literature

''Drax and Mag: UnFamiliars'' -- Chapter 1

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The light of three streetlamps pooled on the pavement, the spotlights in her three-ring circus.  Waiting in the wings for her cue to start the act, she watched from between a stand of trees, like an actor peering between curtains.  For her first trick, maybe she would turn some water into wine.  She could use a drink.

Silence was her drum-roll as she took the stage, and the streetlights each sputtered and went dark as she passed under them, like the theatre houselights dimming to start the show.  One.  At.  A time.

Her boots echoed hollowly on the pavement as she crossed the suburban street, stalking towards the house on the far end of the block.  She skirted close around the side of the building, the only one with lights on so late, and ducked under the sill of a window as she whisked past the side of the house like smoke in a gust of wind.  She paused in front of the bottom step under the back door, just outside the light of the porch lamp.  There at the edge of the stage, the player stood on her mark.  After a moment, the porch light flickered out, too, like all the others.

The door had a window in it, and the window was covered by cheap plastic blinds, and on the other side of those blinds was shining the only light left, where the audience was waiting.  She took a moment to compose herself, straighten her clothing, take a deep breath.  She rolled up the sleeves of her jacket, first the right, then the left.  No stage magic here.  Nothing in this hand; nothing in that hand.

The show must go on.

Knock.  Knock.  Knock.


The after-midnight silence deepened as the near-imperceptible sounds of movement inside the house ceased, all eyes inside suddenly fixed centre-stage.  Scrambling sounds came from the other side of the door, of people and furniture being hastily re-arranged.  Then, for another moment, silence once more.  A silhouette of a head and shoulders cut through the light between the blinds.

The door was yanked open sharply, like someone was trying to tear it off its hinges. The latch jumped to the end of its chain like a lunging dog, and a snarl was on the other side.  A pretty face wearing its ugliest scowl glared at her over the door chain.

"Do you know what time it is!" the girl in the house snapped.

"Should be about three a.m.  Y'know--witching hour?"
The door started to swing closed.  The interloper stomped down the steel toe of her scuffed black boot between the door and the frame, jamming it open a few inches.  She peered over the door chain into the house at three extremely hostile faces inside.  The doorknob rattled under the girl's efforts to force it closed.

"Hello to you too.  Listen.  Let me introduce myself: My name is Bridget Cleary," she smiled like a shark.  "Maybe you've heard of me?"

The girl's grip on the doorknob loosened, and the faces inside the house glanced at each other uncertainly.

"Why would we have heard of you?"

"Do me a favour and don't screw around, please.  We both know what this is about." Bridget handed the girl a business card, hand-written in a spidery scrawl of black ink across creased paper, aged yellow as a lion.  The girl reached out and took it, scanning it incredulously.

"Bridget Cleary, of the Cleary Line.  Demonology, History of Occult & Arcane, Weirding.  By Appointment Only," Fionna read out, then looked up at Bridget, an inquisitive eyebrow raised.  "'Appointment only'?"

"Not everyone is aware of their appointment."

"How did you find us, then?"

"Same way I find everything else."

"The internet?" Fionna snorted.

Bridget frowned.

"I work in mysterious ways," she muttered noncommittally.

"So Bridget the Burned is supposed to be your great-great...great..."

"Five greats.  Mother's side all the way down, yes."
There was a moment of conspiratorial glances and pursed lips between the girl in the house and the two men behind her, but then with a metallic swish, she unlatched the chain, and opened the door.

"Prove it," the girl demanded coolly.

As the door swung wide, the light from inside poured out down the steps in a long, square shaft, casting Bridget's shadow stretched and spindly behind her.  The spotlights converged.

"Let me just..." Bridget carefully and slowly raised one hand in the air and reached the other towards the inside pocket of her jacket, palms open and hands flat, to make it clear she wasn't reaching for a weapon.  The girl and the two men watched her closely, tense as coiled springs.  All she pulled out was a lighter and a pack of cheap cigarettes.  Confusion crept over the other three faces.

