(HSSC2) Veritas Carta

Veritas Carta
By Voidmaster

--The Fool

The candlelight illuminated the room sparsely, as if the very flames were afraid of the dark. The subtle glow of the candles gave the object Susan Rod’s attention. Her eye’s glittered with greed, singularly visible in the darkness. The rest of her body was shrouded in the embrace of shadows, as they slithered about her in an almost loving caress.
Her attention was affixed to a small gold box, reflecting the yellow light into her eyes as it sat, innocent, in the middle of a table. It was guarded on either side by two obelisk-shaped candles, which burnt with a protective and mirthless white flame. Slowly, she reached out towards it, stretching her pale and delicate fingers, driven to reach by the power of greed. As she reached towards the box, the shadows that shielded her hand flared up in defense when it came into contact with the white light of the monolith candles, but then withered away from it, exposing her hand for what it was.

The pale scars that covered her hand like a tic-tac-toe game were leftovers from the days she had spent cutting herself. Back when she was mixed up with the popular internet witchcraft, doing anything and everything to gather power. But now she had found real power, so she had cast illusion over herself to hide her embarrassing past from certain criticizing members of the Coven.
Her focus lost to her memories, the protective magick surrounding the box took the opening. Shattering her barriers in one swift, powerful blow, the obelisk-candles flared up, shooting up her arm and chasing the protective shadow away, in order to expose more of Susan’s body to attack. The flames seared her arm but she knew that its real attack had not come yet.

In pain and frightened, Susan’s training kicked in. Knowing that she could not drive the fire back, she took another route. Her unburned hand forming a quick symbol, she transferred the heat energy into an explosive force, changing the nature of the defensive spell.
There was a flash and a bang, tossing Susan across the room as if she was nothing more then a discarded candy wrapper. Picking herself up from the mess on the floor, she grabbed her ribs, noting that several of them were broken. With a snap of her fingers they mended, as did her burnt arm. While not usually capable of this, she was drawing on the excess energy that was given to her by the rush of her adrenaline.

Picking herself up, she was caught by surprise by the door behind her swinging open, sunlight driving her shroud of shadow completely away. The sacrificial dagger flashed through the newfound sunlight so quickly that the poor owner of the little golden box didn’t have a chance to even realize who was breaking in.


--The Lovers
The attraction between Susan Rod and Daemon Mara was obvious. It was also just as obvious that this attraction was very one-sided. Daemon worked at the Collector’s Cards card-shop, working as the cashier and owner. He had been a loner ever since he moved into Reading, Pennsylvania, keeping to himself and sleeping in a small room in the back of the shop.
It had been love at first sight, at least for Susan. She ran into him when she was in her inter-net witch stage. She had gone to buy a deck of Tarot cards, only to be faced by this rugged, unshaven hunk, which politely told her that they didn’t sell them. She had stood there, struck dumb by the strange rush of giddiness and desire that had flooded her. After she had recovered from her initial shock, she smiled widely, said she must have made a mistake and left. After she got out of the door, she leaned against the wall and slowly dropped to a sitting position. He was the one.

Brought back to the present by the rush of a car as it passed by her, Susan looked up. She stood on a street corner, just opposite of Collector’s Cards and watched as Daemon stepped out of the shop door and put the “We’re Closed” sign on the door. Dressed as an evil jester for the school’s annual Halloween Festival, he made his way hurriedly across the street, so as not to be late. Susan fingered the golden box in her pocket hungrily. Now that she had a Magicae Artes deck she would have a future. Now that she had True Tarot, she would give both of them a future.


--The Magician
Susan stood by her booth on the school grounds. They always set up a special booth for her Tarot readings, ever since she had started doing them for the festival. It was her requirement that she have a space to herself; that her readings were private and stayed unexposed to the elements. And she didn’t require to be paid, so that meant more money going directly to the school. After staring into the gathering crowd searching for Daemon, she wandered back into her booth.
The booth was dark, only lit by a few normal candles scattered around the desk. There were, however, two new editions to her décor this year. Susan reached under the desk and pulled out the two obelisk-candles, unlit, placing them across from each other on her desk. She had made the candles her own by killing their previous mistress, so they would follow her bidding. She lit them with a wave of her hand; their white flames now turned black.

