Sunday's Alright for Casting
“Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit!” A panicked man whispered, ducking behind a half-wall. His name is Sunday Gardner, Sunny to his friends, and he had found himself way over his proverbial ginger head.
He clutched his quarry closer to his quivering chest, shaking out of nerves instead of breath, although the Kindred was thankful he did not sweat. Sunny was more than just a part of Tacoma’s sequestered vampiric society, he was a part of the arcane Tremere clan, and one of rather high renown.
If he had been a part of an official House, Camarilla or otherwise, he’d easily be one of the advisory Magisters, if not a Regent in charge of his own chantry. But instead he was Anarch in sect and personal temperament, going only his own path in life and magic alike.
That doesn’t mean he is a purely solitary island. He was sought after by, and spoke freely with, other Tremere within the city, as well as a trusted few outside of it. For a price, he even lends them his expertise, such as on this night.
The Rhododendrons, an organization specific to Tacoma, had picked up the trail of a lost grimoire, belonging to an old eccentric of the city's past who mysteriously vanished. Their group, still in its infancy, was spread thin, and so reached out to Sunny for his aid. He expected an easy job, juvenile for his arcane skills.
He was sorely mistaken.
Underneath the small house the eccentric claimed as his own there was a small sequestered set of rooms that made up a small library and study. Finding the Grimoire was easy enough, spells from decades past felt different than modern magic, but he wasn’t expecting to find the maddened form of the eccentric chasing after him.
He wasn’t a Kindred, merely an occultist who got too close, so Sunny didn’t know what he was up against. Turning off the lights to provide some cover and hiding were all he could do at the moment.
An animalistic groan filled the air, although the assailant could not be seen. He had already carved a slash into Sunny’s back, which made the panicked man thank his Kindred physiology once more as it blunted the tearing force that would’ve ripped the spine from a normal human.
“Oh yeah, I can go fetch a random book for you, I won’t ask any other questions or anything, why the fuck would I do that, it makes too much sense!” The man rhetorically chided. “Ain’t that just the way. I’ll work two cents an hour ma, i’ll do your homework cuz, I won’t say a word uncle, oh sure i’ll drink your blood creepy vampire bitch! Again and fucking again!” He palmed his own forehead with each point of emphasis.
Perhaps the raving was his way of coping, as once he was finished with his forehead strikes, he took a preformative, meditative breath and began to think. He didn’t have long, however, as the animalistic groan of the unseen assailant began to grow louder once more, and quickly.
Silently skulking from his position, a solution comes to him. “I got into this mess for you, let’s see if you can get me out.” Looking down at the Grimoire close to his chest, he gave it a quick intuitive feel. It didn’t have the tingle or bite of magic around it, but whatever formulas were inscribed within certainly did. Unwarded, but useful.
Hearing the growl stop as it reached a peak volume, he gave up on stealth and rolled forward, just barely missing a heavy slash through the air that carved through the hardwood floor. Since he was already low to the ground it didn’t take him long to stand back up and break for another corner of this small underground study, taking refuge in a small inset bookshelf, whose shelves had collapsed long ago.
Finally, he flipped through the grimoire, and with each rapid flip of the page, his eyebrows knitted closer and closer together until he almost sewed his brow ridge together.
“Wards, nothing but fucking wards!” He whisper-shouted as he bit down on the collar of his shirt. “How can it just be only wards!?” The vampiric art of Blood Sorcerery was a versatile one, but one that required preparation and planning. Neither of which he had time for, on top of not knowing the exact nature of the assailant.
He runs through his internal repertoire, more varied than the average modern Tremere, but finds himself wanting without any pre-prepared methods. The best he can do on his own is increase what he can perceive, and maybe reach deep and pull out something VERY destructive. While the latter would solve this problem, it would create who-knows-how-many others.
It irked him more than anything that something as simple as wards, a cornerstone in all manner of magic, vampiric or otherwise, eluded him to such a degree. He had found workarounds, allies, and even began to weave technomancy to fill in his gaps, but him creating wards with his own power? His own blood? They always ended in failure.
It was a problem as simple to pinpoint in the eternally young man as it was complex to deal with. He simply could never draw the line to keep others away. Favors, compromises, violations, sacrifices, insults, they were all weathered by him for a myriad of reasons. It ingrained an inherent weakness in his mind, his very soul, that left him defenseless.
“I mean shit, it’s why I'm here of all places, isn’t it? I couldn’t just cut out everyone I wanted to, so I ran, but when Fiore came knocking, I couldn’t tell him to shove his drum-circle ass utopia plan, and here I am.” He slumped in his sequestered bookshelf, and for a brief moment, resigned himself.
But then he notices the silence, that the groaning is gone along with his drive, and this time it did not come with an attack or a peak of volume. He warily reached a hand out, and a quiet snarl was heard, making him reel it back in once more.
“You’ve got a boundary set up.” He whispered to himself. “Must be the big open areas of the study, tucking away in this old bookshelf takes me outside it.” Then, an idea began to form.
Despite being alive since the 1920’s and a practitioner of ancient magic, Sunny was a digital designer by trade, a coder both for humans who needed top-notch knowledge, and Kindred who just didn’t want to ghoul someone for it. He also dabbled in all sorts of electronics throughout the years, and knew how to combine his areas of expertise to high efficiency.
Slowly and carefully flipping through the book from his safety point, the burgeoning idea began to form more and more as his eyes fell upon a certain page. It would require some modification, but no harder than tweaking a circuit board or editing a string of code.