"I said--"

Bridget cut her off with a quick gesture of her hand, briskly raising one finger for silence.  She flipped open the pack and took one.  It rested loosely between her lips as she put the rest back inside her jacket.  She raised both hands, one flicking the lighter and the other cupped around it against the breeze, and lit the cigarette.  She glanced up.  They were getting restless for the main act.  She took a few quick, short puffs, working up a strongly glowing ember on the tip of the cigarette, and exhaled through her nose, looking the girl and the the two men straight in the eyes one by one.  Bridget took one more drag, long and slow, as deep as her lungs would let her, leaning back slightly as her chest rose.  The ember flared up red, visibly consuming the length of the cigarette, until the hand holding it dropped away from her face.  She tipped back her head.  Unnatural, oily black smoke churned in her mouth, just behind her lips, and escaped in a lazy drift from her nostrils.  By some strange trick of the reflected light, Bridget's eyes seemed to glitter red for a moment.

Then, with a sudden, violent breath, she exhaled.

Smoke poured out, black and pungent, almost tangibly thick.  It formed an ashy plume in the doorway.  It twisted, condensed, and pulled, then seemed to go taut.  A creature's head, gaunt and fanged, with a long, flickering, forked tongue and wide, torn ears, appeared in the smoke like a statue in stone.  It seethed in place for a moment.  Bridget grinned toothily at the three in the house, stray tendrils of smoke still curling from between her teeth like a volcanic fissure.  The creature suddenly shot forward, giving a roar that grew in pitch until it was like a scream of wind through a rusty gate, gnashing blindly with its needle-like teeth.  The girl in the house barely flinched as the smoggy mouth clamped its jaw down with a snap one last time a hair's breadth in front of her nose.  It seemed to shattered itself with the force of the bite, and dissipated back into smoke.

Bridget descended into a vicious coughing fit, dropping the lighter, which clattered away between the boards of the porch steps.  She inhaled raggedly and shuddered into another breath, a mischievous smile managing to sneak into her expression.  She bent over and  used the toe of her boot to stub out the dog-end that still smouldered dully in her hand, then straightened up again and tossed it over her shoulder into the street.  The girl nodded for her to come in, and Bridget did, gesturing for a glass of water.  The girl looked at one of the men, and he quickly brought some tap water from the kitchen.  Bridget downed the whole thing so fast the other three hardly saw it and cleared her throat loudly.

"Thank you for your vote of confidence," she rasped, starting to get her voice back.  She looked around, taking in the room.  It was a small solar by the back door, that with four people in it, felt cramped.  The walls were an optimistic enough yellow, but a pale shade lacking the courage of its convictions that didn't want to interrupt.  Accents like the door-frames, windows and baseboards were a similarly meek shade of blue.  The floor was shiny white hospital-like linoleum, aggressively practical and clean.  Boots and shoes were lined up neatly on a mat by the front door, under a row of coats hung in an alcove.  Polka-dot gardening rainboots and a cartoonish yellow plastic rain poncho and hat particularly stood out.  Much of the space was occupied with thin, metal shelves of potted plants and canned foods.  The exterior-facing walls were lined with windows, and a closed door was opposite them, behind the two men.  Bridget left the empty water glass on the corner of one shelf.

A single fragrant dark purple drop clung to its rim.

"I suppose we should thank you for coming, Ms.  Cleary" the girl said, somewhat blandly.  One of the men behind her, the older one with a thick beard, wrinkled his nose at this like he smelled something foul.  Bridget saw his reaction over the girl's shoulder, and locked eyes with him for just a moment before looking back at the girl.

"Just Brid is fine..." her eyes darted back to the older man again for barely a second.  "Actually, how about Bridget."

"We were just sitting down to dinner, if you'd like to join us? Sit down and get acquainted?" she asked, sounding as if she wouldn't mind if Bridget declined, but Bridget enthusiastically agreed.  The girl walked between the two men, and opened the closed door on the other side of the small room.  It led into a generously sized kitchen. A huge dark oak table occupied the middle, set for dinner with a white tablecloth draped over it.  The plates and glasses were empty, but the kitchen smelled of the hearty beef stew that bubbled on the stove, quietly rattling the lid of its pot.  The design of the room meticulously matched the first and likely the rest.  The counters were bleached laminate and the appliances were all a matched set of identical stainless steel.  All the dining chairs around the old wooden table didn't match it; they were as streamlined and modern as the rest of the kitchen.

