The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening
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Authors: H.D. Strozier
The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening
Text Copyright © 2016 H.D. Strozier
All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Nothing decent was ever happening in the streets between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. MaLeila remembered her mother always telling her brother when he used to plead with the woman to let him stay out past midnight with the rest of his friends. And the woman had been right. MaLeila knew that first hand.
But unfortunately, being out at those indecent hours seemed to be an occupational hazard for being a sorceress. Or at least it was for MaLeila ever since she became a sorceress, because she was pretty sure other sorceress didn’t have to worry about the Magic Council turning a blind eye to deranged magic users just because they didn’t like her. Regardless, it was better for her to track down the rogue magic users at night after school hours and work than have them directly interfering with the two tomorrow.
“I have to at least give the lady a little credit. She doesn’t want to drain my soul or magical energy to make herself stronger or even kill me. She wants to preserve me in suspended animation to look at me for the rest of my life because I’m pretty. At least that’s new,” MaLeila said to the man in front of her over the loud music of the rave, her arms draped over his shoulders as much as they could be seeing as he was over a foot taller than her 5’ 2”.
“You actually sound excited about the prospect,” he said in a dry tone.
“At least the goal isn’t to kill me or eat my soul or drain my aura so it’s like I never existed and I can’t haunt people or be reincarnated or whatever happens to a sorceress after they die a natural death. At the very least if she does that, someone might discover me in a thousand years and I’ll wake up to a brand new world to explore,” MaLeila said with a shrug hands absently playing with his thick wavy hair. For now, it was just past his shoulders. But in a few months, it would certainly be down his back again.
She didn’t need the flashing lights of the rave to illuminate his golden pecan colored face to know that he was glowering back at her own milk chocolate colored face, both for the comment and for playing with his hair.
Finally he said, “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
MaLeila rolled her eyes and said, “Always so serious Devdan.”
“You’re too nonchalant about your life.”
MaLeila shrugged and said, “Laugh to keep from crying, Dev.”
“Neither one changes anything.”
“You know that from firsthand experience?” MaLeila asked soberly, locking her brown eyes with his grey ones. If he wasn’t forced to stand there with her, if he wasn’t forced to have to blend in with the crowd with her while they waited, MaLeila wouldn’t have asked. But regardless of what Devdan wanted to do, he was cornered at the moment.
He didn’t reply only tensed up just so slightly and pulled her closer as they both sensed the aura of the sorceress that for all intents and purposes wanted to make her decoration for her home. Neither one was sure where she was, but they knew she wouldn’t make her move until they were distracted, until their guard was let down, like the hunter (albeit hunter of human beings) that she was.
“You should go ahead and kiss me right now,” MaLeila whispered, standing on her tiptoes so her face was closer to his.
He did. His lips pressed to hers. If she were a couple of years younger and hadn’t had the experience of having a boyfriend, MaLeila might have been excited about them kissing. But whenever they did this, kissed in the middle of a crowded, pretending to be lost in each other, it was what they called it. Pretend. Mechanical, always aware of their surroundings, not at all focused on the sensations of the kiss if there were any. In essence, there was nothing pleasurable about it.
MaLeila sensed the sorceress get closer and it was then that she opened herself up to her ethereal sight, the sight that didn’t need her physical eyes and that let her see the world that co-existed yet transcended the physical. Essentially she saw “the magic in everything and everyone” so to speak, where everything was dark but illuminated by lights that represented magic, auras, and ethereal connections between those auras.
Devdan pulled his lips away slightly and muttered, “She’s behind you.”
“We have to wait for Bastet.”
“She better hurry up.”
“She’s watching her too. She will be. You know that.”
Just after MaLeila spoke, the lights brightened in the room until there were quick blinding flashes of light. It did a few things for them. The first thing Bastet’s magical light show did was totally distract the rave party goers. It was the reason they led the sorceress chasing MaLeila there in the first place. Everyone was either too drunk, high, distracted by the trick of the lights or all three to notice magic happening. So unless they were aware magic existed, they wouldn’t notice the magic or they’d notice and think it was an illusion. The second thing the light show did was disturb and disrupt the magic of the deranged sorceress. They had deduced before that her magical talents, similarly to Devdan’s, were derived from yin. But the sorceress’ powers weren’t as broad and varied as Devdan’s, and her strength while exacerbated by the magic present at night, was diminished by powerful light that was akin to that of the slightly unfiltered sun. In essence, Bastet’s yang magic.
With the sorceress’ magic diminished and everyone distracted, MaLeila pulled away from Devdan, turned on her heel and summoned her ankh shaped gold plated platinum staff to her right hand. While still using her ethereal vision she undid and redid the magical seams of distance and space to open up a portal to a light filled dimension beneath the sorceress’ feet. It instantly began to suck her in, the event heavily camouflaged by Bastet’s ever brighter and now blinding light show.
In a last desperate attempt to win, the sorceress used the remains of the magic that hadn’t been diminished by the lights to try to put her in the suspended sleep she was infamous for according to her entry in the International Registry of Magic Practitioners. If the woman were at her full strength, she would have no doubt put MaLeila into an instant sleep that would have put her in a state of suspended animation. As it was, MaLeila did start to feel woozy, her body light as though she might float into the air and never come down.
Devdan intervened by manipulating the shadows so that they formed a transparent barrier around MaLeila, protecting her from the sorceress’ efforts against her. The sorceress began to let out a scream, but by that time she’d been sucked all the way into the portal and MaLeila made quick work of repairing the seams of distance and space until the portal was gone and the other dimension was separated from their world once again.