“Doesn’t hurt to have something like them set up in case I need extra help controlling the deck tonight. Besides, they don’t make bad decoration.” She thought to herself as she admired her set up. Slipping the golden box out of her pocket, she opened it for the first time. The cards inside were made of thin but surprisingly firm sheets of gold, ornate pictures etched into the shining metal. The cards felt good in Susan’s fingers as she sifted through the deck. On the back of every card the words Magicae Artes were etched into it, in a flowing almost calligraphic writing. Shuffling it first, she put the deck down on the desk and drew a card experimentally, being very sure not to invoke any sort of magickal energies.

The Circle of Fortune card reflected golden in her eyes, the mystic symbols in the circle gleaming in the candlelight. For a moment, the card swallowed up Susan’s attention. The gleaming symbols seemed alive with magick, the fires of Hell beneath the circle seemed to crackle and burn brighter, whilst the clouds of Heaven above grew dark, and diminished in glory.

Suddenly, the front curtain on her booth was pulled aside by a gust of wind. Startled, Susan dropped the card in her hand, her thumb being cut as the card landed softly on her desk. The wind continued to blow as she raised her eyes to look outwards. Darkness had set in, but it was a cloudy night. A storm was coming. Quickly brushing her brown hair out of her face, she raised her hand, formed a symbol and mumbled an old Coven adage.

“Beware what comes on the wings of a storm.”


--The Inverted Chariot
The simple light provided by the monolith-candles flickered quietly to themselves. Not overburdened by an abundant source of customers, Susan tilted her head and listened to the flames as they danced on their candles. Then she heard the whispering.
Quiet, soft whispering spoke to her through the flickering of the candles. She heard the words, not understanding them, but being drawn in all the same. She closed her eyes in order to hear what was being said more sharply. As soon as her eyes closed shut, designs and images showered the inside of her eye-lids. Pentagram’s covered in strange words, vast cities and landscapes bound with stone and magick, dark symbols carved into walls, and golden altars flowing in blood, the human bodies on them withered, twisted, and drained.
She sensed more then saw the creatures that lived in these places, and the evil and power they radiated was the most intense force she had ever felt. Suddenly, a clap of thunder ripped through the sky, and her eyes snapped open, the images fading from her sight and the whispering turning back into the casual sound of flickering candles. Pulling herself out of the daze, she looked down at her table. Sitting casually as if it had always been there, a leather pouch slumped between the monolith candles. Picking it up cautiously, she opened it and emptied its contents on the table.
The flame on the obelisk candles had risen high into the air, and turned into a light consuming blackness. As she stared, they returned to their original color, but burned just as intensely. A strange amulet laid on her table now, one that strained her mind just to comprehend. It was made of a dull, black-grey stone, with a red, glittering gem in its center. The shape of the amulet was what boggled her, for while she saw it in the usual 3 dimensions, there was a phantom form that lingered around the edges. As if it was a faded form of what the amulet really was. Picking it up by the chain, she attempted to observe it closer, but found that the longer she stared at it the more fragmented and chaotic her thoughts became, and if she stared for too long her vision began to blur.
Rubbing her temples and closing her eyes, she slipped the amulet back into the pouch and pulled the strings tight.
“Whatever that is,” Susan thought. “I should probably air on the side of caution and not wear it. Don’t know what kind of spells it has written into it. Could easily destroy me, judging by how much power must have gone into making it exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously like that.”

(Continued in next post)

-- The Tower
The night air was warm against Susan’s skin as she trotted down the lane back to her home. The dead tree’s that made up the majority of the forest along these roads creaked as she walked their shapes completely invisible to her eyes. She clutched her pocket protectively; this part of the woods wasn’t only creepy, it was dangerous.
When she first began learning real magick, she quickly realized that those woods were something else. Violence and evil intent began to radiate from every direction in that place. Susan didn’t kid herself though. She knew what she did was evil; all the same, she knew how untrustworthy she was, so she always kept as far away from other witches and evil entities as she could.
A few scattered phrases found their way into Susan’s ears on the wind. She tilted her head sideways, trying to catch a few more words.

