Category: vampires and mages

Doppelganged

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You open the door to the ancient cellar, the soft creak of aged wood drawing its eyes up towards you, a pair of uncanny lanterns glowing with nonexistent moonlight. The spells were still secure, it was right where you left it. Beyond it, the Door looms on the far side of the room, shut tight.

It rises with a dripping slithering sloshing, assembling itself into the shape of a young woman, the form it usually takes with you. As a creature of the Unreal, it has no definite form, it just uses the one it thinks is most likely to get under your skin. It won’t of course, and it’s long since abandoned the pretense that such confabulation would work on you, but still we all have our little rituals.

Its smile is nothing but teeth as you pace the perimeter of the Liminal Bridge, observing it from all angles. Yes, this one will do nicely today. “Is it time to release me?” It asks, putting on an innocent singsong affect, “Have you come to your senses yet, too-clever-for-your-own-good Mage?”

You chuckle and set the containment vessel on the floor before it, “We’re going on a little trip.” Its smile grows only wider and more malicious, warping the shape of the face it wears far beyond what should be possible with flesh. When you snap your fingers the chains binding it to the Liminal Bridge release and it’s sucked into the artifact. The containment vessel wobbles for a moment, then chimes softly to indicate the seals are locked in place. Smile, this next part should be fun.

The Dollhouse is perched on the ridge above town like a crow warming itself on the wires. The ugly Victorian mansion slumps over the top of the hill and seems be holding itself up with nothing but magic and willpower, which is probably the case. Witches clearly need to dollify more structural engineers. The Witch who owns the Dollhouse in question is young for her kind, full of passion and malice. Normally witches know better than to make Dolls out of Mages, but this Witch thought she’d be clever and make an extra powerful doll out of one of your apprentices. She needs to be given an extra powerful lesson about why even a novice Mage is not a viable target for her predations. There are lines even Witches must know better than to cross.

Your robes whip dramatically behind you in the wind as you crunch your way up the gravel footpath, pulling the creature you’ve disguised as a Doll along with you. The witch opens the door before you can knock. Didn’t even send a doll to do it, she knows she’s in trouble. The girl before you frowns, looking from you to the doll standing silently behind you. You can sense the magical tension in her, she expects a fight. If it came to a duel she would have a decent chance of winning, but it won’t come to that, Mages don’t fight fair.

“You know why I’m here, Witch.” You tell her sternly, “You’ve violated the treaty. This is your last chance to return the Mage you dollified. If you don’t, the Compact will be forced to take more extreme actions. You owe it to your sisters to not turn this into a major incident.”

She scoffs and crosses her arms, clearly too full of herself and drunk on her own power to see reason. She was already summoning her dolls behind her, anticipating the coming battle. So much for the easy way. You shake your head in disappointment.

“I don’t give away Dolls for free, it doesn’t matter if it was a Mage or a Witch or a president, they’re my dolls now,” She tells you, a sly smile creeping onto her lips, “If you really want her back, than what are you willing to trade?”

You avoid letting the smirk reach your face as you glance behind you, “Doll for a doll,” you tell her, “I made this one custom, it’s much more powerful than a normal doll, and even more powerful than a doll someone like you could make from one of my Mages. You should be able to sense that.”

Her eyes go past you for a moment and widen somewhat as she studies the doll still standing silently behind you. Witches are so predictable.

“It’s not often you have the opportunity to get your hands on a Mage’s doll.” you continue, “We don’t tend to make as many as y’all do.”

“And you will trade this one for the one I took from you?” she asks. You see the gears turning in her head and know you have her. She’ll try to pull some other trick, but you already know you have her.


“Along with a promise to not violate the treaty again in the future.” You say, reaching into the pocket of your robes and fishing out a half-crushed pack of smokes. She watches you carefully while you unbend a cigarette and light it with a cantrip.

You’re expecting her to try some sort of “if you can tell me which one is your doll it can be yours” type shit while the dollified mage is sitting in another room, and of course that wouldn’t fool you, but it never actually comes to that. Instead, the witch fumbles over herself agreeing with your terms, completely blinded by the potential she detects in your bait and handing over your apprentice doll without any trickery. You exchange mainspring keys and soon you’re heading back down the hill with your new doll. You might almost feel bad for the witch if you didn’t know how much work it was going to be to reverse the dollification process she performed. Ah well, consequences.

You’re almost back to the main road when the spells keeping the unreal monster contained in the doll you made fail. The Dollhouse sways and warps as a battle suddenly breaks out within, you can’t help but stop and admire your handiwork. Gradients of impossible color radiate into the clear air and cracks begin forming in the sky. The battle won’t last more than a few seconds.