Bridget walked through the door into the kitchen before the others did, and settled herself in at the head chair of the table.  She smiled at the three irritated frowns around her.  They seemed to consider arguing about it, but just sat down wordlessly in the other chairs.  Bridget looked down at the empty place setting in front of her, and grabbed a corner of the tablecloth that overhung the edge of the table by a few inches.  She flipped it up, revealing the actual surface of the oak table.  It was more than old. Maybe more than ancient.  Intricate relief carvings twisted around the surface. Lines of shining filigree formed complex insciptions. Etchings i stained with dye and ashes peeked out from under the rest of the cloth.

"Just having dinner?"

"That was for after dessert," came the flustered voice of the younger man, who was much shorter than the other and clean-shaven, a mousey man with small glasses and wearing a priest’s collar.  Bridget looked at him for a moment, corners of her mouth turned up like she was trying not to laugh.  With a shrug, she folded the corner of the tablecloth back down.

"Fair enough."

"I guess I'll hurry up and serve dinner then," the girl said, with an attitude of trying to get this over with as fast as possible.

"I thought we were going to get acquainted first," Bridget said with mock disappointment.

"We can do it while we eat," the girl pushed, and got up to go to the stove.  While she ladled out the stew from a deep steel pot, Bridget reached half-way across the table for the water pitcher and poured herself another glass, then grabbed a couple roughly-cut slices of fresh bread that sat on a wooden cutting board.  She crunched on the bread with a satisfied expression, like she'd momentarily forgotten three other people were watching her with sour stares.  When the girl poured the soup into her bowl, she dipped the bread and looked around at the others, who had grudgingly started to eat.

"So!" Bridget dropped into the awkward silence, "Names to faces? I know you've heard of me, at least within The Industry as the current curator of Bridget the Burned's notes and research...." she trailed off here, prompting someone else to continue.  There was another awkward silence.  

"I'm Fionna Kelly," the girl began reluctantly, and stalled over a few more spoonfuls of stew.  She was older than Bridget had first thought, nearly the same age Brid appeared to be, but in many ways looked quite her opposite.  Where Bridget was fairly tall, Fionna was quite short.  Bridget's pale skin, her long ruler-straight black hair, and her sharp cheekbones and strong build made her seem older.  With Fionna's smooth-featured complexion, her thick curls of auburn hair that fell around her shoulders, and her slight frame, she seemed much younger.  She dressed like a librarian, in a knee-length narrow skirt and matching vest, both an earthy dunn shade.  An airy spring blouse lent the only splash of pastel colour, and only served to make her seem washed and pale, as if she were at all times shocked and livid about something.  Her jewelry was limited to a simple crescent moon-shaped pendant on a thin gold chain and tiny diamond-stud earrings.  Even here, indoors at her own home, she wore polished black flats, with immaculately white socks turned down evenly at the ankles.  She had a fresh French manicure and perfectly emphasized eye make-up.  In short, she dressed the way she decorated her home.  Bridget was strictly a jeans and t-shirts type, and when she wore shoes at all, she chose steel-toed boots.  Just in case.  She had a worn and faded dark-red jacket that she wore like a second skin, its only adornment a pair of buttoned-down epaulets.  A tiny inverted cross, carved from old wood and worn smooth, hung from a nylon cord around her neck.  Her only other jewelry was a large and ornate silver signet ring on her right hand, gaudy and showy, and very at odds with how she otherwise styled and carried herself.  The one trait that Bridget and Fionna shared were their bright, icy blue eyes.  Their gazes locked for a moment, and the room frosted over.

"Do go on," Bridget muttered.

"As head of our...group, I hold title as Nexus Fionna.  I specialize in...direct research.  Not of any particular note in The Industry, as you call it, certainly nothing like your great-great..."

"Five greats."

"Grandmother.  But I am the local Nexus, and this is the local Red Cabal."

