Awakening - The Last Science #1

Chapter 2 - Rachel DuValle - IV

  They'd only just discovered magic maybe six months prior in February, and Rachel felt more than ready to take things up a notch. As far as Rachel knew, herself along with Mason, Rika, Ryan and a few others, were the first in history to ever cast any sort of spell or ritual besides the Three Gods. She'd spent a few weekends delving into every history book she could get her hands on dealing with the occult or spellcasting, and none of them seemed connected to what they'd discovered, nor did the Gods offer up any suggestions about where magic had come from (though Rachel secretly suspected they knew). Nor did the Internet, as she spent yet another weekend searching every website, every obscure forum, every social network she could find her way into for similar experiences to theirs.

  Magic was real, and had apparently popped into existence only a year ago, in a small college town in the middle of the forest in Washington, and no one knew about it.

  They'd taken to it voraciously and experimented with it. Everyone in their original group was eager to try out new ideas, come up with new and exciting variations on the simple spells and rituals they'd already learned. So it was that Rachel DuValle was possibly the first ever to attempt a ritual on her own mind, on a windy afternoon in September. It was dangerous and unprecedented, something she certainly might not have walked away from.

  Rachel had shuttered herself in her bedroom, the door locked and wedged shut, with towels and blankets pressed against the edges of the frame. The curtains to her bedroom window, overlooking the steep hill and thick forest behind the apartment complex, were drawn tightly closed, and a second pair of heavy blackout curtains were carefully wrapped around those, with a layer of duct tape holding them against the wall to shut out every tiny piece of light. Her bed was pushed into the corner of the room, leaving a wide space devoid of anything and everything she could remove.

  There was still a layer of carpet, of course, but she could only do so much to remove potentially influencing objects before she started making permanent changes and breaking her lease. Rachel still needed a roof above her head—at least for the moment.

  Before plunging her room into total darkness, she'd laid out chalk in a diagram described in the page, grinding it into powder and sprinkling it in the circles and patterns she'd seen in her mind. At eight different points around the circle, she placed a tiny amethyst crystal, set in a small tealight holder to keep it standing and pointed upward. She'd spent hours carving them to perfect points that would sit neatly in the circle. Finally, to complete the simple design, she needed to place the object she was enhancing in the center of the circle. Which, in this case, was her own brain.

  Rachel pulled off her clothes nervously and set them neatly against the wall. She wasn't sure how much of an effect they might have on the ritual, and she wasn't about to find out. It was already clear to her that other objects crossing the line of chalk while the ritual was in progress could send the entire delicate process tumbling into something... undesirable. She wanted to be as careful as she could, given that she had nothing to help her. There were no guides to find on the internet, no research papers or books she might consult. It occurred to Rachel she was a pioneer, exploring things no one had ever thought might be possible. It was exhilarating. She carefully removed her small earrings and set them atop her clothes. Fully nude—not a single errant object between her body and the environment—Rachel turned to face the chalk circle, finally closing the door and plunging the room into total darkness.

  Gingerly, excitedly, Rachel stepped into the circle. She'd expected something more dramatic to occur, but nothing happened. All she felt was the shivers running up her legs and her spine, a perfectly normal reaction to the cold air hanging around her skin and the abject fear slowly seeping into her bones. Was she about to do something she would regret for the rest of her life?