With some internal resistance, he used his fangs to bite down on his wrist, creating a puncture wound that the slow, thick, vitae began to flow from in short succession. He then applied one of his personal favorites among the Tremere skills, the ability to telekinetically shape blood into certain patterns.
The trickle from his arterial wound came out slowly under the abilities sway, like a snake coaxed from its jar by a snake charmer. It had to be slow, to be careful, because otherwise it ran the risk of being detected by the malignant spirit, as far as Sunny could guess, that patrolled the halls.
From the wrist, it went up, curled over and through the web of the fingers, and the slithered down to the floor from the vantage point of the crumbled bookshelf. As it slithered in a straight path, and thinned out to create a node of power, no sound was made by the roaming spirit. This step would work, and now he just needed to hold out his attention and internal stores of Vitae, thankfully not too drained thus far.
It took more time and mental effort than he would’ve wanted, but after many careful minutes, the vampire flashed a cocky grin, and stood up from his hide-away. The searching groan started immediately.
Instead of waiting and seeing, he made a mad dash towards the main entryway of this subterranean study, a large and open landing after the initial staircase downwards. With his extrasensory abilities heightened, he was able to better see the ghostly outline of his assailant, as well as the claw slashes it launched towards him while he ran.
Of course he was still worried, those claws hurt like hell, and who knows what else he might do. But, worried or not, once he made it to the landing area, he quickly turned on his heel and put a bloody palm towards the spirit, open grimoire in the other hand.
“First, let’s see exactly what we’re dealing with!” With a close of the bloody hand, from the circuit-like lines on the floor, multiple rapid blades of blood arose like a spike on a line graph and rushed towards the spirit, slashing into it multiple times. Most of them did nothing, but then two slashes that passed left no cut, but buffeted it as if some physical blow did happen.
“Not quite a Wraith, not quite their Shadow. Something maddeningly in-between. Yeah, that sounds like hell alright.” Sunny said as information entered his mind. “But, i’m not letting myself be your fucking cat tower just cause I can sympathize. You’re being put on ice, mister.”
Before the spirit could recover from the blades buffeting, Sunny had already thrown himself into a string of guttural chanting in some vaguely Germanic language. The circuits of blood across the floors sparked to life and shone with a bright color, and before the spirit could even gather enough instinctive consciousness to try and flee, it was too late.
Ropes of blood came from the floor and wrapped itself around the spirit, creating a spherical cage of woven ropes, hooked to the floor and ceiling. But the “bars” of this cage were not bars at all, but instead sharpened edges, just wider on the outside.
“Gilded Canary Cage. A ward that becomes a cage of miniature wards. Trying to get through it is like playing the worlds hardest game of Operation, and even if you do leak out, the backlash of breaking just one ward can be severe, imagine how it’d be for all of the miniature wards wrapped around each rope.” Sunny cockily explained as he wiped the blood off his palm.
“Of course, I ain’t no good at wards. But, changing the forming shell of the ropes from miniature wards to miniature blades, small edges to cut yourself on wrapped in the loose bit of a ward I can create? That I can do.”
The spirit shrieked and clawed from the inside of the cage, but even when it wormed an arm out the backlash of the cage tore the ectoplasmic “flesh” from its form, leaving it leaking and becoming faint. After a few attempts, which Sunny stuck around to see if his idea had really REALLY worked, it began to curl inside the cage, resigned to its fate.
“And now, you leave.” Sunny thought to himself. “You leave, this ravenous little fucker either burns to nothing or stays trapped forever, and you move on with your goddamn life!” He begged to himself.
Instead, he pulled out a phone, amazed he still had reception down here.
A contact he had recently made, one that very few Kindred could have made, picked up on the other end. “Hmmgh, hello?” The tired voice answered. Sunny kicked himself remembering that a human would be asleep by this time.
“Yo, Hiếu, it’s Gardner, got something for you to exorcize. It’s in a cage at the moment, should hold until midday tomorrow at least, I'll send you the address.”
“What kind of some thing?” He answered. The clerical Mage had only recently met the unexpectedly professional vampire, but knew that he wouldn’t mess around.
“Kind of a half-wraith half-shadow but pretty feral and cuckoo. Tried to turn me into doner kebab before I worked it out.”
“Hmm, an odd case, but i’ll work it out. Thank you, Sunday,”
“Sunny”
“God be with you.” The mage said, clearly about to fall asleep once more.
After sending the address, there was just two matters of business to attend to. Looting the library for any other tomes that the Rhododendrons didn’t need, and getting them their target.
The former didn’t go so well, but he did find a well-kept copy of Othello among the books. The latter…
“Here ya go,” He slammed the grimoire down on the desk of Genowefa Blanchett, head of The Rhododendrons. “One ward-filled grimoire, in near-mint condition.”
“I’m impressed, Gardner,” The blank, pale-faced woman replied, closing her own book. “Took you less than half an evening. Although you look a mess.”
“Well, i’m good at what I do. Now, since you paid upfront, i’ll be fucking off now.” He turned to leave with a huff.
“You know,” The hook was cast. “We picked up a couple more signatures towards the west of the city, pulling near Gig Harbor. Most of the flowers are scanning out east since the Garou have been more…understanding lately. Would you mind giving it a skilled once-over?”
He stopped, and really weighed his options.
“I'm gonna have to pass…” he took a few more steps towards the door, each heavier than the last.
“For…tonight at least. Hit me up tomorrow.”