"The whole thing..?"

"The Red Order has been having issues with our numbers for several generations now, and this isn't exactly the best neighbourhood for recruitment.  But, yes, I'm Nexus Fionna, and this is our Red Cabal."

"You're a Weirder." It wasn't a question.

"I...yes, I am," Fionna said defensively.

"Not long ago they didn't allow Weirders like you to even be lay members of the Order.  Not long before that, they didn't even allow Weirders like us to be anywhere but on a pyre.  And now it's 'Nexus Fionna', is it?"

The older man dropped his spoon into his bowl with a clatter and a splash.  The young priest grabbed his shoulder gently.

"Joshua," Fionna muttered.

"She's not a Weirder! Not a dangerous one...she knows as much as she needs to.  She uses it to uphold the Purge, never done anything uncanny," Joshua suddenly broke his silence.  He looked at Bridget pointedly.  "Unlike some."

"Mister.  Brant." Fionna said, mildly but firmly.  Her eyes stayed fixed downwards at her hand holding the spoon, paused an inch above the bowl.  Joshua settled back.  He smouldered there quietly, like the last hot coal burning under the ashes of an extinguished campfire.

Bridget let the tension hang awkwardly in the air, seemingly unaware it was awkward at all.  She looked at Joshua, eyes flickering over minor details.  He was an old man who wore his age like armour, like an ancient tree, the veins and tendons in his hands and neck standing out as spreading roots.  His skin was like a leather holster, his features sharp as a knife.  His eyes with irises like the dark between stars burned behind the mask of his face.  The last stubborn strands of black hair stood starkly against the platinum silver of his densely curly hair and beard, both just barely past the point of needing a trim.  His clothes were inexpensive and plain, just blue jeans and an olive-drab shirt under a faded denim jacket.  He had the look of a farmer who once was a solider.

"Did you come here with a reason in mind? Besides saying things you know will get people going?" the young priest injected into the silence.

"Of course I did," Bridget said, continuing to totally ignore or simply not detect his anger.  She cleaned her bowl with the last bite of bread.  "I assume you've heard lately from the guys who run your club?"

"How did you know the Seven Inquisitors had contacted Nexus Fionna?!" demanded Joshua.  Fionna cut him off with a volley of daggers glared across the table.

"I didn't--though I do now, don’t I?”, Bridget smiled.  “But I know there's been some...  whisperings ...lately.  In The Industry, in the..." Bridget waved her hands vaguely, "...aether? The words 'Ark' and 'Covenant' are being used, among others.  And if I've heard about it, I assume the Inquisitors of the Red Order are already passing notes about it in class, too.  I also assume they asked you to place a little call to the information desk for them?"

"How--"

"How did I know that? Maybe you know something and I know something and together we might know something else.  Maybe I need an extra set of hands and you need a monstrous signal boost if you're going to make that call tonight.  Maybe, just maybe, I inherited more from Bridget the Burned than just the five or or six hundred pounds of diaries and bits of paper, where she jotted the secrets and mysteries of the Weirding in the margins, between her shopping lists and her recipes for Welsh rabbit and shepherd's pie, and maybe it's something you need a lot more than I ultimately need you, so maybe you shouldn't be asking."

Bridget picked up her glass and downed it, as a punctuation mark.  A swirl of red appeared in the water as it drained, like a single drop of blood had fallen in it.  When she exhaled, it smelled like flowers and fruit.

"Father Callaghan, would you be so kind as to help me prepare the table for tonight's work." Fionna didn't sound like she was asking.  The young priest complied, and helped her quickly clear the table and put aside the tablecloth, constantly looking around through his small, round, wire-frame glasses with guileless brown eyes like a lamb.  He was clearly nervous, glancing over his shoulders, like something was upsetting him.  He seemed guilty and reluctant.  His youthful but conservative 50's Boy Scout cut was just starting to get tossed out of place.  Not quite regulation anymore, much like himself these days.  As he turned back to the empty table, he fingered his priest's collar and visibly gulped with anxiety.  With his timid, soft features, he looked like a frightened little boy staring down into the blackness at the top of the basement stairs.  Some candles were lit, and the electric lights extinguished.  He and Fionna returned to their seats.

