Chapter Eighteen Pt1: The Bryce Legacy
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Which story should I release next? (see below for synopses)
  • To Build a More Perfect Human
  • A Princess of Alfheim
  • A Cheap Harry Potter Knockoff Except Instead of Wizards, It's Mummies Or Something
Total voters: 18 · This poll was closed on Sep 8, 2020 10:35 PM.
Announcement
Hey, everybody!

The poll above is being posted in Transfusion, Consequences of Magic, and Visions of Dark & Light, all of which will have chapters published today and tomorrow. This poll will be to decide which previously unreleased story I release next on Scribble Hub, and I'll be pooling all of the votes across six different chapter posts, so be sure to visit all six chapters if you want to be like Al Capone, who advised us to "vote early and vote often." The synopses of the stories are as follows:

To Build a More Perfect Human is a near-future science-fiction story in which a paramedic semi-accidentally treats himself with cutting-edge biomedical technology and, in so doing, accidentally turns himself into the world's first cybernetic superheroine. In this story, I take several current advances at the forefront of biotech and materials science and extrapolate how these might result in full-body transformations and the development of superhuman abilities. In many ways, this is a companion piece to Transfusion, in that it has similar thematic elements and also takes place in the fictional Palmetto City. However, it doesn't have any magical/supernatural elements to it.

A Princess of Alfheim is an isekai fantasy story in which Larry Born, a World War I infantry "doughboy" from Nebraska finds himself transported to the magical land of Alfheim and resurrected into the body of Laeanna, a princess of the fae. Can Larry/Laeanna keep her identity a secret... and does she even have to? Will she manage to seduce her beautiful handmaiden, Meliswe? And/or will she be seduced by Calivar, a fae prince with a secret similar to Laeanna's? Or maybe love will have to wait - Laeanna soon discovers that she's not the only transmigrant from Earth... and she learns that some of them are being used by enemies of the fae to plan an invasion of the peaceful fae realms.  

Please leave a comment below if you like this story and please check out my many other free series on Scribble Hub. As always, thanks for reading!

-Ovid

Chapter Eighteen: The Bryce Legacy

I was within the tree, swaddled in darkness. It was neither hot nor cold, but a deep unease settled within me. Lily's daughter had been within the tree for sixteen years, and she'd appeared unaware of time's passage: each day a flitting nightmare, to quote the Gangling Man who'd seen me enwreathed. For all I knew, days were passing… weeks, years, decades. Cassie grown used to life without me, resigning herself to our trio. Maybe they'd bring in a replacement for me. Lily would forget about me - she had a daughter now, after all. Or maybe they were all in the tree now, too… perhaps the Gangling Men had been successful in their plan, had scoured the world of magic-users and were now feeding upon the souls of each and every one of us to give themselves life in our world.

That's what I worried. Was that a flitting nightmare, because it sure felt nightmarish. But, I reminded myself, it couldn't be true. The tree had bound me up in its horrible bough, but it hadn't yet tapped into my essence… and I was eager for it to try, because the Gangling Men and the Bryces had gravely miscalculated, for I recalled what the pale man had said right before I rescued Fabiana: You! The girl who took our ring, who rigged our contest, who knows how to banish our kind. We trade your life for your friend's.

There were no Gangling Men around when I took my ring back, stopped their meddling in our Winter Festival, or dispelled them into rags (true, they had some sort of group consciousness, but it only seemed to function in proximity to their Tree of the One Voice). How, then, would this information get back to them? How would they know it was me who'd done these things? That was easy: because Cassie knew, and therefore Heirophant had known when he was reformed using her essence. Which meant the tree would have to tap into me psychically, which meant…

I felt its first tentative probing. Probing at my psyche, probing to get in. And I was tempted to resist it - just as I'm sure a thousand witches and warlocks before me (or 666 plus about four a decade… so closer to 720) had attempted to resist and, by all appearances, had tried and failed. But I had something they didn't. So I opened myself to the probing of the tree, let it tap into my mind, into my essence… and shifted that strange, unwholesome perturbation of my essence to the front. In short, I handed Lucian Bryce to the tree. And, if I'm not mistaken, Rowan Bryce very specifically did not sign over other members of his bloodline to the tree… the Gangling Men were now in violation of the contract.

