More of "The Skin"
Well I have actually been doing some more writing lately. So here are a couple of more sections/chapters of what I posted a long time ago. (I'll get the wife to help link to the previous parts when I get home.)
The room was long with a few work benches along the left wall. The last one had a vise with 1/4 inch thick piece of steel firmly gripped in it. The two people in the room were staring intently at the piece of steel from six feet away. One was a male of moderate height with short brown hair, wearing a simple grey wool suit but no tie. His dark eyes were impassive, as if he was waiting for something. The female was almost as tall, with longer black hair pulled back into a ponytail. She was smartly dressed in a dark blue pantsuit with her arms straight down at her sides. She had a look of intense concentration, almost leaning towards the sheet of metal.
As the female concentrated a flame flickered at the center of the sheet facing the two. She appeared to relax somewhat as it started to grow larger, although there seemed to be no fuel or real source for it.
The man turned towards her and started calmly giving instructions. ”Now try to concentrate it. Keep it focused, do not let it grow like you normally would.” From his comments she was obviously the source of the flame, and it grew more intense as she attempted to do as he suggested.
As he turned back to watch, the flame started to contract, growing more brightly as it did so. The steel plate was just starting to glow from the heat when the flame burst out to three times its size. The woman gasped and took a step back, but the man did not move. He only shifted his attention to the woman, “That was fine. The hard part is maintaining your control.”
He turned his attention back to the steel and quietly said “Igneo”. A bright greenish blue flame came into being at the top corner of the piece of steel. It got brighter and more condensed, not unlike a propane torch as he furrowed his brows in concentration. It started cut through the steel as it slowly moved down its edge, spattering hot metal on the workbench.
He turned back to the woman and the flame disappeared, leaving a jagged cut through the steel. “You have grasped the principle, now you need to practice Tavla.”
“I still find it strange that you need to speak a word to call forth your flame Roland”, said Tavla with quirky grin. She had put her hands on her hips and was looking at his face.
“You must remember that my magic comes from a different age and different source. Your blood magic was developed after your line was created. I can teach you this method, but first you need to master the flame that you can create.” He looked like he would go on, but he simply turned towards the door and started to walk away. “Keep practicing.”
Tavla watched him as he started to leave, but her attention was suddenly drawn to the ringtone coming from her jacket pocket. As she fished her phone out, Roland slowly stopped walking towards the door. The shiny black touch phone looked like it fit her personality, and she touched its surface with a slender finger, silencing the ringtone.
“It’s a text from our friends, the mages.” She said as she was scrolling through the message, but Roland had not yet turned to face her. “They say that tap they put on the Technocrats for you yielded something. They said they have found a Nephilim.”
Roland turned sharply to look at Tavla. “Practice can wait, we are going on a trip.”
She gave him a surprised look as it almost appeared that Roland was excited. She hadn’t seen much emotion from him since she had come to study with him. Joining the Order of Secrets had been exciting at first but they had not had much adventure since then. Just lots of studying translations of tomes Roland had written himself hundreds of years earlier, and a few boring summonings to pass the year she had spent under his tutelage. Even Chiarusco could not make the time pass any quicker with tricks, jokes, and stories. Of course, he had not gotten to any of the good ones yet, the ones where Morrigan, Roland’s teacher, was still alive.
Samantha was looking at herself in the mirror at one moment and the she wasn’t. Not that she wasn’t trying, but she was no longer in the mirror’s reflection. Actually she realized, neither was Dr. Tennant, all she could see was the room and the furniture.
She shook her head and closed her eyes before she looked again, but now even the room was gone. Well, mostly gone she thought. She could still make out the walls as some kind of transparent boundary. And then she noticed things moving along the edges. It was starting to freak her out but she remembered that the test would be causing some hallucinations so they could track where they were coming from in her brain.
Dr. Tennant repeated himself, “What do you see Samantha?”
Her words were somewhat slurred but still understandable. “I shee the roohm, but whee aren’t in it. It’ss kind of hazzy and tansss..parent.”
“Do you see anything else? Is there something moving in the room, coming towards you?” The avatar always appeared to coming at the subject from distance, unless they had already been inspired naturally. The seizures Samantha was suffering were obviously due to her avatar attempting to make contact, since she had no obvious physical defects. Modern medicine had actually inhibited the contact between the subject and her avatar. But that was all for the best, for it might have driven her insane and made her monster.
“Yesh” she replied, “there is some..thinng outside the roohm.” Samantha could see what looked like a humanoid moving beyond the hazy wall of the room in the mirror.
“What does it look like Samantha?” The form of the avatar was his true goal. It would let him know whether this subject would useful, or if she needed to be rendered neutral.
Samantha tried to make out the figure better but it wasn’t getting any clearer. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision. When she looked again it was inside the room. It still wasn’t very clear but she thought she could see wings on the humanoid.
“It has wingsss.”
Ah, a bird type, thought Dr. Tennant to himself. The type of bird would provide the answer to what spheres of influence her avatar would provide. “Do you recognize it Samantha, something you have seen before?”
“Not a bird”, she replied.” It looks like ann angel.”
“Are you sure?” He had never had anyone see their avatar as angel, but perhaps the girl was extremely religious.
“Yesh.”
As Dr. Tennant started to key the avatar’s form into his pad, Samantha’s left hand started to twitch. He did not notice as he was looking at the syringe with the sedative on the small table next o his chair. The tremor started to move up her arm as the doctor was startled by the pinging coming from his pad. He started to notice the shaking of Samantha’s head as her eyes started to go wide in shock or horror as he read the words flashing on his pad.
WARNING
SEDATE IMMEDIATELY
WARNING
POSSIBLE NEPHILIM
WARNING
He fumbled with the syringe, trying to get it into the IV. He had never had the result some up with such an urgent warning. Samantha was now well into a seizure but she could not take eyes away from the mirror. She slowly calmed as the sedative took effect and her eyes finally closed.
With that averted the doctor finally relaxed and read the rest of the message that had come across his pad from the Hub. This Nephilim was a supernatural hybrid between a human and an angel. The inspired result was always a marauder of the worst form, with incredible power but an unusually short lifespan.
He had to read that twice. Angels were myths as far as his order was concerned, or at least that is what he had been taught. But he was glad that he sedated her before they could find out for sure. The girl would have to be scheduled for a severing, rendering her a harmless neutral. There was no way they would risk having her accidentally inspired. She would stay on her current meds until the procedure could be performed.