The old oaken table was fully uncovered now.  It was imprinted over practically every inch with branching, curved ,and interlocking geometric shapes.  Lines of cryptic script curled around it, each letter itself made up of tiny runes in myriad tongues, living and dead.  It formed, loosely, a circle with a number of smaller circles inside it, and other shapes radiating out from the centre point towards the edge.  Gilt filigree highlighted some of the most important sigils, and red or black or yellow paint some others.  In the centre of the middle circle, in gold and gemstones, were the letters of the English alphabet writ large, with the numbers zero to nine, and two simple line drawings of doors, a closed one to the left of the writing and an open one to the right.  Fionna put an empty shot glass upside down on the image of a closed door.  Before she could move it across to the other, Bridget cut in.

"Would you mind of I did the honours?" she asked.  Fionna hesitated.  "It's a bit of a speciality, and this call we're about to make is a special occasion."

Fionna took her hand off the shot glass, and Bridget put hers on it.  The others, almost in unison, put their hands flat on the table.  Father Callaghan was starting to sweat, his hands pressed so forcefully against the surface that the blood had run out of them, and they splayed white-knuckled against the table.  She was about to move the glass and begin the ritual, when she paused for a moment reflectively, head on one side.

"You know...you don't need most of this stuff.  The antique table, the jewels, the candles.  I assume you have a planchette for this thing somewhere that you don’t want me to use--understandable, that’d be like using someone else’s toothbrush.  But all this other stuff...I mean, it's like if you thought you could only use the phone while standing on your head.  You can do it that way if you like, if it makes you a more confident speaker, but...that's just on you.  All the phone really needs to work is for you to dial the right number and talk." she said, like someone confiding a stage secret.  "If you feel better doing it than not, go ahead.  But you could do this with a shirt button and a kid's alphabet book."

Bridget slid the glass across the table to the image of the open door, and laid both her hands flat on the table like the others.  Fionna, Joshua, and Father Callaghan held their breath, waiting for something to notice them.

Back out on stage.  The audience is waiting.  It's time for Act Two.

Bridget closed her eyes, cleared her mind, breathed deeply and steadily.  With a high ringing sound, the shot glass began to tremble rapidly against the table.  Slowly, roughly, as if it were being jerked along on a string, it began to circle the open door.

"Hell-ooo...." Bridget chirped, in a sing-song voice that would call to a neighbour over a backyard fence, "I know somebody’s out there tonight.  We see you."

Stark black shadows that were cast across the room spasmed as the candle flames wavered.  The glass began to spin faster, like it was being thrown hand-to-hand around a circle.

"And what's your name, then?"

The shot glass jerked violently towards the letter D.  Then it stopped for a moment, like it was out of breath and resting.  After a moment, a hollow grinding sound carried it towards the R, where it paused again.  A little faster, to the letter A.  After barely a second, it glided smoothly to the X.  It rattled back to the D.  It slithered to the R.  It sang to the A and the X.

Faster.  D.  R.  A.  X.

Faster.  D-R-A-X.

Faster.  DRAX.

Faster.  DRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAX....

Fionna, head on her chest, raised her eyes towards Father Callaghan.  He gave a small shrug.  Whoever this Drax was, it wasn't one of the big names Downstairs.

"Show us," Bridget asked of it.

Cupboards slammed open and closed.  Dinner china rattled like bones.  Father Callaghan yelped.

"And what is your Aspect?" Bridget demanded of it.

W-R-A-T-H

"We're here for the Red Order," Fionna interjected, projecting her voice towards the .  Bridget's head snapped towards her with a fiery stare.

"Fionna! Are you that stupid?!"

R-E-D D-O-G-S
R-E-D D-O-G-S
R-E-D D-O-G-S....

"We're all in Conference," Bridget hurriedly assured Drax, "We will abide by the ground rules of this meeting.  We had an Appointment."

B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S

"There's been some crackling on the radio, you could say.  Something in the aether's about to bubble to the surface.  A lot of noise and commotion.  What's going on down there?"

