The Damsel Blade Pt. 02

Gwen woke up stuffy and uncomfortably warm, the cause for this was the muscular radiator of Balin. Still sleeping, his huge mass deformed the bed, dragging her into the centre. A mental inventory was essential, she still couldn't believe what was happening, even if the evidence spoke for itself.

Sliding out of bed and he barely stirred. After the 'not sex' he'd fallen asleep rapidly. She'd have been insulted but her body wasn't far behind him,, she'd quickly showered, the evidence of his lust for had got everywhere. After that she'd laid down with him just to help him sleep, and now it was four hours later.

She got up and tried to navigate her ancient bedroom, trying to ignore the two realities, that this is the bed she always slept in and one that hadn't existed for decades. The dissonance was intense, she had foggy memories of this place at best, but also knew it intimately.

The room itself was also back to its old form, tired wallpaper and high ceilings from which hung a particularly gothic chandelier of antlers strung with lights, a little art of her own, a spell that had fused a load of cheap antlers into a single sphere of horns. It was actually better than she remembered.

Her bedside table was strewn with bits, she blushed as she quickly slung the vibrator and lube that marked last night's loneliness. It was an odd sensation, feeling embarrassed about something that she was normally so positive about. The nature of True Gwen's battling Classic Gwen's habits was infuriating.

Tidying, she did find her Black Berry which she swiped. She tried to remember the rest of her day and checked her wardrobe, her clothes were there, there was even an outfit she'd picked out but had never worn given how this day had gone the first time. She was still naked, but the prepared clothes felt off.

She'd been experimenting with who she was, or at least that's what she'd believed at the time, right now looking at the black clothing, which ranged from stringy to sheer, all she could do was grimace. It was like she believed if she brought enough of this kind of stuff she'd start feeling normal in it. It also was far from the style she'd cultivated over the last few decades, being excessively goth.

She'd ditched the goth thing along time ago, it had seemed on brand considering she was a Lilith, often thought of as a sex demon. Despite the fact hell was a lie, as was heaven, it had good branding. As time had gone on and persecution had begun as people like her cursed with certain touches of heritage associated with sin, well continuing that narrative felt like she was betraying those who just wanted a normal life.

She did pick up the bra, even if it was a lacy monstrosity, it was actually supportive which was a blessing. Also there was a pair of long socks, ideal to keep her legs warm, the marble downstairs could get chilly..

Clipping the bra on she glanced down and sighed. The clothes were only part of the problem which extended to the piercings and the tattoos. That though was a more perverse need, like if she decorated herself with enough nicknacks and gewgaws the general shininess would have some bird take an interest and drag her back to its nest to investigate closer.

She glanced at the slumbering giant in the bed. Still even in her own head she tried to pretend there hadn't been a specific person she'd been hoping would one day spot a glint, a shadow under clothing and ask to see. And now that he finally took a look Classic Gwen was cartwheeling around the room while the True Gwen sat in the corner and smoked a celebratory joint, neither certain it was real.

As she moved to find some plainer, comfier gear she tripped over his training bag. It was open and she could see a hoodie peeking out, she pulled it on, noticing that there was a little birthday gift hiding at the bottom. She resisted temptation and focused on getting out of the room. The last thing to do was step over the Damsel Blade.

The awful thing lay on the floor, the dark iron drank in what little light her phone screen gave off. She remembered the time she'd been stabbed by it and took an extra wide step. The sword was a magical black hole, an endless pit that practically no Arcane power could escape. She resisted the urge to move it out of her way, knowing well how it might take that damn thing was catty!

In the hall, it was just as it had been when Bellamy was alive. Redesigning almost felt as if she was scrambling his memory. Erasing him from the Sanctuary that he'd protected with such dedication. It would also be scrubbing away her childhood, the places she'd played, the furniture she'd bumped into, the floor boards she'd learnt to avoid when walking late at night. It was a lot.

Time to get things sorted, "Thera." she called.