“Demon…. You thought that you could….Effin’…… We’ve got you…… You can’t escape……”
Susan formed the Sign of Levitation with her hands, shot into the air and followed the noise into the forest. She heard the tree’s creak and groan as she flew past them, their wooden limbs cracking from the breeze she created as she flew past.
She came upon a small clearing, and saw a sight that sent her blood cold. The clearing was lit by a bonfire, its flames dancing into the sky as an evil jester lay, bound with ropes by the fire. A small group of teens surrounded Daemon, their clothes torn and ragged. One of the teens in the group walked towards the fire, and the dull glint of a large, grey revolver flashed into Susan’s eyes.


BANG!

The shot rang through the empty forest like a cannon blast, as the blood poured from Daemon’s stomach wound.
Susan was swallowed up with sadness. She felt her heart drop in her chest, down into an abyss it had only visited when her grandma had disappeared. Tears began to flow freely from her eyes, but then she felt a fire start in her stomach that built up to full her entire body. Her fury burned with the heat of ten thousand bonfires, and she felt herself cast the cards before she stopped to think.
With a flick of her wrist, she pulled the golden box out of her deck and cast 9 cards, 3 for each of the teens still alive around that fire. The cards floated in the air in front of her, and shone with their own brilliance. All of the cards for the teens were the same.
She spoke, her words magnified by hate and flowing with fury. She cast fear and hesitation into her words, so they couldn’t escape while she spoke.

“You have cast your die and chosen your fates. The cards have seen your actions, and now cast judgment upon you.” The group stared at her, caught up in the magick of her words. They watched her blankly as she glided down to the ground and read their cards.

The first card flipped into the air and turned so that it could be seen. On it, a happy lad pranced down a pathway, a dog at his heels. The far side of the path was rocky, and suddenly dropped off into a cliff.

“The first card is The Fool. You started this day ignorant of your fate, driven by the running puppy of your emotions.”

The golden card disappeared, its magic being used up, and another, fresh card rose from the deck to take its place. A proud, brick tower rose on this card, with the top being blasted off by a meteor and several people toppling from its windows, either tossed by the blast or leaping from the windows in order to escape a fiery death.

“The next card is The Tower. It signifies your eventual failure and downfall, the twist of fate that has brought you to see your own end.”

The card vanished once more, and a third one replaced it. A figure mostly hidden in shadow stood just out of view on this card. Bone hands reached out of the shade and grasped a long, ornate scythe.

“Your last card is fittingly, Death. I think you’re smart enough to grasp that one by yourself.”

The final card vanished and a strange silence set in as Susan stood, waiting for the magick to do its work. Suddenly coming to his sense first, the teen with the gun started to try to run, but the gun slipped from his hands, bounced off the ground and misfired. The shot ricocheted off a nearby tree and struck one of the other teens in the back of the head, blowing the front of his forehead out over the girl still standing next to him.
Panicked out of her paralysis, the blood-soaked girl turned to run, but her foot tripped on a rock and she fell face first into the bonfire.
The screams echoing behind her, Susan took off again, and tracked the one left through the forest. The boy ran as fast as he could, trying to outrun her shadowy figure as best he could. Glancing back to look for her, his foot caught on a rock, and with sickening cracks and thuds, he rolled into the rock studded ground, and by the time friction slowed him to a stop, his head was bleeding profusely and was just as broken as a majority of his other bones.

The three disposed of, Susan turned flew slowly back to the bonfire. It wasn’t hard, as the fire reached quite high, and the light it cast cascaded through the trees at her. Hovering silently in the clearing, she noticed something that was very wrong.
The small pool of blood was where it had been when she had left, so was the crackling bonfire. Daemon’s body was missing

Landing with a soft thud, she collapsed on the ground and stared quietly into the fire as it cracked and burned its way through the night. Tears stained Susan’s face as she lay there, immersed in silent, unending pain. Suddenly a chilly wind stirred up and the nearby fire shrunk back from it. The warmth of the fire seemed as a distant memory as the wind slipped through the tiny holes in her clothing and smothered her skin.

