How You See the Same Sky

Ksirafai have this funny thing about them where they think they’re creatures of shadows and mystery all the way up until you make them blush. Or catch them off their guard, but that option gets you scars in inconvenient places.

People are supposed to be afraid of them, they’re the secret police of our mortal enemy Order of Reason. Can’t be arsed to come up with a more creative name though I’d tell you. It’s what happens when you get too crazy about the Catholic church. Brain rot and poor choices.

You know who doesn’t make poor choices? Me. Which is when I made the decision to ‘betray the Hermetic Order’ and ‘hire a hit on one of my own’, I got a really hot assassin on my case who has a complex about magic.

Great day for me I tell you. The whole thing was really simple, you know. Do a quick ritual to find the sleazy shadow brokers, threaten to expose them unless they put their finest on the case, and take a nice walking tour of Venice waiting for her to show up.

She told me her name was Lucia, and really left no questions on the table. Said I wouldn’t get her last name, that there was to be no magickal funny business to be had, and showed utter shock and confusion at my plight. Why would a Hermetic hire an Order of Reason- ahem - Daedalan assassin to take care of their problems? Aren’t we opposite sides of a holy war in the marketplace of ideals or something?

Well other Hermetics are really annoying. I’ll give you an insider perspective - every pointy hat wearing spellcaster in our various chantries are all a pretentious sliding scale. On one end, you get a very well-meaning humanities major. On the other, every other sentence begins with “well, actually” - and that’s before they pull out their wands.

Love 'em all to death, though! Well, most of them. There’s a fair few that get on my case… which was why I was there in the first place.

Daedalans are a little less annoying. They’re fun! They rattle you around like there’s peanuts in your head and everyday I thank God for the opportunity to be manhandled in such a manner.

That said, they’re not very good at talking.

“So.. are you a part of a guild of sorts or are you a solo worker?” I asked, flipping a coin as I tried to lead her to the house that my dearly detested Cander was to be at later.

“None of your business, magus,” was the reply I got. Tough crowd…

“Huh..? Well, damn, I would’ve thought you would share something, trying to build a rapport here…”

“And why do you care?”

“Are we both not human?” I shrugged. “We need socialization to live.”

“Perhaps you do, I do not.”

Lucia’s an odd woman. She’s got long brown hair tied into a braid, eyes of a honey color that are almost constantly narrowed in an aggravated squint. I could tell that the outfit she was wearing that day was not her typical choice, restricting her movement. She also spoke with a tongue made of daggers, which while probably understandable, was not much appreciated. There was a way she carried herself, moved her body, that all seemed…practiced. It was doll-like in a way that I couldn’t describe.

“Geez...are all of you guys like this…? No wonder you’re all a handful of wet rags,” I sighed, at the very least trying to rile her up, get a reaction, something

“No, you just got the stick deepest in the mud with me,” she said in return, not even looking down to make eye contact with me.

“Do you talk to your fellows very often?”

“Only my brother, typically.”

There was an in.

“Ohhh, brother eh?” I put a skip in my step. “What’s his job?”

“He’s a scientist, an artificer. What’s it to you?”

“Curious! How dare I have such wiles, how dare I-”

“Yes how dare you indeed, my family matters are not the matters of clientele no matter the origin,” her voice was curt.

I sighed, rubbing my hand at the back of my head.

“I just wonder if the Order of Reason is anything like us, you know. Yes sure the Houses of Hermes all bicker and squabble with one another but in the end we all share the same dinner table and libraries, yeah?” I shrugged.

“You also share your magickal practice and propensity to abuse power.”

Not lying, that one still stings all these years later.

“Certainly, but not everyone of every organization is good,” I said. “And Hermetics don’t like bad Hermetics just as much as Daedalans do. Why do you think I’m risking my own hide with all of this? Cander’s a bastard who’s abusing the most sacred of our laws to get ahead and endangered many people in the process, and I will reach across the battlefield to give him the what-for he deserves. Which is a body floating in the ether for the spirits to have for dinner.”

I looked up to gauge a reaction, an endeavor that proved unsuccessful.

“...So it’s a matter of one’s ideals within the structure you’re in then any allegiances set in stone. Magick, Reason, willwork or wristwork, it's all really about the change you want to see in this world, and what you’re willing to do to make that change. I hope I’m at least demonstrating that - ah. Here we are.”

I paused, and Lucia looked down at me finally. The time for waxing philosophical being said and done, it was time for work.

“There’s to be a party here tonight, Cander’s to expose their kid to magic and make things difficult for all of us.”

Daedalans are really funny in the fact that they will perform magick out on a Thursday afternoon with the sun still out right in front of your wizard eyes. For all her talk, Lucia was rather bold, casting a spell before my very eyes and thought I wouldn’t see. I wondered if she even knew she was doing magick - Hermetic 101 teaches you not to cast in public lest reality itself comes crashing down on you.

That was the real difference between our two sects. To the Order of Hermes, magick is an art, something to practice and cultivate, always be engineering and make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands. To the Order of Reason, it was a skeleton key, something to use when it’s needed and then hide into their back pocket and deny such a thing exists.

‘Reason’ was my least favorite word back in those days. An excuse to demonize the art of spellcasting and call it science.

