Modern Mage – Chapter 14

Sorry about the delay between chapters, working on a lot of things in my life so writing when I have the time to work on it. I hope those who have been enjoying the story so far continue to do so. Thank You all so much for reading.







I wasn’t kidding when I said I’d be laid up for a few days, the side effects of the electrocution were nasty. The healing took several days even with improvements I made to my body. First problem was the twitching, it wasn’t constant but that just made it worse. I was drinking a hot cup of tea when my arm twitched and then I was wearing a hot cup of tea in my lap. Then there was not going out to see anyone until the marks and friction burns healed as it would be difficult to explain the scarring that occurred and then disappeared to medical professionals like Sindee’s friends and parents. By far the worst of the side effects were when the nerves would just go dead and my arm or another portion of my body would go numb for hours. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I lived through it but I’m going to have to craft a ward against electricity for the future. In the end I was in bed healing for a full week before the electrical burn scars were fully gone. In that time we had no further issues with the Tremere. Actually there didn’t seem to be anything going wrong. I took this as a bad sign of things to come; the proverbial calm before the storm.


The next three days went quickly as we spent them with Sindee’s parents on their last few days in town. It was nice to be able to relax and go anywhere in town with them and not be looking over my shoulder. Sindee’s mother noted the difference in my behavior and took a moment to speak to me about it. I still kept aware of my surroundings; I just wasn’t constantly on edge the whole time we were together. The one advantage about having a Nephandi as my enemy is that he had to hide his Magick just as I had to. Her parents drove out of town the second week in September and Sindee returned to work.


The first time I was alone for the whole day I went out to the construction site on the house. They were making excellent progress on the building having completed the basement and the framing of all three buildings. The house would be completed relatively quickly if they kept up their pace and I would be able to get in and start building the wards around it as a Sanctum. I got back to work on my investments to ensure that my clients and my own finances stayed in good order so I could worry about my new unknown enemy.


I knew from the time of my awakening that my life would never be simple again, however the events of recent months have brought me to the understanding of how complicated it would be. Only 3 months had passed since my arrival in Las Vegas and I’ve almost died 3 times as well. I knew that something could easily happen to me with what was coming. I could have run, taken Sindee with me and start a new life somewhere else that would be safer for both of us. While I could have done that, I wasn’t going to. I was needed here to fight in the ascension war, to stop what was coming this way. I could have left the fight to someone else, but that wasn’t who I am. The only way to protect Sindee and ensure no one ever came after her was to stop them from being able to do so. I’m not the heroic type then again I wasn’t being a hero. I was choosing to defend my home, my family; the result that I would be protecting the city and the world simply was a side effect of doing what I needed to do. I made a decision that could be the end of me so I had a few calls to make. I started with my lawyer, as an awakened individual he would be able to handle the instructions without any issues. I decided it was time to make out a will.


The legal matters were handled quickly with little fuss so that I could conclude the rest of my business for the day. The first order of business was to create a minor talisman warding against electricity. While I have only faced him once, the Nephandi was very quick to use the electricity as a combat spell making me confident in taking the time to ward against it. What I was making really wasn’t a true talisman. I was making an imbued item or charm that was limited in the spells used on it and the magick stored within; it still needs to be activated by any Mage who wore it. A talisman when created is imbued with its own power and abilities including a connection to the plane of Magick. Talismans can be used until their stored power is depleted and can be recharged over time while the charms can only be used until depleted and new spells must be cast to create them again. The final difference between a charm and a talisman is that anyone can use a talisman if they learn what it is including Mages, Vampires and Mortals alike. In order to make the Warding charm I did some research online and found out that the best conductor for electricity was silver which I would use to draw the power in, and then I found a Discover Magazine article about a super-insulator that could be used to store the power drawn into it. I gathered the materials I needed to make the charm and then I just needed to decide on the way I wanted it to work and which spells I would use. I could have made the charm from anything as it doesn’t usually matter with Magick at your disposal. I chose to use specific materials because it gave me an advantage in granting me more options with the material effects. What I had in mind was not just a ward against electricity but a capacitor that would store the energy and allow me to tap into it for my own spells. Another clue about the nature of Magick is that one form of energy can be changed into a different one. I used Forces and Matter to shape and craft the materials increasing conductivity and capacity for storage then applied Prime to change the electricity into quintessence or primal energy within the charm itself. The reason I did it this way was to allow the charm to last longer by feeding off the primal energy stored within. This isn’t a spell I tried before but it should work the way I planned; either way I’d find out the next time I fought with someone using electricity. I’d decided to make two of them which took up the rest of the day while Sindee was working. I made them both into watch bands to replace the ones currently on Sindee’s and my own watches.


I made a nice dinner for Sindee and we spent the night curled up together on the couch watching a few old movies we liked. I needed to accelerate her training as soon as the house was complete if she was going to be able to protect herself when I’m not around and I wanted her to get as much rest as she could before we started in earnest. We did work on little things like more sensory Magick to ensure she had a grasp of what things were before I taught her to start changing what and how they worked. The more she leaned about the nature of anything the easier it is to understand how to change them.


I had a lot to do in the next 6 weeks, training Sindee in all the sensory Magick while waiting for the house to be finished. We went to the construction site together daily because I wanted to check the progress and in the evening make some changes internally where the walls had been put into place. Since the changes couldn’t be seen or detected without opening the walls up so the effects were coincidental and therefore no backlash involved. I had decided that I was going to make this location both as secure and protected as I could as I was going to attempt the creation of a Node. A Node is a place where the tapestry of the Tellurian becomes knotted, becoming places of power for Mages and other beings. Nodes form naturally in the world, and I was going to try and create one. Nodes are one form of power the Vampires have no use for beyond denying them to their enemies. They are however unable to detect them for themselves so they can be kept secret from the kindred. Creating a Node is not a task that should be undertaken lightly. My choosing to do so was for multiple reasons that I felt make it worth the risks involved in the creation and defense of it. First and foremost the vision of a fight with a Nephandi gave me the idea to bring together a group to defend the city and the tellurian. A Node is an excellent place to form a chantry, a school for the awakened to learn and work to improve their powers. Were-creatures also use Nodes though as I understand it they have a different name for them. They seem to be a place where the Spirits they get their gifts from gather. I hoped to work with some of them in order to protect the place from all of the possible enemies we could face in protecting the city by sharing the node with them. If this worked and a Node forms I may not be around to know. I mentioned before that there were worse things for mages to suffer other than death. I’ve mentioned a couple and will explain more as they come but the one that had me worried the most was because what I was attempting was not a simple alteration of something within reality. What I was going to attempt was to alter the fabric of the Tellurian itself and that could put me into a Quiet.


A Quiet is one of the worst possible things a Mage can suffer, being turned into a Vampire and having your Avatar destroyed in a better fate. A Quiet is a deep state of psychosis in which the Mages reality is the only thing to exist anywhere. No contact with anyone or anything. A personal madness created by the Mages own mind that has destroyed more Mages than those that came out of it stronger on the other side. A quiet can cause a Mage to become what is called a Marauder. Marauders are the most dangerous and unpredictable beings that exist.