Strange Aeons [Book 1]

8. Scry Me a River [part III]

«Oh God, here, now you've jinxed it!» Chico rolled his eyes. Banshee glared at him. Vopros raised a hand to shut them both up. He didn't have to say anything else. And they began.

Rituals included a lot of preparations. Strange ingredients, symbols to be written on the ground, precise gestures to be done in a precise order and words to be spoken. Unlike light spells, who were basically left to the personal touch of every mage, rituals were on point, and intensively specific.

It took them a couple of hours. Chico went to the Headquarters' Division 3 to retrieve rare ingredients for the ritual, luckily covered by their Order membership, while Vopros and Banshee laid down the physical part of the ritual, moving out of the way all of the furniture of the living room, and painting the magical, ancient runes with colored sharpies and 2-for-a-dollar candles from the nearby supermarket.

Right in the middle of the ritual circle they had formed, with the rare ingredients in small IKEA bowls in the expected places, Vopros put a bigger bowl, and filled it with the Lenin Vodka he kept for special occasions.

"The Mirror of Vopros", as Banshee and Chico called it with an unexpectedly good classic fantasy reference, was almost more transparent than water. Without the pungent smell of strong alcohol and the little ripples over the surface if someone bumped it, everyone would have thought it was simply an empty bowl.

Vopros took Banshee's hand in his.

«You show me path. I bring you through path. We bring the path in the bowl. Da?»

Banshee nodded at that absolutely incomplete explanation, and then they both suspended a hand over the bowl, closing their eyes. Only the slight trembling of Vopros's bushy mustaches indicated that his lips were lightly moving in a repetitive, self-hypnotic mantra of secret Russian words, mirrored by Banshee who was using her own native language.

She saw the forest of fluxes that formed the pattern you could see with Know, much more entangled and twisted than anyone else. The fluxes that were, that is, and that will be, all in one writhing mass in front of the eyes of her mind. She tried to focus on River. His voice, his face, his demeanor. They just needed a glimpse of the right fluxes, and everything would have been all right. If she could pinpoint Vopros on the right path, he would have taken it from there.

Strangely enough, she couldn't feel him, at all. Usually, when two mages intertwined in a ritual they were aware of each other's presence. Banshee couldn't see Vopros in any vicinity of the fluxes.

She blamed it all on her own incompetence, and focused more, painting a sort of dissonant road in the hundreds of thousands of fluxes going around the air. It was just like undoing a complicated tapestry, tugging at each and every thread trying to understand where it led before choosing to follow it. Proceeding through trial and error wasn't really the best option, but at a certain point it became the only one possible.

Then, little and slow, small vortex, going faster and faster, started forming in the center of the bowl, until it suddenly stopped completely. The vodka moved around in the bowl, and then began to settle. And as it settled, first out of focus then more and more clear, an image appeared on the surface of the liquid.

The clear image of River formed. He was apparently in an apartment, very different from his Headquarters' base. The image was stable and, finally, Vopros and Banshee didn't have to hold hands and stand still anymore.

«Aw me God! Me can't feel me legs!» whined Banshee, starting to stretch, her muscles tangled from the rigidity of her position. «I can't believe it worked!»

Vopros went straight to the freezer to drown a half bottle of vodka. His throat and mouth were so dry he felt like he was swallowing rubble.

«Usually is more difficult.»