As much as I wanted to argue the point, my previous attempts at a discourse told me that I needed to invest in keeping my mouth shut.

After making such a nonchalant show out of wizardry, she turned to me and said she’d need the time to return home and prepare. Fine by me, why not. I had the time to twiddle my thumbs and commit some crimes against reality or whatever else she thought I’d do with the hours.

So I waited.

And waited.

And scorned myself for not learning any time spells.

And took a gondola tour around the city.

Twice.

Also made a mental note to ask someone when I got home about time dilation that I would proceed to forget when I finally did return.

Suddenly, it was sunset, and I had an event to attend.

Mortals don’t know how to throw a good party, but I was determined on being at the scene of the crime as it happened, if nothing else than to stall for time. Simple plan - I distract Cander, Lucia comes up and abuses his vice for carnal pleasures, Lucia does...well she did not elaborate on that bit, but then we go home, pour ourselves a glass of wine, and call it in.

Then Cander and I started talking.

Now admittedly - the man was always an utter scumbag. He’d been lying and cheating his way through the Order ever since I came to Venice. Whatever happened to respecting the works of the Order and keeping their secrets in the face of the mortal masses, I did not know. Money probably got involved, but invading private sanctums and pilfering sacred material that explicitly was designated to not leave those sanctums to give to the corrupt ruling class was more than a little much.

“Didn’t expect a bash like this to be your part and parcel,” I mused, leaning against the wall in a quieter corner of the main floor, near the stairs. Had I not captured him in the niceties of social convention, he’d already be up the stairs to the private quarters - where no else would be except him, the head of household, and his son, there waiting for the aforementioned master to lasso his son into some rite or another.

“Ah, you know how it must be, Alcmena, anything for the wealth of information the ruling class can provide,” his voice was wry, as if he were trying to get out of the conversation by being more smarmy than usual.

“Well sure, but I mean in this instance. Why these stiff-collared snobs?” I tilted my head in mock confusion. “I just sneaked in here for the food.”

“Ha! Well, you won’t believe,” he laughed. “In exchange for the Ars Demonica grimoire I swiped from some poor sap’s shelf , I basically got his son as free labor.”

Now I knew this. I knew that that book was missing because it was taken from my library. I didn’t tell Lucia, or her employer, that it was a Grimoire of Summoning Demons, because I’m not telling Daedalans that I have that, but I knew that it was. Because I was holding onto it to prevent this very exact scenario. But I was still dumbfounded.

I began to tap my foot in a rhythm, gritting my teeth as I’m really unsure whether to let my blood boil or be in utter surprise of both what he just admitted, and the fact that he didn’t keep track of who he stole from.

Deep breath. I can’t cast magick a raging ball of fury.

“You mean the grimoire that’s been missing from my sanctum for the past week?”

“Ah-”

“The book that goes into detail on how to summon a demon? The one I’ve been keeping on request of the Order so infernalists don’t get their hands on it and copy it? That one?”

He grimaced. I snap, causing the sound of a thunderclap near the orchestra to serve as a distraction. Can’t have anyone following this clown show.

“I’d start fucking running you pathetic rat bastard-”

So I lied. I’ve made one bad decision. And that wasn’t waiting for the actual assassin I hired before doing in what modern terms is called ‘going absolutely batshit crazy’. In my defense, my feet moved on my own, and I did start screaming like a banshee on the hunt without me realizing. As I was processing what was happening, I was already running after the bastard ready to throw him into the deepest reaches of hell myself. I pulled out my wand. Then I heard her voice.

“Do not-”

In a moment I skidded to a halt, coming to the realization of oh, right, there was a plan. The plan to murder Cander is an orderly fashion. That plan. The plan I had been ignoring this entire time.

That one.

Lucia seemed like a dancer in the air, moving through it like she was born to do just that. Her glove flew off, she grabbed Cander’s cloak mid-air, and I watched as she turned it to iron chains in her grasp. He looked me in the eyes as she pulled, and his last words were accusations.

“And you call me a traitor-!”

Then she hit the wall and I heard something snap. Ouch.

Corpses are not a sight you get used to even after dealing with the undead and literally asking for a hit on the corpse you are now faced with. So the reasonable thing to do is launch oneself into cleanup detail and have the spirits handle it. Even so, I am a human with human sensibilities and human reactions. So I only had one word to say.

“What.”

“I could ask you the same!” her breath heaved as she sat up. “What was that stunt for?” “Had to send a bastard to his maker,” I said, not about to admit a moment of weakness. I began to stir a portal open - nothing too crazy. Then she had some bright ideas.

“What did I say about not doing magick for this-”

And that’s where I drew the line.

“You broke your own rule, got plenty of stunts up your own sleeve, eh?” I snapped back a little too fast. She then sputtered about ‘practical sorcery’ and other fun lies you can tell yourself, and I had started thinking.

She’s really good at this, huh.

I said what I did in a teasing manner, nothing more than poking fun at the strict logic-and-reason assassin girl watching me kick a body into hell.

Looking back on it though, I’d call myself a prophet. I’ll accept that title.

“You’re quick with that ‘necessary sorcery’ though, chain-iron maiden. Ever thought about being a Hermetic?”