Windows explode, trees fly off into the sky, the house itself seems to boil, new rooms erupt and vanish chaotically, chimneys blister and burst off sending bricks soaring into the air. The ground warps and twists, local reality collapsing as the Dollhouse folds itself in half and implodes with a sound like water being sucked down a drain.

The top of the ridge begins folding in half as the Unreal hungrily sucks up the wreckage of the structure, fractal tentacles blooming into the sky as your monster stretches out into Reality. You smile as all evidence of the witch’s existence is ripped from reality. Message sent.

You give your monster a few minutes of frolicking mayhem you think it earned, then activate another spell, sucking the creature back into its containment vessel and leaving the hilltop a barren crater. All in a day’s work.

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Mirrorburned

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Her opening strike knocks out of the timeline. Relativistic shrapnel drags you along a quantum shear plane and by the time you’ve reoriented you’re about to hit the Mirror at 8 stadia per second. Conceptual weapons are still manifesting, the only way out is through. You brace.

The moment of impact arrives like a rising chorus of cicadas as particle turns to wave and wave to particle. Integrity systems spew a million error codes, blurring back into the miasma of pain they’re supposed to replace as eternity resonates onto one long pure note.

Then you’re through, and the Mirror is falling away from you as you tumble into the Unreal amidst a shotgun blast of diverging counterfactuals. Vector confinement comes back online. Warding fields blossom out in fifteen dimensions as your tactical systems finish manifesting. You yank open the command authority socket, control surfaces magnesium flaring with grip friction. Conceptual weapons are up, datalink reestablished, time to waltz.

Your awareness is a rapidly ballooning sphere already extending up and out past the crater you left in the skin of the Mirror, that’s how you know she’s preparing a followup shot. You twist imperceptibly and hit the superstring feet first.

Subatomic fire leaves afterimages as your momentum drags the collapsing ring singularity behind you. Energies twist, coil, you make a cut. A supernova bullcrack slams you back towards the Mirror. She’s already firing again, same move twice in a row, they never learn, do they?

The ribbon of boiling quantum foam spirals upwards in a corkscrew as you roll out of the way of the incoming strike. Her attack is as precisely timed as you knew it would be and the string you accelerated curls around it perfectly. You’re already starting your deceleration burn. You smirk.

And then there’s light.

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Nightwaltzed

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// mages, eldritch horror, The Mirror, The Door, Unreality

The knife sinks into the mirror’s surface with only a bit of resistance. Ink black fluid drips and runs out of the wound in the world as you widen the hole, carving your way into the Unreal and gouging out a hunk of Purpose from the flesh of Unreality.

Your damp fingers close around something hard and you yank it free, setting aside the shard of Divinity in a separate pile. It glows and makes your hair stand on end to touch. It’ll fetch a good price.

The Unreal shifts and writhes beyond the mirror, materials flowing and coalescing. You quicken your pace, knowing you won’t have long before the immune response begins. You’ve made a tidy sum, no need to be greedy, that’s how plenty a Mage have met their untimely fates.

You pull your hands free as you feel the place beyond the mirror turn to fluid and then gas, opening up into a darkened corridor. This is the tricky part, you want to be the one doing the harvesting, but the Unreal will be just as quick to harvest you, if you let it.

Something is coming, movement flickers at the end of the hallway as you quickly cast the spell to reseal the mirror. You pull into a defensive stance in case you fail to seal it in time, not that it would do you much good.

An impossible morass of limbs and mouths begins climbing up the shaft towards you, dragging itself along the corridor towards the freedom of the mirror. You could down the seconds until the spell completes as it approaches.

A twisted limb reaches out for the threshold and bounces off the surface of the mirror as the spell is cast. The thing crowds up against the glass, pounding and shrieking, but the window is already drawing shut. That was a bit closer than you’d prefer.

You smile and offer the monstrosity an informal salute as the mirror frosts over and the creature mutates into your reflection, its howling maw morphing into your knowing grin. Your reflection winks, and the mirror is still. All in a day’s work.

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Running Colors

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// transformations, implications

It’s been three hours since the changes began. You can still feel your insides shifting, rearranging, your guts sloshing and the world sloshing with them. Your vision kaleidoscopes drunkenly as you lurch through the driving snow. Why did you go home with her? What did she do to you?

The cold stopped bothering you a while ago. If you weren’t such a mess, you might have noticed that, or noticed that your breath isn’t producing condensation, or that despite your anxiety your heart seems to barely beat at all now. You haven’t, however, actually noticed any of it.