From round a corner Thera appeared. Thera was the soul of the Sanctuary, her home. Currently a projection of a Gargoyle, while mostly looking like any other human her skin was white and polished, the other notable difference was the tail, it was far sturdier than Gwen's whip like appendage, hers was about as wide as a palm where it met her back and came to a blunt tip over it's three foot of length.

She was about a head taller than Gwen, with straight black hair, made of unbelievably flexible strands of marble, gathered in a serious bun. This combined with her frankly amazing rack and chosen fashion style of a serious figure hugging pencil skirt, shirt and blazer, made her look like a librarian who was conservative in the stacks but liberal in the bedroom. Despite looking fully formed Gwen knew that right now she was just a rough outline of a person, not the fully fledged individual she was to become.

"Hello Gwen, this is a turn up for the books, you have achieved your objective." The voice sounded friendly enough but the mismatch of colloquialism and blunt robotocisms was almost painful. An element of her past she'd almost forgotten in favour of remembering the whole amazing person Thera became.

"Thera it's really good to see you. What seems different about me also was the house affected by any magic last night?" She had to fight down the urge to reach out and pull her into a kiss. Thera had been her partner in all things, but right now. Right now she was practically a child, even if she didn't look like one.

"You seem taller, more gobby." the voice was monotone, but occasional words gave glimpses into the person it was to become. Gwen smiled, gobby had always been a compliment. "As for incursions, none that I am aware of but I'm still not working at full capacity. It is possible that things might slip past me."

"Could you recheck the security and wards around the house, I don't want anything in or out today, I'm worried about any kind of signals, magic, radio, smoke! Nothing to disturb my day" Gwen descended down to the Sanctuary proper, leaving behind the decoy house and sinking to the space below.

"It is done." Thera walked after her, her path occasionally taking her through walls or pieces of furniture. She'd forgotten about this completely, right now despite looking rock solid the Gargoyle was totally intangible. At least she hadn't discovered that through a kiss.

"Great, can you let me know if he leaves the room, and now can you ready the scrying room for me" She was in the part of the Sanctuary that was outside the real world, a realm between the Mundane and Arcane. The rooms and designs changed, the Sanctuary had sampled the great civilizations of ancient earth, Roman, Greek, Mesopotamian, Chinese, Egyptian and others she couldn't recognize were all found here jumbled atop each other.

The different style vied for position, sometimes rearranging the very room she was in, they all made a lot of use of stone though. Glad of the socks, her focus was on the cold flagstones in front of her, trying to remember the path and ignore how the walls were breathing.

"I'll let you know if your beau wakes. Though, I did not believe you had found the scrying room yet" Thera was just an observer, but the question felt like a slap.

She cursed, how easy it was to reveal that she had future knowledge, it was part of the reason she wanted to block out everyone. She looked at Thera. The Sanctuary had picked up enough from her and the others who owned to create a person, a seed of a soul but until the Arcane rose in power she'd still be only part way there. She was utterly trustworthy and loyal, and now as Gwen reeled from the events of the morning and days before even a rough chatbot version of Thera was better than nothing.

"Look, just follow me to the scrying room, I'll explain."

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She sat in a greasy spoon, it followed the tried and tested formula of many others in the city, plastic bucket seats anchored to cheap tables, large portions of greasy food, and lashings of toast. She used to like meeting in places like this. It was neutral territory, and if you kick off in a spoon everyone tends to want as little do with you as possible.

Despite the quiet music background of radio 2 and the calm clink of cutlery on plates she couldn't settle. Her limited pool of luck was drying up, in likelihood mopped up by Frank who used a constant supply just to get through a day. She had some escape from him though, he was in toilets, defiling it in some manner. He was grim.

She pondered the morning. It was 9 at the moment, when the kid hadn't run past by 7 they'd finally given up. She'd ditched Frank who'd been sent to check the training hall and she'd then gone on to the target's house.

Their was a willow near the house, bare in the winter but even it's thin whip like branches were enough to shield her from nosy neighbours in the winter gloom. She scaled it with ease, fingers gripping the wood, the edges blurring as the she let out just a shred of the beast beneath.