F-I-R-E S-A-L-E

Fionna raised an eyebrow at Bridget, who shrugged.

"Demons can have a sense of humour, too."

"Just get it to the point.  We're not here to make friends with it."

"Something big's about to happen."

A-L-W-A-Y-S I-S

"Something...Biblical."

"We know something's out there that wasn't before," Fionna cut in again, "The Inquisitors have divined it.  Weirders can hardly hear themselves think for all the static about Something New."

T-H-E-N W-H-Y A-S-K

"Because we want details."

T-H-E-N W-H-Y T-E-L-L

"Because if you don't, the Inquisition has something up its sleeve.  Oh yes. The Inquisitors have a way to make things very hard for you,” Fionna whispered darkly.

S-O Y-O-U D-O-N-T K-N-O-W

Fionna flushed.

"We know enough.  The Inquisition made a Deal about this meeting, answering us is part of the ground rules."

W-H-A-T I-F I J-U-S-T D-I-D-N-T

"You'd be violating the Contract, and in a lot more trouble than any earthly person could possibly cause," Fionna snapped, "Now, maybe we could just get down to our business already: where is the Ark, and what is the Final Covenant?"

T-H-E A-R-K S-L-E-E-P-S

"It's waking up.  We can all hear it.  What's it supposed to contain? What is the Final Covenant?"

A L-O-T L-I-K-E T-H-E O-T-H-E-R T-W-O

Silence creeps around the room like a fog, as the ringing sound of the shot glass across the table rested.  Bridget's eyes closed and a bead of sweat ran down her temple, as she took the intermission in her channelling to gasp hungrily at air that was hung with thin smoke from the candles.  Her breath hitched in her throat as the clear ringing movement of the glass cut through the room.

B-U-T N-O-T R-E-A-L-L-Y

"Then what are all three of them?" Fionna demanded, frustration grinding in her voice.

O-L-D.  N-E-W.  F-A-T M-A-N.  L-I-T-T-L-E B-O-Y.

F-I-N-A-L.  N-E-W M-A-N-H-A-T-T-E-N P-R-O-J-E-C-T

"What was that supposed to mean?" muttered Father Callaghan, not sure if he actually wanted to be heard.  "It's a weapon? Is...is this about the war? Something we'd have seen on the news?"

The glass shot to N, circled there for a moment, then spelled out:

N-O-T Y-O-U-R L-I-T-T-L-E W-A-R.

"So the Mortal Coil is safe, then?"

The glass circled over the N near the center of the board only once or twice, before adding:

C-O-L-L-A-T-E-R-A-L D-A-M-A-G-E

"What kind of Ark would you need to hold something like that?" the priest whispered.  He swallowed imperceptibly, feeling like someone standing at the edge of a cliff, dropping a torch into a chasm, watching it fall and fall and fall, until the darkness swallows it and doesn't even say thank you for the meal.

O-N-E T-H-A-T S-L-E-E-P-S

"When is the Final Covenant coming?" Fionna interrogated the board.

W-H-E-N I-T W-A-K-E-S

"Is the Ark going to be a person? An object? A place?!"

"Animal, vegetable or mineral?" Bridget interjected with a breathless, tired laugh.  Fionna stared icicles at her.

I-T I-S G-O-I-N-G T-O B-E, the glass spelled out, and rested emphatically there on the E, while the Cabal members peered over it, hoping it would continue.  Fionna sneered smugly, and looked up and around, speaking confidently to the thick darkness pervading the room.

"That means you don't know, doesn't it?"

T-H-E A-R-K  S-L-E-E-P-S

I-T W-I-L-L W-A-K-E

I-T W-I-L-L B-E

Fionna glanced down at her nails, an almost theatrical expression of disinterest.  She made a show of meticulously examining her manicure for flaws she knew it didn't have.
"Hm...So, I'm hearing a no.  No, you don't."

A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

"Like I said, tell us something we don't know," Fionna rolled her eyes.

A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S

A-R-K A-W-A-K-E-S...

The shot glass was jerking and skipping and rattling around the table so violently it might break.  Fionna laughed like a silver bell.

