The Light of Amorth (working title)

This is a work in progress, so there are some gaps. Thanks to Writers Digest for helping to get my creative juices flowing!

THE LIGHT OF AMORTH

Goodnight Hall was already fragile. Now, it was a steaming heap of broken banisters, crushed concrete, and the charred remains of the delicate double doors.

Georgina Fosterday stood shouting at the children looking down at her for answers. “There’s nothing to see here, children. Go back to your classes.” She waved her wand in front of her and the rubble glistened lightly, lifted and formed a temporary wall.

“Who’s the one responsible,” asked Obdigan. “That was pretty powerful.”

“Pretty powerful?” she responded. “What’s missing?”

Obdigan scanned over the wreckage. “Umm…”

“Where are we, Obdigan?”

“Goodnight Hall.”

“And what do we keep in Goodnight Hall?”

He paused and moved closer to the rubble.

“Watch your step, Obdigan!”

Obdigan froze, his foot poised over a twisted knot of seraphic metal and human flesh. “Dear gods,” he whispered. “Is that a-”

“Yes.”

“I knew this was powerful magic, but I had no idea…”

“This is a crime scene, Obdigan. Someone has attempted to find it, and they did.”

***

I adjust the lamplight on my desk. There are many things cluttering the top, none of them are what I need. The air begins to buzz, and I see firecrackers of lightning darting through it. Burned toast- a sign that precedes great magic.

“Father,” he asks.

I turn. He is a small boy, always has been. His hands, his twisted hands, are hidden behind his back, and his breathing is labored.

“My son,” I beckon. “Welcome home.”

He limps toward me, clack shuffle, and stops just inside the halo of light. “I have something.”

“You have gone through great pains to get it.”

“They will find me soon.”

“Son, then we must act quickly.”

He brings his hands around, and I feel the surge of magic filter through the space between us like the ringing of the bells in the tower. I shiver from anticipation.

“It needs only your signature, father.”

I grab my quill and hastily dip it into my ink. It wants more.

I bind a sanguine curse into the quill’s individual’s feathers, and reach out to the parchment. “Once I sign, son, the journey isn’t over. We still have a lot of work to do.”

“Work well worth it, father.”

“Work that will be done,” I reply.

***

“Down there, Obdigan!” Georgina shouts. “All other Rangers circle and form a perimeter!” She could see the circling cloud of protection around his home.

Obdigan lifts his wand and levels a charm at the apex of the protection dome.

***

“Father, quickly.”

“I can feel them,” I say.

***

Obdigan’s stream rends and tears a small hole in the dome. “Soon!” he yells. “I’m almost through!”

Georgina’s hair on the back of her neck stood on end and a shiver snaked through her body. As the hole widened, magic sledge melts onto the street and blasts through the sky. Something is off. Something is tilted.

“Stop!” she commands. “Stop. Now!”

“I’m almost through!” Obdigan fires back.

“There’s nothing to get through!” Georgina’s words drift helplessly through the sky. She feels sick to her stomach for a second, then she blinks and shakes her head. Something’s missing. Something’s not right.

“What are we doing here, Georgina?” asked Obdigan as he flies toward her.

“I… I’m not sure.” She says. “I… uh… I think that we’ve been hit by some sort of… um…”

Obdigan snickers. “Another ghost-chase, huh?”

She scrunches her eyebrows. “Yeah… I guess.” Something’s missing, she thinks again.

“Hmph,” he replies. “I’m headed back to HQ. The Goodnight Hall has finally collapsed.”

Obdigan opens a vapor and is gone, leaving Georgina alone above an abandoned house in a run-down subsection of Philadelphia. “What am I doing here?” she asks, then flies off to the north. Her mentor should still be living in New York.

***

“Successful, I assume,” I say. “Come, son, now we can begin.”

“Begin healing our world,” he replies, and I am happy.

Part 2

Glitz and glam fascinate me. Yards of glistening fabric have created the illusion that the whole gymnasium is an undersea kingdom, and these children are creatures craving the salt water.

What are their most secret desires?

We think, when we’re young, that we’re implacable, that we can withstand the raging winter winds. But, we become fragile.

I look down at my son, his eyes scrutinizing the fog machines and penny loafers. He hasn’t heard music from a speaker before, and I’m sure the tinniness of it makes him shudder.

“Father,” he probes. “If this works, then what can we expect?”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “If this works, then we will see freedom.”

“How do we know they aren’t already free?”

Laughter from the rafters trickles down to me, and for a moment I hesitate. “See that boy standing over there? The one staring into that lighted device?”

I feel my son nod.

“That is a fetter, son, a disastrous onus. Do you know what he is looking at?”

“But there are many who are looking at their own devices.”

“They are all communicating through it, beholden to the device itself.”

He squirms.

“The ambiance. Their clothing, their transportation, their euphoria, their weakness and illnesses, all of the things that pull them into a spiraling abyss is the result of us.”

