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 Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 5:22 pm
It was a little bit—
No.
It was really weird. And Keren, being who she was, proud Surrounding survivor and page of Saturn, had a really high threshold for what she thought was weird. Things that passed for weird among lesser mortals were just everyday magic to her.
So, what was it that Keren the Deathless was finding so weird?
It was the strange little voice in the back of her head, which had been struggling to articulate itself for the past week, distracting her from her classes and her experiments, urging her to call forth her pitcher and her lace in the most inconvenient places – like the forensics lab. And her having to whisper to herself, “No, not here, not now, it’s not a good time,” quieting the voice but never quite fully quieting it, because of course it would be back, struggling to form words, urging her to take up her pitcher, if she’d only take up her pitcher then she’d be able to hear better-
“Alright, fine, what the ******** do you want,” Megiddo swore at her subconscious. She’d meant to go to bed, meant to pass right the ******** out after showering, it was eleven PM on a school night for god’s sake, but the voice was just too loud. The pitcher was clattering into her hands before her towel even hit the floor, wool and lace and leather wrapping around her like fine mist. She listened for the voice, could practically feel it inside her ears, wind and hush.
I pledge my life and loyalty to Saturn, and to Megiddo, said her subconscious, I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.
Which sounded stupid, Megiddo thought, and she said so: “Why the ******** would I want to do that.”
To which the voice stubbornly repeated: I pledge my life and loyalty to Saturn, and to Megiddo. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.
Talking to herself in the middle of her bedroom… was a new experience for Megiddo. That much, she could admit. But considering everything that had happened to her in the past three years, she didn’t think that made her crazy. All things considered, hearing voices telling you to do something to do with your magical powers probably meant you were due for a power-up. Not that she was certain she’d earned one, but who was to say she hadn’t?
Well, that, or your brain was being hijacked by aliens. Fifty-fifty shot in the dark.
“Well, beam me up, Scotty,” said the page, because what the hell, she had nothing to lose, right? “I pledge my life and loyalty to Saturn, and to Megiddo. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.”
It got very quiet and very dark.
“Did I ******** it up,” said Megiddo.
And then it got darker still.
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Posted: Mon Jan 13, 2014 5:23 pm
She could hear water dripping, somewhere close-by but also far away. Megiddo took a step forward, and the ground beneath her boots felt like it was, perhaps, cobblestone. Which was odd, because she’d been in her bedroom only moments before, and that had wall-to-wall carpeting. Her footsteps echoed, which was also odd.
“Oh ********,” said Megiddo, peering into the darkness. “Oh ********, where am I?”
She took another step, and as if cued by the sound – or her proximity – a gothic gas lamp flickered to life some six feet to her right, and then six feet from that, another lamp, and then another, six feet distant again. Lamp after lamp, every six feet, until they’d illuminated the entire cobblestone courtyard around her. It was not a huge space – but it was big enough, surrounded by a high, high wrought iron fence beyond which she could see—
She could see—
“No, I am not going to think about that right now,” said Megiddo, focusing on her more immediate surroundings. At the center of the courtyard was a round well, over which there was a small, steeple roof, which sheltered a pulley attached to a chain. That, she thought, explained the sound of water. So, beyond the fence-
“No,” said Megiddo again, firmly, but there was nothing else in the courtyard that she could see besides the well and the lamps, and she was going to need to concentrate on something soon. Perhaps she should look up…?
She looked up.
This was a very bad idea, for the sky above her was full of churning orange and slightly greenish clouds, like no clouds ever seen on earth. But the color of the sky and the words of her oath were enough to give Megiddo a solid understanding of where she was – one that she thought she might have known right from the start.
“Oh, ********, I’m on Saturn,” said the page. “******** brilliant. I’m on Saturn, and I have a Calculus exam in the morning. ******** everything.”
She thought about repeating the dumb oath and seeing if that would take her home, but over a billion kilometers seemed like a long way to travel without even looking around a bit. Heels clicking on the cobblestone, Megiddo strode over to the fence and peered out to the beyond that she had so far refused to acknowledge.
It was a great city, towers stretching up into the sky, silent as a mausoleum. Part of her was inclined to think that it was a mausoleum, but the fence separated her from it. Was the city Megiddo? Or was only the courtyard Megiddo? Or even less than that? Was just the well Megiddo? She didn’t know, and she didn’t know how to go about finding out.
Walking the entire perimeter of the fence revealed a gate, through which she could look out upon a wide boulevard that she stood no chance of reaching, since the gate was locked fast and the fence too high to climb, with jagged spikes along the top – to keep intruders out? To keep her in?
Then, a keening wail broke through the air. Megiddo looked up, trying to place the noise. Some sort of siren? An alarm? An ancient security measure? She had no idea. Looking back towards the boulevard, she spotted a figure moving rapidly towards her, materializing into a young woman on foot, running as fast as her long legs would carry her, wearing a dress remarkably similar to the one Megiddo herself wore, right down to the Saturnian sigils circling the hem.
The page stepped back from the gate, expecting it to open for the other girl, but it did not – instead, the girl ran straight through, as if the metal weren’t even there.
“Damn,” said Megiddo, following the girl across the courtyard. The bucket in the well was in the raised position, although she could have sworn it was in the lowered position when she arrived. As Megiddo watched, the girl before her plucked a ring from her finger and dropped it into the bucket, and then, looking over her shoulder, set the pulley spinning. As the chain ran down, the girl ran back across the courtyard – the gates looked open now, although Megiddo knew they had been closed just a moment before – and hauled the gates shut, leaning against them with all her might—
-and dissolved into smoke. The gates were closed. Megiddo felt a chill run down her spine. The small hairs on her neck stood straight up.
“Well,” she said, approaching the well. “Let’s see what she left in you.”
It was a deep well. It took Megiddo a long time to haul all the chain in, but when the bucket finally bobbed out of the darkness, she could see silver glittering in it. It was a ring, the same ring she’d seen the ghostly girl drop, five minutes and a thousand years ago, with a careful sigil of Saturn inscribed upon it, surrounded by a shape that was best described as a pitcher.
“Well,” said Megiddo to the ring, slipping it onto her right ring finger. “You’re mine, now.”
Which only left the question of how to get home, seeing as she was exhausted.
Luckily, her earlier hunch about repeating the oath proved correct.
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