All Who Wander

[Mel Richter]

The Astral domain of Krisi stretched like taffy as her question was answered, before Triessa could say or do anything. As everything went silver-white, that strange harmonic voice whispered its judgment of her, and her heart clenched in sudden panic. It didn't sound very positive.

"Of course I'm lost!" she shouted into the voice defensively. "I never claimed not to be! Nothing in my whole damn life makes sense, how can I not be lost?!"

The light of the Astral plane then dimmed around her, leaving her floating in a vast darkness.

Her feet touched a ground, and her weight reasserted itself. Triessa sucked a breath in, suddenly worried. Had she drifted into another domain? It felt different though, it felt...personal.

Then she heard the low thrumming from ahead of her, and beneath her, and she knew. Words were being spoken, dark words breathed in unison. Triessa steeled herself not to move, not to go, but she wasn't given the option. This wasn't reliving, it was reviewing. There was a skip, like an edit in a movie, and she was at the door down the musty hall through which the sonorous chanting below could be heard. Her wrists hurt from where she'd managed to wiggle out of the ropes they'd bound her in.The floor was cold under her bare feet. She was still wearing the nightgown she'd had on when the cultists burst into the house to take her parents...and her.

She had to reach up to the doorknob...it felt so high, even though she'd grown a lot recently. Her hand had felt heavy.

skip

The basement...why was it always basements?...was lit only with black candlelight. Men and women in robes were arrayed in a ring surrounding a circle on the floor that was inscribed with strange, intricate runes. Inside the circle were four wooden devices like multiplication signs, or the letter 'X.' On each X was a person, with their hands tied at the top branches, and their feet tied at the bottom ones. Two people Triessa didn't recognize.

And mom and dad.

Her father seemed to spot her there and had just enough time to say, "Run!"

Then the chant reached a crescendo, and something appeared in the center of the circle. Something hard to explain or describe; the eyes slid off of it. Not a creature, but a phenomenon. Years later, in school, when Triessa learned about black holes she had to go to the school nurse because of the panic attack thinking about it gave her. She didn't really remember why, but this was it. Something utterly black, darker than darkness, that the boundary of seemed to twist and writhe as it consumed the light in the room. Every sound suddenly went quiet, save only for the sounds from inside her own body...her heartbeat pounding in her ears. The candles seemed to go out, plunging the whole room into shadow so thick it felt somehow physically present.

Triessa couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. She was locked in place, a mosquito in amber. What would it be like if this lasted forever? Preserved, but conscious. Unseeing and unhearing and unfeeling, but aware.

Then it was over. The candlelight flared back up, almost painfully bright in her eyes for a second...though of course the light was normal. It was her eyes adjusting that made them look bright. The 'X's were empty. Nothing remained of the people who had been on them.

As Triessa looked on with dawning horror, a cheer went up from the robed cultists and they began chatting among each other in a way that seemed...normal. Like regular people at a social event, excitedly telling and retelling their favorite parts of things, comparing notes on movies or music or other shared hobbies. Catching up with one another.

Except one. One was staring thoughtfully at the X that had once had Triessa's father on it. He went over to it and put his head about where her father's head had been...then turned to look out away from it.

...exactly where Triessa was still cowering in the gloom outside the candlelight.

The cultist swore then and said, "The girl! She got in here! Draven you were supposed to be watching the door!"

Someone else replied, nettled, "Are you kidding? Watch the DOOR when THAT was going on? Besides, who cares?"

Robed figures coming towards her, fanning out to prevent her from slipping past. Triessa backed up, but hit the crumbling concrete bricks of the wall.

"She's not going anywhere...are ya kid?"

Dizzy with terror, Triessa pushed against the wall and screwed her eyes shut. She pushed, imagining that the wall would break...that she would be back at home, back somewhere she was safe...

And then it happened. She stepped backwards, and the world exploded with silver-white light.

Triessa caught her breath and looked wildly around. The Astral plane was still churning around her, but she realized what had happened. Without meaning to she'd shaped it into a recreation of that scene. That had been the first time she'd crossed into the Astral plane, and found herself at the place she'd come to know of as 'The Beach House.' A private domain of her own creation, modeled on a real place, albeit with some embellishment.

Did going through that again help her answer the judgement of the Krisi? Did she know who she was now? Was she just the sum total of what had happened to her as a child? Coming to live with her mother's parents on their farm? Learning 'enough' magic from her grandmother that she wouldn't accidentally hurt herself...or anyone else? Her angry teenage years, looking for something...anything...to explode at? Was that who she was?

No. Because I know all that.

The Dark had come for her grandparents. It had come in force, and braved losses. Not a random hit, or just brushing aside practitioners that it had stumbled across. Targeted. And they'd known what to expect. The Dark had come for her parents too, before Dark Day. Why?

She felt something like a fist close around her heart and squeeze. For so long now she'd hoped she could just...avoid this. Stay quiet, keep her head down, live like a normal person, and avoid it. But then the Seekers had found her, and they seemed to want the same thing...but it was through them that Gravely had found her. And even then...vampires? They were monsters, but not allies of the Dark. Surely...surely it'd be okay. Wouldn't attract notice. Because she'd wanted to do something. Part of her lived in dread, and wanted to stay low...but another part of her chafed. Another part of her remembered watching her parents be sacrificed and doing nothing. Even as a child she'd had power enough to escape. What if she'd done something else?

And even though fighting that vampire was the single scariest thing she'd ever done in her life since Dark Day, there was something awakened in her after surviving. Sternly on the side of that was this...because her grandparents had steadfastly kept to themselves, alerting no one. If they could still be found and attacked, then it was only a matter of time before Triessa was. She might already be a target in fact.

Hiding...didn't work. It hadn't worked in that basement. It hadn't worked for her grandparents. It wouldn't work for her. Not forever. At best it could buy time to...to do something else. Fight, or learn how to fight.

The fist around her heart opened, and Triessa pressed past it. Harold and Agatha knew more about this than they'd told her, she was sure. There was something important that they'd kept from her. To protect her, or maybe just because she'd never been willing to talk about ANY of that with ANYONE before. Now she had to do it though...this was part of who she was, and she couldn't be complete until she knew it.

The Krisi had told her where to go. All she had to do now was wait for the others to emerge, and they could be on their way.