the magickal energies around her.  She concentrated on drawing as much mana as she could into her staff from the air and grasses around her.  The head of the staff began to produce a faint green glow, not unlike the flaring rump of a firefly. And while she knew that her staff would gain a more powerful charge if she plunged it into the damp and fertile soil underfoot, she didn’t have time for that. 

All life forms produced mana, though not all could make use of it.  Whatever mana went unused by an entity would eventually overflow into the surrounding air.  Only about one-person-in-ten could control, or even sense these magical energies.  Those that could, including Allamae herself, were known as “attuned.”   And her training as an Adept, made her a more skilled attuned than most.

As she drew closer to the end of the path, which emerged from the field near the rear entrance of the house, Allamae noticed a thinning of mana in the air.

Someone has used magick here, she determined.

The acknowledgement set her further on edge.  Her parents had always reprimanded her for using even minor magick around the house.  That mana from the air had been used meant that more than minor spells had been cast here, and not long ago.  What was more, Allamae could not sense the whereabouts of her family.  She tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that it would be easy for her father to conceal the location of her parents and sister from anyone who would seek them out.  And it would explain the missing mana. But she was also aware that her inability to sense their presence could mean that they’d left the house altogether, or had been taken – or worse.

She took off her sandals and darted from the edge of the grassy field to the covered deck, attached to the back of the large house.  Her steps were quick and quiet - like those of a lioness on the prowl.  She stopped just short of the door.  Flickering candlelight danced across the thin white lacey curtains that decorated the windows.  She knelt beneath one of them and placed her hand on the brick wall below.  At this distance, she should be able to detect them even if her father had been concealing their location with a spell.  She strained her senses harder to be sure, to no avail.  It was like squinting in a pitch black room, trying to see something that may not even be there.  Except, there was something - someone was in the house.  They were not of her blood, but she could tell that they had been trying to conceal their presence.  But the magick in use was not Vooduun.  It was VOXMAGIA; the word-based magick of the Dual Kingdoms.

Allamae's heart pounded in her chest.  Was she too late?  Had the invasion already started?  Why hadn't there been any signal or alarm?

She continued to scan the house with her mind.  There were at least three in the house.  And one of them was directly on the other side of the wall.  She focused on him.  She couldn't read his mind, but she could sense that he was anxious – nervous, and there was also fear.  By focusing on his anxiety she expanded it, until the intruder's mind was clouded with the full intensity of his own worry, doubt, fear, and shame.  And with his mind so distracted, she detained it - a separation of mind and body that left the victim paralyzed, believing that what he was seeing, feeling, and doing in his mind was real.  Allamae knew that it was a small step from detaining a person’s mind to fully seizing control of it and the body it inhabited.  On a few occasions she’d taken over the mind of Flambeau to run through the open fields on her family’s estate.  But she had never tried it on another person.  Mind control was considered one of the most perverse forms of magick – even among the Vooduun.  Instead, she put the intruder’s mind to sleep – drawing it into the darkness until he fell unconscious.  No one would be able to awaken him for the next few hours.  

When she entered the house, she saw the unfamiliar Voxmage slumped backward in a chair.  He had been facing the door she’d come through. 

Had he been waiting for me?

The other two were upstairs.  She stalked up the dark wooden steps, careful to avoid the places she knew would creak if stepped on.

 When she'd reached the top of the stairwell, she placed a bare foot on what should have been a hard wood surface, but what she felt was wet, sticky, and cold.  She lowered the head of her staff to the floor.  She was standing in a dark puddle of blood that seemed to coat the entire hallway before her.  The eerie green glow of her staff reflected off of the liquid’s glossy surface. 

Allamae fought the urge to scream, her breathing became quick and short and panicked and filled with rage.  As her emotion intensified, the head of her staff grew brighter. 

In that moment, she became intently aware of the others in the house – two men, voxmages.  They had become conscious of her as well.

A sudden flash of light appeared behind her.  Turning, she caught a glimpse of the two voxmages, at the foot of the stairwell.  And as if by reaction, she withdrew herself from their minds.  She had not moved, but they would not be able to see her.  Vooduu was not so good at manipulating the physical environment, but it was the discipline best suited at manipulating life forces and the mind.  Even if the mages looked directly at her, their minds would ignore the sight of her.

“Where did she go?” One of them blurted out, “I thought that these Vooduun could not teleport!” 

 “They cannot,” the other deliberated; his pretentious accent made the words ooze out of his mouth like sour molasses. 

“She is here,” he went on. “You will release my mind, witch!”

And with a word that was foreign to Allamae’s ears, he could see her.  But it was too late for his friend.  She had re-appeared in mid-air, having just leapt from the bannister above them; as she fell, she plunged the sharp end of her staff downward into the first man’s chest.  Blood splatter through his fine woven doublet, and again when she yanked her staff free of his torso.  The raspy gurgling sound the man made as he tried to scream, faded to a dull gargle as he lay writhing on the floor, ropes of crimson gushing from his chest.

