Mark Teppo - Lightbreaker

Patientia beneficium. I had never been good at waiting.

Nicols shared some of my restlessness. It was at odds with the terminal weariness soaked into the shape of his face but, as I watched the way his eyes flicked away whenever he looked at me, I realized the source of his unease. I was his occult anchor; at the same time, I was alien-bright and shiny in a way nothing ever had been before.

Shortly after sunset, we finally spotted a match for the barn we carried in our heads. A row of ragged evergreens hid the building from the highway, a natural barrier obscuring the property from casual view. We only spotted it because we were on an access road, looking for a way back to the main highway.

The barn had been red once, like all barns built as historical symbols of an anachronistic American cultural heritage. Time and the insistent Pacific Northwest weather had turned this one dull and scarred, like it was covered in old blood. It was fronted by a decrepit farmhouse, squatting like a sullen toad at the end of a woefully uneven gravel driveway.

Nicols pulled the car up to the farmhouse, headlights transmuting the cracked paint into a wrinkled layer of old skin. As he looked in the glove box for a flashlight, I got out and listened. Night was spreading fast, purple to blue-black like a bruise stretching across the skin of Heaven, and the nocturnal world was waking up.

The hiss of the highway was a distant sizzle beyond the row of evergreens. Energy flow along the ley beneath the road was a thin trickle, fading to near nothingness in the distance between cars. An owl hooted at us from the tall trees behind the barn, a solitary call that was more a querulous inquiry than a territorial warning.

Having found his flashlight, Nicols swung its beam across the front of the farmhouse. The windows were boarded over, and the front door was sealed by several clumsily nailed two-by-fours. A "No Trespassing!" sign was attached to the siding beside the door but the faded condition of the letters detracted from the bluster of the message.

The Chorus touched the ley, orienting me on the magnetic poles. The front of the house looked due north, and we walked around the left-the eastern side-of the house to the back. Just as inviting as the front. Nicols examined the slabs of wood nailed over the windows and the back door with his flashlight. I opted for a magickal examination, and let the Chorus read the dilapidated building. Nothing. It was just an abandoned farmhouse, a dead spot on the landscape.

Nicols turned his flashlight toward the nearby barn. He played his beam across the worn surface of the building for a few seconds, and then clicked off the light. In the darkness of the developing evening, a thin gleam of magick leaked through the warped walls.

Definitely the right barn.

The door was on the west side of the building, and a heavy combination lock held the rickety portal shut. Nicols tugged on the lock once, a half-hearted pull in case it hadn't been closed properly. He stepped back, and glanced at the upper floor of the barn. He was trying to think of some acceptable excuse to kick in the door.

I grabbed the lock while he was rationalizing. Elide . The movement of the Chorus in my arm made my skin tingle. The lock held; it was the screws holding the hasp to the door that came out. I tossed the whole assembly aside.

"A little breaking and entering going to bother you?" I asked as I opened the door.

Nicols looked at the lock lying on the scrub grass. "Not as much as how you just did that."

"Just a crowbar of my Will," I said. "Crude, but effective."

"Is that all?" I heard him mutter as he trailed me into the barn.

The barn had no windows on the ground floor, but the interior was illuminated by the phantasmal glow of magickal seals. The barn had been gutted to make room for a ritual platform. It was a large slab of concrete, about three inches thick. It wasn't a single piece, rather blocks about three feet wide-three by three, making it a grid of nine. The platform contained three magickal circles-the central one dominated the space, and the secondaries were laid in opposite corners. The inscriptions along the inner rims were still glowing, the phantom light of residual magick. Drifting in the center of the big circle, coiling upward like a small dust devil, was a wispy column of spirit smoke. More residual energies left behind by the attendees of the ceremony. Left behind by Doug and Katarina.

My chest ached, a chill filling my lungs like atmospheric tension caused by a pressure change. The Chorus slithered along my spine, rising into my head. They wanted that column of smoke, wanted to taste the vibrant lights that had touched each other here.

I swallowed heavily, feeling like a recovering alcoholic who had just found a forgotten bottle of vodka in the freezer. The pressure in my chest didn't lessen as I tried to breathe normally. My lungs were frozen by the resurrection of old memory. I could feel her hand in my chest again. The whispers of the Chorus slithered like poison dripped into my ear.

Nicols swung his flashlight toward my face. "Are you all right?" he asked.

I shook my head, stumbling away from the concrete platform. The Chorus erupted as I retreated from the spirit echoes of Katarina and Doug, as I fled from her . This was what they wanted. What I wanted. Why would I deny them- myself -this? Their voices, a shadow conspiracy carried so long. The taste of her soul, they hissed, after all this time. Is this not the cure? Is this not what you need?

I could taste her on my lips. I could smell her again. So close . The tear in my world was so close to being fixed. Like a chain that didn't quite reach. Just a little more, just a little closer, and I could fit the hook into the ready link. Just one more tug.

This need was mine-had always been mine-and yet, was also not-mine. A Buddhist riddle, an existential conundrum bound into my psyche. The Chorus held the memory of that night in the woods. Her hand, in my chest. They reminded me how she had torn my soul. She had ripped out a piece of me; she had let the darkness find a way in.

This memory predated them. This memory was mine, not theirs, and they had taken it into their core. Why? Deep down in the dark where their roots lie, there was something else, a seed-

The vertebrae in my lower back exploded with psychic pain. The Chorus howled in my head, threatening to detonate another psychic payload in my spinal column if I fought them anymore. Let us-! They dragged at my leg, trying to make me walk toward the circle.

Magick and mysticism are reflections of the expression of Will. The world is mutable, shaped by the imagination of the magus. His transformation-his ascension-is shaped by the focus of his Will. He acts instead of being reactive. The only prisons that can hold him are the ones he makes himself.

I held my ground, and raised a psychic cage-a black iron prison-around the Chorus. I had taken them all-one by one-and lashed them to each other. I had preserved them, saving them from spiritual dissolution. I was their master; my Will was stronger. They tried a final thrust, but I broke it apart with a needle of force. My Will.

I slowly relaxed my fists, the shakes fading. My fingers ached from having been clenched so tightly against my palm. The tension in my chest broke, and my exhalation was a vomit of frost, a gust of cold air spawned by the Qliphotic surge within me.

Nicols cleared his throat uneasily. "Ah, yeah, I think maybe I should wait outside." He waved his flashlight toward the ceremonial platform. "You can explain all this to me later."

"I'm okay," I rasped.

He turned the flashlight on my chest. "I dunno," he said. "I know I'm new at this and all, but from over here, it certainly looks like you're not okay. For one thing, you're doing some weird shit to my flashlight beam."