Immediately, my consciousness was ejected from my body, back beyond the black and leathery pod that now housed my body. And with a little work, I pushed myself into the tree, along its leathery bough, into its strange and pulsing trunk, and ferreted out the unspeakable, twisted soul at its center. The One Voice.

"You are not one of ours," it spoke into my mind.

"Correct. I am one of theirs."

It attacked me psychically, and my consciousness reeled in response, and some bit of me surged forth and, suddenly, it was the June of 1908 and a ley storm raged in Tunguska, Siberia.

+++++

"This is a bad idea, Archie," the warlock said.

"If we don't, the witches will overtake us in a generation, and we will never be free of their insufferable posturing," he replied. This was Archeron Bryce, my great-grandfather by blood, blue-eyed and wild-haired. "Can any of you deny it?"

"I cannot. But surely, it would be better to ally with the wizards, loath though we may be to do so…"

Archeron snorted his disapproval. "Loath for good reason. Such a storm as this comes but once a century. If we don't avail ourselves and now, we'll never get another chance. Warlocks five hundred years from now will bemoan our cowardice. Gentlemen, commit yourselves now and commit fully or prepare yourselves for defeat - those are the options."

There were a hundred warlocks in all, a massive ring of them around a massive circle of standing stones. All around them, the sky glowed an eerie light, strange blue and purple lights flashing as great manifolds of ley energy combined. Here, they were attempting the greatest summoning of its kind, a powerful entity whose dimension now grew close to ours - under the control of the warlocks, it would wage war against the witches. While there was no formal war between the covens, the witches had been growing in power for centuries and were now on the verge of surpassing warlocks for magical supremacy, even as the wizards and other beings of magic retreated from the world. The witches and warlocks would vie for control, and Archeron Bryce was damned if some uppity women of above-average magical ability were going to cow his brethren.

Most of the warlocks were in agreement, so they began their ritual - it took an hour or so. And, this far north, even as the witching hour approached, the sun was ruddy on the horizon… though the pulsing energies of the ley storm dominated their surroundings. They chanted, they rolled declension stones the size of cows, and Archeron stood at the fore and called the mighty beast into being, a great and twisted tree, its dark boughs swaying like strange tentacles. A herd of elk had been coerced to the base of the thing and, even as the poor animals panicked, the tree drained their life energies to fuel itself, tiny nodules appearing along its many branches.

"It's not enough! Gods damnit, it's not enough!" one of the warlocks shouted.

Quite right - the tree was ravenous. It needed energy and lots of it to root itself into the world magically - already, its physical roots delved down and slaked themselves of the earth's energy. Now, though, it needed more. One of the warlocks cried out and collapsed, his body drained of energy… and the next, and then the next… some tried to flee and they, too, were consumed. Having said the words and committed the energy, they couldn't escape their ties to the ritual.

"Damn you, Archeron! It's going to kill us!"

Already, Archeron was shaping his own energies, shielding them from attack while providing a thread to keep the line of ritual strong. He glanced at the man, his friend, Horace Finney… former friend. Horace went ash-gray and collapsed, his energies suddenly tapped. But Archeron was unharmed. In all, ninety-three of the hundred warlocks assembled died to bring the dark tree into our world. Among those surviving, five made a pact with the otherworldly creature - to feed its power to enrich their own. The two survivors who refused were given to the tree, which swallowed them up, enwreathing them in little black nodules. They became the nucleus for the first two gangling men - the first of many, for the tree had 666 spots on its boughs and seeds enough to make hundreds more of its kind. All other bloodlines but those sworn to the tree would be consumed… or so the horrible plan went.

"Byron and Archeron Bryce were two of those five," I said. "I wonder who the other three were… if their bloodlines still survive and whether they're as thoroughly corrupted as the Bryce men."

But the tree didn't respond, so I probed deeper.

+++++

If Byron or Archeron Bryce had looked to the western ridge near their spot, they might have noticed a figure standing in the night, dark against the chaotic colors of the ley storm. And if they'd had really good binoculars, they might have recognized Elisa Jasper, already famous in the witching community. Yes, some sense in her prophetic vision had drawn her to that same spot in faraway Siberia on that same night. Elisa Jasper witnessed the hundred warlocks in their summoning circle beneath the ley storm - and, in her witnessing, she provided the seeds for their undoing. At the stoke of midnight, at the height of the spell, the ley storm cracked across the sky and a bolt of pure magical energy sent the poor, doomed prophetess, Elisa Jasper, to the hereafter (wherever, if anywhere, that might be). And, in doing so, the very forces of magic sealed fate around her - the death of the prophetess in pursuit of her prophecy sealed her predictions with an inescapable power… or almost inescapable. Her prophecies about the arrival of the Gangling Men certainly came true.