SNAP

Susan jumped and looked in all directions, her thoughts and magick senses keen to search for the source of the noise. The sun had long since set and the clouds had already drifted away. All that was left was the fire and the surrounding trees that creaked and stretched in the wind. Her mind’s eye saw him before her real eyes did.
Out of the darkness in front of her walked a man, dressed in a 3 piece suit, and a crimson satin tie. He walked with a cane, but not because he needed to, but rather because he wanted to. His hair was black with a few wandering gray hairs. His eyes were hidden in the shadows because he walked with his head tilted down.
“S-stop right there!” Susan yelled, the tears still on her face and in her voice. The man kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard the slightest sound. Still deeply involved with looking at his feet, the man didn’t look up as he kept walking, he just walked.

“Don’t come any closer or I’ll have to hurt you!” Susan shouted in a panic. Still the man trudged on, either deaf or pretending to be. Raising her hand, she turned it towards the fire. The flames flowed from their source and smothered her hand in their warm embrace. Turning her hand to point at the man, the flames leapt from her and shot towards their target.
At the last moment, the flame split into two and arched their way around the man in a circle of fire, which fell to the ground around his feet, which apparently caused him to stop and look up.

His eyes seemed to be black in the firelight, a black that flickered with a fire all their own. Looking back down at his feet again, his eyes seemed the relish the light and heat of the fire.

“Ah…. fire. It’s been ascribed to me in the past, but never used against me before. Honestly, I think I prefer cold over fire, but I suppose both have their uses.” His voice seemed an almost frozen perfection of sound; it didn’t echo or bounce off of any of the trees around them. It simply slid into ones ear, like an ice cube sliding down your back unexpectedly.

“Who… Who are you?” Susan asked, her voice slightly subdued by the change in atmosphere.

“I believe you already know the answer to that question, young lady.” The tarot cards began to stir in her pocket. Slowly, one golden sliver of a card rose into the air in front of her, and slowly twisted around for her to see what it read.

The greedy smile spread from ear to ear on the creature’s face, its diamond eyes bright with a rebellious glare. Its skin was horribly wrinkled and mutilated almost beyond recognition of skin, while its nose was gone entirely, leaving an open nasal cavity in it’s place. Its outstretched hand was open and shown to hold thousands of people, all of them horrible cut and disfigured. Looking at it now, the skin seemed to take on a reddish tint, while she could almost hear the howls and screams of pain from the people in its grasp.

Susan’s eyes widened and her mouth opened as the realization set in. She remained silent but her lips mouthed her thoughts.

“The Devil.”

“A penny for the smart lady! I’m not exactly fond of that likeness, but I suspect this little get-up here doesn’t exactly scream the Prince of Darkness. I guess so long as I look like one, I should probably act like a seasoned business man, don’t you think?”, Satan responded, a cold kind of mirth finding it’s way into his speech.
“Now, let’s see here. You’ve used the Veritas Carta deck 4 times already, not counting what you just saw. For a normal person I cut the limit at 3 uses, but since you were already allied to me, you got an extra use out of it. UNfortunately for you, the payment for using the deck all the way up isn’t cheap.”

“Payment?” Susan had finally found her voice again. The fire crackled indignantly as Satan stopped pacing and turned to face her again.

“Yes, payment. Did you really think that THAT kind of power would just be handed out because you already gave me your soul? You, my girl, have not done your homework at all.”

“Well, what is the payment, my Master?” Responded Susan, who bowed as she spoke. She was composed enough to realize that she had long since given this being her allegiance.

(Continued in next post... again)

“Well, let’s see here,” He spoke as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a scroll of parchment and went down the list with his finger.
“Mhmmmmm….. Aha! Your soul is due to me in exactly….. now, actually.” A satisfied grin stretched across Satan’s face, the middle-aged wrinkles on his avatar deepening. Suddenly the fire grew taller and its gentle crackle and snap turned into screams of torment and pain.

The flames suddenly pulled back before Susan’s eyes, and she gazed into a place no mortal had ever seen while still in their physical body. The flames solidified and froze, their ever changing surface now captured in ice.
“There, that’s better. Ice has just always seemed more appropriate to me. Ladies first!” The Devil suddenly stood behind her, pushing her gently with one hand and indicating the portal with the other.