Up top she'd stared into the window, till her eyes, designed by evolution for staring into the dark, adjusted and showed the empty room. She could smell his housemate, even through the weed and maybe a little incense, there was an undertone of magic to him like the smell of blossom and earth. It smelt good, far better than anything else in the rundown little house, but it also had a power to it that tugged at the beast, made it want to go catch salmon or piss on a tree. She avoided the pothead, he was powerful.

A sniff outside the target's digs after she got out of the tree had confirmed he had come home, but a stronger scent said maybe he'd left some hours after. Unfortunately the house was near a tube station and by the time she'd been able to follow the scent their untold masses had destroyed the trail.

She'd then done a quick circuit, the bar was shuttered as normal, the uni library was one option, but she stood outside for a while sorting through scents while trying to ignore the smoke wafting from the tobacco industries fresh converts who huddled outside, desperately trying to convince themselves this counted as 'only smoking socially'. It took a while but she felt confident enough in his nose to say the target hadn't been here either.

The target was a man of routine. His morning started at 5-6 running down to the training hall, after that study, after that he saw friends or just did more training,he frequented a pub sometimes when he relaxed but that was closed till midday. The only other option was the girls, neither of which struck her as being early birds and he wasn't sleeping with them either, despite them both buttering him up so much it was a wonder he hadn't been stabbed clean through by sexual tension.

She didn't like this job at all. She'd been lured into it which was a first, part of her personal circumstance was that she didn't really have a reputation. People really didn't come find her, she found them. No one knew her name, and no one gave her one that stuck. She didn't have one. That was a power in itself. Frank obviously talked with her, but if anyone asked him about person they'd been talking to his descriptions could be anything, even jumbling gender and skin tone. The waitress who had just dropped off two teas would most likely fill her in with an average member of clientele.

Frank seemed to have decided she was just another crook. He also seemed to have decided she was a man, or was so deeply misogynistic as to think any normal woman would tolerate how he spoke of the fairer sex. Here he returned. He reeked. Thankfully the overpowering smell of grease and fried food neutralised the worst of it.

"See I'm telling you, we're wasting our time. He's gotta be at one of the girls' places getting his rocks off. See I wouldn't mind the goth, she's got a nice rack, perky and that arse could crack nuts, in two ways I bet. Probably crazy stuff in the sack. But Barbie, she looks like she's got some experience, and I don't mind the flat chest as she has plenty of junk in the trunk." Frank spoke loud enough that the waitress gave him a death stare.

"Shut up about the girls, I don't give a fuck about what you think they look like. Don't you think this is weird, our target's been pretty reliable."

"Nah he just got lucky. In more ways than one. See with that angry fucker gone he's probably stretching his legs. Told you we should've done it that last evening, but did you listen?" Frank applied liberal lashings of brown sauce to his steaming plate, ignoring the side order of scowl the waitress had delivered it with. He then tucked in.

She tried to ignore the sound of greedy consumption and focus on her other problem. Frank was always lucky, she wasn't even sure if he knew he was touched by the Arcane. He was a human equivalent of weighted dice. He should be rolling in money but his innovative incompetence meant his luck could just about ensure his continued existence.

The luck didn't seem to extend to his job. The one day the target was due a surprise and he'd suddenly vanished. Coincidences didn't happen, not like that. Something was off and this client while a bastard had given very specific instructions, with contingencies. This kind of feeling being one of them.

She'd known the client was powerful, probably a mage of some sort, you'd have to have some serious power to hold a conversation with her properly, or at least remember the last one you had. Also the reward he'd offered, it was too much for anyone who didn't have the kind of magic from the old days. Now though she was nervous, clients shouldn't know how the plans worked, they also shouldn't be predicting plans going wrong. It's bad news to get involved in the business of those with one eye in the future, they tend to know just how far they can push you, and just how easy it would be to bury you.

Over the sound of Radio 2 spilling out from the kitchen the street noise increased as the door opened, and the client arrived, grey suit, smiling face and dead eyes. Time to break the news.