Just in time too, because just as she finished and magicked her staff away into the space pocket she always sent it too, the world began to spin. As Bastet’s light show ended and the rave goers became to clap and whoop for the effects, she began to lose her footing.
Devdan grabbed her arm to steady her.
“You okay?” he asked.
MaLeila nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”
He didn’t let go of her arm even though MaLeila wished he would, if only because she was always hyper aware of any time he touched her when there was nothing more pressing that needed her attention.
“You should have just killed her,” Devdan said.
“I would have, but there were too many people around and that would have been too much of a mess. Besides, with her magic being so diminished in extreme light, she’ll be dead soon in that dimension I sent her to,” MaLeila said with a shrug. “Besides, the last thing any of us want is the Magic Council coming out here to see me because I did something that could have accidently exposed the magical world. They already don’t approve of the fact that I don’t bother bringing these nutcases back to their custody anymore.”
Devdan looked like he might have had a response, but then MaLeila’s balance faltered again.
“Bastet will make sure everything’s okay here and that no one saw any more than they should have. Let’s go.”
“She hates when we just leave her to deal with any possible clean up and cover up,” MaLeila pointed out.
“Can you not argue with me for the sake of it? You can barely stand.”
He was right, though MaLeila would never verbally give him the satisfaction of knowing it, even if her shaky stance said otherwise. Instead, she hooked her arm around his and he led her out the rave and guided them to the bus stop so Bastet could have the car to get home. He probably could have simply transported them home through the shadows like he was usually prone to do when they chased something magic related across the city of Atlanta, but Bastet’s light show likely had affected some of his powers too. MaLeila didn’t ask though. One way or another, Devdan would get them home.
MaLeila leaned against the man’s arm as they rode the bus to the stop nearest to their neighborhood and continued to do so as they walked the dark streets that were sporadically illuminated by the street lamps that the city still paid for to be on. He seemed relaxed, but if there was one thing MaLeila knew about Devdan, it was that he was always alert, very aware of his surroundings, ready to defend them both with either his magic or the gun he kept on his back just in case said magic failed him.
“Wake up,” Devdan said to her, trying to shrug her head off his arm.
“I am up. I’m just resting my eyes.”
“If you fall asleep, I’m not carrying you.”
“Yes you will,” MaLeila replied, though she was far from being asleep. Tired as she was, the adrenaline still hadn’t quite faded from her body and her brain was fully awake and alert.
Devdan said nothing in response, and they continued to walk in comfortable silence towards the old residential neighborhood she’d grown up in. His silence used to intimidate her when they first met… well not so much the silence as what might have been going on in that head of his considering the first time they became acquainted with each other when she was fourteen, he tried to kill her. After they had gotten over that misunderstanding (it took a while for MaLeila to stop needing to resist the urge to summon her staff when he was around) she learned that Devdan was just a man of very few words. He opened up a tad over the years, less reluctant to interact with MaLeila and Bastet, but even still MaLeila could go days and not hear more than a few words. Not that he needed to speak. Devdan’s presence tended to speak louder than words.
Too lazy to fumble with her house key, MaLeila used magic to fiddle with the locking mechanisms of the door and let herself in the house. Not for the first time, she expressed silent thankfulness that the house had no second level so that she could just walk through the living room and past the kitchen to get to her room in the hallway. It was only when she was next to the bed that Devdan unhooked his elbow from her arm and let MaLeila fall forward on her bed.
“I’m so damn tired.”
“Then go to sleep,” Devdan replied.
“Can’t. My mind is too active and my body is too tense.”
Devdan didn’t say anything else, didn’t even make a sound as he silently tread out the room. The only reason MaLeila knew he was gone was because she sensed him go. He came back to stand over her fifteen minutes later.
“Sit up,” he said.
MaLeila rolled onto her back and sat up. As soon as she was leaning against the headboard, Devdan handed her the cup of tea in his hands. MaLeila silently took the cup and blew on the tea before taking a sip, having long since given up asking Devdan where he learned to make the teas he brewed. He had a tea for every malady, even though he himself hated tea. Bastet only offhandedly mentioned that he used to make tea for their old master when the man’s mind was too active with spells and different ways to manipulate magic to fall asleep naturally.
“Thanks,” she muttered, already drowsy from just a few sips. She put her mug down and laid back down with her eyes closed, this time on her back as she stretched out with her magical senses, on the border of the physical world in her direct vicinity and the ethereal one that transcended it. Instinctively, she was drawn to Devdan’s serene magical aura and if the tea hadn’t made her drowsy, its calm state, like soothing waves, did. But it was as she was just between waking and sleeping that she felt an abnormal lurch in the steady, but lively pulse of the magic in the vicinity.
MaLeila opened her eyes, just as Bastet’s ringtone sounded from her cell phone.
“MaLeila, you better get out here. I’m just past the church right up the street from home,”
Bastet said as soon as MaLeila answered the phone and then promptly hung up.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” MaLeila said as she got off the bed. Good thing she hadn’t taken off her shoes. “I’ve got a fucking test in the morning.”
She and Devdan made their way back out the house. Whatever effect the tea had on MaLeila quickly wore off as her heart raced in anticipation of what it was Bastet had come across. The tall, muscular, shapely woman with tanned colored skin and an undercut hairstyle with the left side shaved was standing in the middle of the street, just past the community church when MaLeila and Devdan got there.
“What now?” MaLeila asked.
Bastet only pointed up towards the sky.
The abnormality blended in with the regular night sky so well that MaLeila missed it at first glance, but then she saw the swirling shadows and the currents of electricity concentrated in the sky. MaLeila didn’t need to extend with her senses to know that it was a tear in space, between worlds and dimensions.