“You wicked blood witch!” the other mage cried. 

He spoke a quick succession of more unknown words.  Allamae attempted to lunge after him, but found she could not remove her feet from the floor.  He had bound her.  When she tried to curse at him, he silenced her with another strange word.

“After tonight, your kind will be of no threat to anyone,” He said, pointing a condemning finger at her.  “We will purge this land of your evil blood magick once and for all.  As we now speak, assassins have infiltrated the homes of the Vooduun families all across Sephronia.  We have been instructed to eliminate the bloodlines of your Sephronian attuned.”

Allamae still could not speak, and so she pressed her feelings of anger, retribution, and revenge into the mage’s mind with such force that she watched him wince in pain.  But with a word, he forced her out again.

He laughed. “There will be no revenge for you witch, you will die tonight, as your parents have so dutifully done.”

The anger in her swelled – seething within her motionless body, hot and furious.

“You people are undeserving of the blessing that is attunement. Your wicked use of magick has left our Principle Orator no choice but to strip the mana from the Sephronian lands and all who inhabit it.”

Was this possible? She wondered.  Surely, not even VOXMAGIA was that powerful. Mana was produced by life.  And not just from people, from animals, trees, flowers, bugs; anything that grew, lived, or died created the potential for magick in this world.   Allamae’s father had once told her that even some rocks hold mana. 

Even if they somehow succeeded in killing every living thing in the region and destroying every magick baring stone, in time the grass would grow, birds and other animals would return.  Over a few years even limited sources of life could beget plentiful amounts of mana.  And while attunement was largely hereditary, it was not that altogether uncommon for two mundane parents, with no known attunement in their family histories, to birth a child with the gift. 

If it was peace the Dual Kingdoms sought, their plan was ill-conceived, she decided.  This or they have underestimated the pride and resilience of her people.  There was no magick that could completely negate any other form of magick.  And when the kingdoms fail, the wrath of the surviving Vooduun and all the people of Sephronia would come pouring down on the nations that had wrought such tragedy to their lands.  This plan would start a war.    

  “But do not so fret, my child,” the mage went on.  “The Principle Orator, in her infinite wisdom, has graciously provided for the preservation of Koormagia, or Vooduu as you filthy hoonts call it.”

The hateful slur stung in her ears. 

 “We have taken your children.”  He smiled.

My sister!  She realized.  Why hadn’t she thought of her until now?

She hadn’t entered the room upstairs, Allamae remembered that she had never entered the room upstairs. 

Blood was still trickling from the bottom of her staff, joining the expanding pool that was still pouring from the mage’s chest.  Allamae sensed the abundance of mana contained in the dead man’s blood, dark and potent.  But she had vowed to never use blood magick upon taking her oath to at the University. 

“…and never will I invoke the dark power of blood.  For magick performed with blood, spilled in rage or in good faith, is immoral and shall corrupt the arbiter of its influence,” the words went.  

But the wellbeing of her sister was more important than any compulsory oath. So she let the blood mana come to her.  As it did, the top of her staff grew brighter than she’d ever seen it, and she felt more power surging within her than she’d ever felt before.  And without a word, she detained his mind. 

He tried to speak.  But she did not allow it. She felt his binding spell receding. 

“Where is my sister?” She demanded of him.

Although she was allowing him to, he did not speak.

“I said, where is my sister?!” This time she shouted the words and pressed them into his mind so hard that he couldn’t resist visualizing the answer. 

And she saw it: the beach.  The children will be taken on the ships.

But how could she get there in time?  Riding at full speed, it would take her at least an hour to traverse the thirty or so miles to the coast.  And she wasn’t exactly sure where on the coast he would be.  Sephronia was a peninsula; only its northern border with Baltaran was not coastal.    

“You will take me there,” she resolved, thrusting the length of her forearm against his pale neck, pinning him against the wall, and pressing her full weight against his throat. 

His eyes glared at her, unflinching.

“No.” He rasped, and spat blood streaked saliva at her face. 

Without missing a beat, Allamae balled her free hand into a tight fist and sledged it, backhand, across his pointed face. 

“You will.” She spat back at him, detaining his mind once again.  But this time, she push her full self into him.   It was a strange experience.  She could see herself, her body, through his eyes, pressed close against him.  Her own almond-shaped eyes were white orbs, rolled back in her head, framed by brown skin and high cheekbones, with a crown of thick dreadlocks, tipped with silver fasteners, overflowing from a dark violet and silver head piece.   

She watched as the mage spun her around and pulled her body close.

Take me to my sister, she commanded.

He was unwilling, but his mouth shaped the words nonetheless. "Volvimus!" He spoke, and this time she understood him.