What you have noticed is the way your teeth feel different and wrong, the way your nails have started stabbing through the fingertips of your gloves, and of course, the way your insides are churning and roiling uncomfortably. That last one is taking most of your focus.

Do you even know where you are? It’s the middle of the night in the middle of a blizzard and you decided to walk home from the house of that woman you met at the bar? Like, what the fuck is actually wrong with you? What are you even doing out here?

You stop, eyes darting around the desolate wonderland. Snow is falling heavily, thick fat flakes blanketing everything in a muffling silence, you can only see a few hundred feet, where the light of a 7-11 radiates salvation into the darkness. Yeah you have no idea where you are.

You notice the pressure first, as you hover in the threshold awkwardly, snow and wind blowing into the store. You can’t quite bring yourself to go inside. The tired looking kid behind the counter gives you an exasperated look and beacons you in, the pressure vanishing at once.

You definitely look like hell frozen over. Your makeup is smeared, you’re covered in at least an inch of snow which begins melting and dripping brown fluid from your hair as soon as you enter the building, your clothes are…let’s not think about that. Just play it cool.

The only things you can find that seem remotely appetizing are beef jerky and mixer for bloody marys. Whatever, estrogen makes you crave weird shit all the time. You toss the items on the counter and mumble out a request for a pack of cigarettes. That’s where the trouble starts.

He asks to see your ID, looks at it, at you, and asks you to take your mask off. 

“I really don’t think I should do that,” you say, chewing your lip, feeling like your mouth is full of marbles whenever you speak. He frowns and tosses the ID back to you, “Why? You got COVID?”

“I um…” You stammer for words, “Maybe?” 

He frowns at you, “Look lady, I work here every night and I see a lot of shit, you’re gonna have to actually show me your face, I ain’t afraid of some virus but I’m not losin’ this job cause some bitch was actually a fed.”

You could have warned him at least, but you just shrug and take the mask off. He opens and closes his mouth and hands you the cigarettes wordlessly. You would purse your lips, but your teeth have enlarged too much to be able to so instead you just make a goofy face.

It’s at this point that the smell of the store and of the clerk and the everything else hits you, formerly obscured behind the mask, and you feel your eyes light up as a new hunger yawns open inside you. You’re staring dumbly at the cashier now, and all you see is food.

He must have sensed something in your posture, because he says in a voice that clearly indicates he knows he’s food, that you should probably go home now. You strongly consider leaping over the counter and tearing his throat out, but instead you bolt into the dark and cold.

The jerky tastes awful and makes your stomach clench uncomfortably but you force yourself to eat it anyway, very carefully chewing each piece as you trudge along, unsure how your mouth works now. You’re not really paying attention to anything, but there’s not much to see.

The streets are quiet and barren, snow drifts and blows. The shops are all closed and dark, their windows reflecting the storm outside. You pause in front of one of them, and that’s when you notice that you’re melting. It stops you in your tracks.

The image of you reflected in the glass is oozing and dripping away. The color is falling out of your hair in dark drops, the color from your eyes is running down your face, your tan is washing off. More alarmingly, beyond that, it’s as if your very image is melting into nothingness.

The top of your now bone white hair is gone and your head is slowly disappearing. You pat your scalp in near panic but everything feels okay. You take off running at that point, abandoning your snacks in the snowdrift. The world blurs past you, when did you get so fast?

When you finally stumble in the door the changes are almost completed. Your hair and skin have lost all pigment, your nails are longer and sharper, even if she wasn’t melting, the red-eyed girl in the mirror looks nothing like you used to. Oh but she’s also melting.

With fascination and horror, you watch your reflection ooze out of the frame like a wax figure left in the sun. You don’t even want to think about what the actual sun would do to you. The process is slow, distinctiveness running off you in layers. It doesn’t hurt at least.

After about an hour it ceases to be interesting and you instinctively go around the house carefully blocking out any place sunlight could leak in. You don’t really know why you’re doing this. Yes you do, you just don’t want to admit it, denial is easier. For now anyway.

It takes a while, most of the rest of the night, to fortify yourself against the coming daybreak. It’s something that feels at once both silly and extremely important. It takes enough of your attention to not even bother changing out of the torn and bloody clothes you have on.

So, when you finally glance in the mirror again to see if your reflection has finished vanishing, you’re met by the sight of something wholly unexpected. Perfectly nestled into the spot formerly blocked by your reflection, dripping with fear and hope and freedom, there is a Door.

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