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The scrying room was a perfect example of Sanctuary's magic. It was a space that couldn't possibly fit in the house, and even if it could fit it would be utterly out of place. The classical greek columns, the 10m across silver mirror, the historically anachronous stained glass that dotted every wall and caught a sun far different to the murky grey light of sunrise in winter was perhaps the best indication.

The Sanctuary was an artefact from the original height of magic, the top two floors were a disguise that had managed to keep up with the times shaped by the minds of the previous owners, under that veneer of normality was a warren of rooms from the golden age of magic.

These spaces all floated around there wasn't a floor plan or map, if you got lost you'd always end up back up stairs or in the library, which was filled with books written in enough dead languages to fill a graveyard.

Even Classic Gwen could control the house reasonably well, and she had even started to explore reshuffling the rooms upstairs. The pokey two up two down was cramping her style. Bellamy had raised her to take on the mantle of guardianship of the house, not knowing that magic was about to come back with a vengeance. He'd taught her magic and taught her about the warring factions of Practitioners who sort to control it.

As she'd explained she'd cast a number of spells, surprised by how tough they were to cast. Her body unused to the easy use of magic. Each one was trying to seek out explanations for how she was back in the past.

All came back empty, leaving two options. One there was some proper old magic that had just brought them back, or that whoever had brought them back, was using powerful magic to hide and was perhaps hiding others with the same foresight. It wasn't enough for her and she had a shadow at the back of her mind a thought from Classic Gwen, something she had to explore.

There was one way to explore her past, Classic Gwen's past and perhaps even her memories of the future. But now she wove a spell to satisfy that itch. As she did she briefed Thera, the image of her did it's best to follow the discussion but like a simple AI, it's responses were limited, and it was mostly echoing back what she said in a slightly different tone of voice.

Still it had been helpful, speaking about the insanity made it feel less insane. She didn't touch on Balin, apart from to use him as context, speaking about their relationship didn't feel right.

She'd just finished explaining about the apocalypse, how the rising tide of magic, the way it had morphed itself into a parody of science and how the work of a few had fueled the shadows of other realms to consume their reality.

"So you have a solution to why you can speak with me and the other owners could not, but it seems to lead to a poor end."

"Yes, though hopefully avoidable with our new knowledge. First time round we didn't know about the Oracle's being rotten to the top, we assumed it was a cult or sect." She said, cursing the wasted time hunting little groups all of which were just fragments of the whole. "And this time with any luck we can rob them of some key assets."

"What're you intending to do? The spell you are casting is not in my repertoire. What does it do"

"No, I learnt it somewhere else. It's a very complex but not very demanding spell, takes nothing to cast but a lifetime of experience." She remembered how she'd raided the college library as it burnt. Using the flames and chaos as cover to steal the books away and add them to the Sanctuaries collection. They'd always smelt of smoke after that when she'd read from them.

"What is the purpose of this spell? I can add it the library for you." Thera asked her question again, not annoyed just waiting for input.

"So my memory is foggy, I can remember Friday, yesterday in this time, as if it was only that, but its also a foggy haze viewed through 30 years.'' If her memories were a scrap book this page would be worn and fragmented, damaged by constant examination. "They don't quite line up. And I feel like there's something important I said, the spell will allow me to experience a memory."

"I am aware of references to such spells. What is it you hope to remember."

"I think I made a wish" she finished the spell. It sent a twinge through her, this body didn't seem to enjoy handling the complex magic. But steeling herself she stepped out onto the mirror, the reflection below shimmered and the reflection stood not in the greek stone but in her room, the magic took hold.

Gwen stalked around the bedroom, she couldn't decide whether to be terrified or excited. She laid the clothes out again, surely this was the killer combo, the combination of lingerie, leather and sheer fabric would provoke some comment, some blip of interest from him. She needed just a crack in which to thrust her crowbar of desire.

Fuck she was thinking like Lana, what'd Bellamy said, 'don't stoop to their level or they'll beat you with experience'. She took a breath and tried to remember what this was all about. She still had some weed from Scugs and her grow op in the green house was going well. It'd be ready to harvest soon.