Without warning, the gentle push became a sturdy shove, and Susan was propelled forward, into the abyss before her. Chuckling a cold, empty chuckle, Satan watched as she disappeared into the pathway and the bonfire died back down the normal proportions.

“Sensus termino.” A quiet voice rose above the gentle crackle of the fire. A vague shape in the back round shifted its position and stood, watching the fire.


“Yes Daemon, emotions are shackles. A saying you have wisely taken to heart.” Satan spoke, not looking away from the fire.





--Inverted Justice

Daemon stepped quickly out of the shadows cast by the now dying bonfire. His face showed no trace of the make up it had worn previously that night, but that wasn’t the only thing different about him. His skin was cracked and frail, and his eyes had large dark circles around them. He was clothed in a black robe, with an ornate clip holding his cloak on over the less formal under robes. His eyes here charcoal black, and the light of the fire reflected out of them, the only change in color over the whole eye.

“You played this one well Daemon. I didn’t expect you to use that gift of physical and emotional attraction to the opposite sex so ruthlessly.” Satan spoke as he stared into the fire, its life slowly burning away.
“I doubt I disappointed you, Lucifer. If the payment you offered me had not been as valuable as it was, I would not have done it.” Daemon said as he stood by Lucifer, also staring unrelentingly into the fire.

“No, you didn’t. You and I both know that I would not have been disappointed either way. The soul of a popular Warlock such as your self would have fetched much forced loyalty to me amongst my Demons. A lot of them depend on you for their yearly harvest of souls that allows them to stay in the physical world. I’m sure there would be quite an uproar amongst them if I pulled you in, and even if I did put you back out here afterwards, I’d have much more control over them.”

“That is true. I guess it won’t take you long to figure out a way to reel my soul like you have with the others. Perhaps you could start a bounty amongst the other Warlocks for my head, like you did my predecessor?”

“I could. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun that way though. I’ve already seen the Warlock ranks tear each other apart, and I found it distinctly disappointing.”

“Yes, well, I will take my payment and go then.” Reaching out his right hand towards the suited Satan, he opened it and waited for something to be dropped in.

“Technically you didn’t kill her. I did. Therefore, what you desire still belongs to me, Daemon. You’ll have to actually do me a service directly if you want to get what you want.” Slowly Daemon’s fist clenched but withdrew, no words giving life to his anger.

“What else would you have me do, Lucifer?” Daemon responded his voice calm and cool, though masking a rage he had not felt in years.

The fire had died now, and only burning hot embers glittered as jewels among the grey of the ash. Though, in the middle of the fire, a slightly different colored ember burned. It was an amulet, one of black-grey stone with a fiery red gem in the center. Reaching casually into the hot embers, Lucifer pulled out the amulet and handed it to Daemon carefully.


“Find out who or what gave Susan this. Then, and only when you give me this information, will the name of the witch that killed, whats-her-name, Carrie Sherwood, be yours. You know, I never figured you to be the grudge-bearing type. Why are you so desperate to find the witch who killed your grandma? From what I can tell, you two weren’t exactly close.” Lucifer’s voice sneered at Daemon, even though his face showed no sign of emotion.

“You know perfectly well why.” Daemon clutched the talisman in his hands, and then turned and walked into the darkness beyond.

Lucifer stood by the embers of the fire, alone in the darkness. Looking the direction Daemon had gone, and he smiled in the half-light of the embers.

“You’re emotions are your shackles Daemon. Sensus termino.” Suddenly, Lucifer’s dark laugh spread across the forest, stretching the shadows and giving even a more sinister feel to the forest around him. The sound was jagged, and it ripped across the landscape, making people stop what they were doing and listen, too scared to react.

And just as suddenly as Lucifer had arrived, he was gone, leaving only the footprints on the ground and the memory of his laugh in the hearts and minds of the townsfolk of Reading, Pennsylvania.

(And it's finally done with folks! You like it, please comment.)

Void, your creativity blows me away!

Good job Voidmaster. You´re very talented in the detail you describe things. I could never do that.


Stiff competition

[edit on 25-9-2008 by Skyfloating]

i am very impressed
great story
really great

Great job there Void!

Wonderful read! Love the details!