"You don't know anything, do you? You're basically a secretary, answering the phone for someone important and pretending you know anything about the running of the company."

" Are you even licensed to fulfil demonic Contracts," added Father Callaghan nervously, encouraged by Fionna apparently gaining for the Cabal the upper hand in the conversation, "Or are you just angling for a promotion to soul Sales?"

"Why in all Hell did the Inquisitors make us an appointment with YOU? Of all the black and fell twisted entities" Joshua snarled the last two words.  His perfect white tombstone teeth flashed in the candlelight like the fangs of a bear.  His eyes rolled as he shook his head, fire and brimstone words boiling up from within him as naturally as breathing, "Of all of them writhing  in the Infernal Breach, here's YOU.  The Inquisition of Seven can command the attention of The Motherless Goat!  They can demand audience at will with Gr'Shaag The Bleeding! With He Of The Teeth! With The Nine Heads of Old Hyaag'Yor and the Queen of Rot and the Lady of Worms! They hold The Enemies in submission by wielding their very tools and weapons against them.   And you expect us to believe--"

"Believe that the Inquisition drew up a Contract," Fionna interrupted, "so that we could talk to someone called..." she raised her hands, gesturing sarcastic air-quotes around the word," ...'Drax'? Really? Drax?!"

"It sounds like a drain cleaner!" Father Callaghan piped in brightly from the sidelines.

Bridget seemed to be in visible pain as the messages relayed by the glass careening around the table shot back against the Cabal's accusations.  A splintered shard of glass at least an inch long broke off from around the rim of the shot glass when it struck too hard at the wrong angle on an inlaid diamond that formed a highlight on the crossbar of the E.  The shard flew towards Fionna's face and scratched her lightly across her cheek under her left eye before passing over her shoulder and clattering into the metal kitchen sink behind her.  She didn't flinch.

Suddenly, Bridget slumped forward, as if falling unconscious.  The glass fell still as soon as she did, and silence again slunk cat-like through the room.  Every heartbeat was audible.  When the glass started to slowly quiver and crawl again, the ragged edge of its rim was jagged as a wolf's smile, and the noise it made was harsh and irregular.

D...R...A...X

D...R...A...X

A...R...K A...W--A-K-E-S

D...R...A...X

D.R.A.X.

D-R-A-X

DRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAXDRAX...

As the glass accelerated, Bridget jerked upright in her chair like someone had yanked on a rope attached to her spine.  She heaved in breath like a drowning person.

"Throwing a temper tantrum?" Fionna wheedled.

Hecklers in the audience tonight.

Losing control of the room.

The cupboards above the counters and below the sinks started to bang and rattle open and closed.  The plates and cups jittered closer and closer to the precipice of their shelf, setting Fionna's teeth on edge.  The drawers of silverware slammed open and closed a few times, knives and forks and spoons slicing back and forth over each other in silver waves.  With a final surge, the drawers tore completely free from the counter, spraying the floor with a rolling foam of sharp cutlery.  Before it had even hit the tiles, the knives in the slots of several wooden knife blocks on the counter flew out of their sheathes.

Long, thin fish knives like rapiers.

Heavy, square meat cleavers.

A horizontal rain, each drop a tapered triangular blade like shark's tooth as long as a  forearm.

A dozen of them flipped end over end through the air with a whistling sound.

Like a shocked crowd.

Fionna's hair flicked as a vegetable knife somersaulted just barely past the back of her neck.  A tiny paring knife, curled like a talon, glanced Father Callaghan's left ear as it flew past.  They lodged themselves in the opposite wall, not quite randomly.  Four defined spaces showed around where they all were sitting, like the silhouette of a knife-thrower's lovely assistant.  Father Callaghan raised a hand to his ear and gingerly dabbed at it.  His finger came away stained red with a smear of blood from the crescent-shaped cut.

Bridget tilted her head back, sweat soaking through her shirt in a semi-circle across her chest, and coughed roughly, gulping air as if she'd been holding her breath until just now.  Fionna sighed curtly, smoothed the few stray strands of hair, straightened her clothing.