He looks up to me and stares into my eyes. “Then we have no choice than to try.”

I slowly, gingerly unfurl the scroll and run my fingers over the ancient ink. I shiver against the surge of magic crawling up my spine. It’s something I’ve always loved.

The words are not foreign to me. They are old, yes, but they are familiar.

A burst of purple explodes from one boy’s hands. The sound of a million waves crashing careens through the auditorium. A dragon erupts from a girl’s mouth, splitting her in half lengthwise.

Black-blue clouds of an electrical storm creep and crawl above us; the power of the sun surges through underneath.

Then, they scream.

I lift my wand to my throat and project, “Careful young children, you are the chosen first!” They push and scramble toward the exits. I know I will not reach them all. “Embrace your new gifts, for you have been imbued with the magic you all have had inborn! Do not squander your newfound abilities!”

Another bursts into flames. Yet another completely disappears.

I was anticipating chaos. Chaos at the first influx.

There was enough magic in this world. Enough for everyone to claim what is entitled to them.

My son and I stand at the top of the bleachers, and I see the equalization.

Several have changed colors completely. Others have transformed into animals and are milling about aimlessly.

They will need guidance, but I have work to do.

***

Georgina’s klaxon blares, alerting her to unlawful magic use. “That’s directly south of us,” she says out loud to no one in particular. “Obdigan! Get yourself ready!”

She grabs her wand, waves it through the air, and opens a vapor. Her mind fixes on the location from the alarm; she breathes in deeply, closes her eyes, and reopens them a split second later.

She was expecting to see a school, and instead is staring into the thick of a corn field.

“What the?” she whispers. “Where? Where am I?”

She levitates, pushing herself above the field of corn. “Where’s the school?”

***
Obdigan brushes the dirt from his jacket and pants. “Well that was new,” he says.

“That man just came out of the ground!” an elderly woman screams. “Right there! He’s risen from the dead!”

“Crap,” Obdigan mutters, then opens a vapor again and falls in.

***

Little by little, I think. Little by little shall they all be equal.

Part 3

Goodnight Hall was built as an annex in the late 19th Century in order to give the campus more storage. At first, it held cleaning essentials and extra books. By the 1970s, the annex was repurposed the storage and display of magical items, and John Falterday had been the one to organize them. There were very few graduates from Fleetwood College's School of Magical Instruments that year, but John had broken records on how well he could dismantle cursed and charmed objects. He always wondered why college kids were allowed to handle such unstable items.

He was precise in his ordering, and he filled, by the time he died, more than fifty logbooks and ledgers. His successor, Artie Sloan, really just had to keep things dusted and not move anything.

There was a side room built into the north wall of Goodnight for the study, analysis, and the possible disposal of especially dangerous or volatile magic. It was in this side room the Light of Amorth was carefully placed in an enchanted envelope, locked with a charmed sleeve, and set inside several layers of resonating harmonics. It was essentially inert.

John Falterday received the Light of Amorth from a magic collector whose name has long been forgotten. The mage disappeared shortly after he donated it, presumably into a loose cloud of vapor, and John was left watching over an item that left him feeling cold and nauseated every time he held it.

"You see, Artie," he began one summer afternoon. "This item is actually a cleverly decorated alembic. The outside," he held it flat on his palm, "is intricately carved like a what?"

Artie squinted, then took a quick breath in and held it. "A didactum?"

John politely cleared his throat. "Perhaps we should start with something a little less challenging."

"No, no, wait. I've got it." Artie shook his head to clear it, then said, "it's decorated to look like a bibliocodex!"

"Close, though well-done. A bibliocodex is a little taller and rounder. The decorations mislead us into thinking it's an ordinary luxe. Tap the top, out comes the light. These inscriptions, instead, lead us to a mechanism that unwinds this outer hull."

"Ah."

"Yes. And, if I may be so bold, I believe this to contain an ampule. Three to be exact." He glanced up at Artie, and his mouth transcribed what Artie would later describe as a devilish grin. "This, I believe is the Light of Amorth, the exterior a clever pun as to what is actually-"

"Get that thing away from me!" Artie shouted, turned, and tripped out the door before hiding behind a desk.

"Artie. Artie!" John shouted after him. "Artie, I've rendered it inert!"

John knew what he was holding that day. It's the only reason he could have hid it so well. Georgina Falterday knew that her father understood the devastating effects it could unleash. After years of trying to figure out how anyone knew the Light of Amorth was being inconspicuously stored in the Research Annex of Goodnight Hall, she finally figured it out. The mage who donated it had to have belonged to The Barbicans. And, they don't let anything go without knowing how to find it later.

She approached the school from the south and sat down on the grass hanging over the curb of the parking lot. The corn fields are gorgeous, but not a few miles south of where she was supposed to have landed.

"Help me," bleated a goat in front of her.

She stood, placed her hand out, and wondered how she was going to get the wyrm off the school's roof.

-JR Simmang