In those early years, the Gangling Men took the world of magic by storm. Nobody was quite sure what was happening and, by the time they figured it out, it was too late to do anything about it. They stole witches and warlocks with impunity, spirited them away, and added them to the tree. Sometimes, they'd take whole conclaves, and other times they'd take you in the middle of the night. Strong wards could kill them, but they'd always come back and in greater numbers. And, as the tree neared its 666th conquest, Callista Jasper, the daughter of Elisa and a great witch in her own right, came upon the realization in an old book of summonings:

The darkened tree spreads awful root,
its strange corruption drawn by blood,

and when six thrice have gone to fruit
six darkling seeds shall be its brood.

That is: once the tree had taken its fill, it would have enough power to release six seeds, each capable of producing another tree. And, once filled, those trees would themselves bear seeds, until every witch, warlock, and person with a half-decent claim to magical power was consumed. Only the Gangling Men would remain, and the world would be in their thrall, theirs to do with as they saw fit. But that hadn't happened… not yet. Why?

"That's the last of them," Amelia Lily said… our Lily bore a striking resemblance to her, the same strong but pleasant features, the same steely eyes, sharp in resolve. But her hair was chestnut brown with a single golden forelock tumbling to the side. "The others are attending to our distraction… but I cannot say for how long. We must act now."

"Agreed," Callista Jasper said, and they started the ritual. She was sure that they were living out one of her mother's prophecies, that surely this great casting would be found somewhere in those inscrutable pages.

It was a ward - a powerful ward cast by eighteen of the most powerful witches remaining and cast upon the solstice witching hour. There was little they could do to stop the tree - with the power of 665 witches and warlocks in place, its power was near its azimuth. But they could contain it, stop its spread and prevent its six 'darkling seeds' from taking root elsewhere, for they would need a connection with the main tree to grow. Maybe then, they could thwart the threat of the Gangling Men before they consumed the world.

The ritual was complex and taxing, but they neared completion… only to be attacked by the Gangling Men as the final incantations were underway. Amelia Lily turned her attentions away for a moment, forming her symbols and muttering her incantations by reflex alone. And as the Gangling Man approached her, hoping to take her by surprise, she reached out and dispelled it - though she couldn't devote enough time to burn its symbol-cloth, to eradicate it from the world for good.

"Sisters! They come for us!" she shouted - and her sisters shouted back, some of them in terror, some in anger, and others doubling-down on their part of the incantation. "Stay strong!"

Another of the pale men came for her and almost knocked her off the spot - she and Callista had both assumed the front spots along the eighteen-woman circle and, should either of them be knocked out of place, the ritual would begin to collapse, probably inexorably.

"Stay strong!" She blasted another of the Gangling Men to bits - not dead, but likely incapacitated.

"It's… it's taking too much," Callista said.

Amelia felt it, too: some of her sisters had fallen, and more were out of place or else fleeing in earnest. With each that left the ritual, it shifted more and more burden to the two of them. She turned to Callista, wanting to touch her, to kiss her one last time, for they had been lovers once and Amelia had never found the courage to quench that flame in her heart. But neither of them could step away, or it would all be for naught. Already, she could feel the draw of the ritual tapping into her body's life energies.

"I love you," she whispered.

Callista turned to regard her, her face going gray and lifeless, a single tear trailing down her cheek. "Goodbye, sweet Amelia."

Amelia felt herself go slack and, as her consciousness receded from the world and everything went dark and cold, she knew the ritual was complete. It would be the work of future generations to see that her task was not in vain.

"Don't think I won't tell Lily about this," I said. "You, my friend, are fucked." But the tree didn't respond - to be fair, I didn't have a mouth at the time, so I doubt it heard me.

Thanks for reading, and make sure you follow me here to catch my latest releases! It looks like roughly biweekly releases for this story will be the norm for the time being. If you really want to read the rest of this story now, it's all posted to my Patreon. If you like my work, don't forget to check out my many other stories Scribble Hub, Patreon, or Amazon (free with Kindle Unlimited)!

https://www.patreon.com/OvidLemma
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