"Look," she said in clipped tones, one corner of her mouth curling above her teeth like a cat sneering over a cornered mouse.  "Can we just speak to your Manager?"
Wind roared through the room, like breath from a dragon's throat.  Bridget's raven hair flew back from her shoulders like dark wings as Fionna's many candles flared around the room like lightning, and then went dark, swallowed by the gale.

Grand Finale.  Lower the lights.

Joshua cried out like a barking dog as he was struck in the side of the head with a sugar bowl that had blown off the counter.  The cups in the cupboards chattered like teeth.

The high, ringing sound of the shot glass moving on wood started again, drawn not by the entity but by the storm it was creating in Fionna's kitchen.  It slid past the field of letters in the middle of the table, and a moment later, hit the floor with a sharp 'ting!' and started to roll.  Callaghan and Joshua jumped up from their chairs and ran after the sound.

Too many feet scrambling, and soon that sound was replaced with a loud 'crack!' Both jumped back.  Joshua dropped to one knee, and started groping blindly at the ground where he thought he heard the break.  Ignoring the hot, sharp, sudden pain in his palm, he seized tightly onto the largest piece of the shot glass he could find--it felt like the bottom, with it's thick base acting as gums to the serrated teeth where the rest of the glass broke off.  The wind rose in strength, threatening to blow doors off hinges from the inside, and started to fill with smoke that smelled like Bridget's cheap cigarettes.  In a single motion, Joshua jumped back to his feet, turned around, and slapped his hand down on the table in a wide arc.  It struck like a drum, and the room fell still and silent.

No one even breathed, until a tiny glow of light meekly poked up its head.  Fionna had re-lit one of the candles, a rose-scented tea light, which sat in a saucer on her palm.  She glanced around, her lips pressed into a paper-thin, bloodless white line.  Her kitchen looked like a bomb had struck.  The other rooms seemed untouched, but the kitchen was a disaster.  And so was her hair, it felt like.  The candle was tiny, and she could only see a couple of feet around herself, through the last dissipating veils of thick, black smoke.  Near her elbow, Father Callaghan was white as a sheet and trying to occupy as little space as possible.

Joshua stood still as a tree trunk with his bloody hand over the shards of the shot glass on the table.  He examined it in the candlelight.  He'd managed to slam the bit of broken glass down right over the engraved image of a tightly locked door on the tabletop, immediately ending their connection with the Drax entity.  A sticky sheen of blood peered out from between his fingers, spreading across the table.  He finally lifted the hand, and began to disinterestedly dislodge bits of glass still stuck in his palm.  On the table, the remains of the token were stained with blood that looked black in the low light.  They sat in a jagged pile in the exact centre of the bloody print on the table left by Joshua's long-fingered hand.

"Ms.Cleary," Fionna called to the darkness at the opposite end of the table, "Was that 'Drax' a friend of yours?"

No answer.  As seconds pass, all three of them look up from them own concerns, and towards the table.  Fionna lifts the saucer with the candle above her head.

Bridget was gone.

Fionna leapt across the kitchen in a single step, and yanked up the blinds over the window.  She was just in time to see the orange-red burning point of Bridget's lit cigarette fade into the darkness of the unlit street.

Exit, stage left.

Applause.
Continued here! --> Chapter 2

Azadraxiel is a minor familiar demon that rather likes the earth. The Weirder who had summoned and bound her, one Bridget Cleary, was murdered by her husband when he discovered her practices, and instead of returning to Hell on the completion of Bridget's Contract, Azadraxiel, stole the body of her former master as her Ark (she'd been using a goat before) and lived on for hundreds of years as Bridget, on the Infernal Equivalent of an expired passport. She posed as progressively further removed descendants of the real Bridget the Burned, and practiced as a demonologist and Weirder, working under the nose of the Red Order--once known as the Inquisition. Using a loophole in the standard Contract of binding Familiars to their masters, she works to summon her sister, Magraxiel, to the mortal coil.
ow, the aether is buzzing with news.
News of something big about to happen.
Something Biblical.
Something using words like "Ark" and "Covenant".
...And "Final".
© 2014 - 2024 Abbi-Normal
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