CHAPTER TWO

Lacy threw her shopping bags on the couch as she entered her apartment. She had left Brittany’s feeling rather content. Even though she had spent well over 2000n, and she would probably never go anywhere to wear the tres chic clothing that she had bought, she had enjoyed buying it. Besides practicing magic, shopping was what she enjoyed most. After grabbing a bottle of water from the ‘fridge she activated the telecom. Her good mood evaporated as she listened to the message on it.

"Lacy, this is Rocky. I know we had plans tonight, but some biz has come up that I have to take of. I’ll get in touch with you soon. Sorry, see you later love," stated the voice coming out of the speakers.

"This seems to be happening more and more lately," thought Lacy. "I wonder which little bitch his "biz" is tonight?"

Stifling her disappointment and anger, Lacy gathered the shopping bags and went to her bedroom. After putting away the clothes, she grabbed her mageblade from the closet. She pulled the ornate cavalry sabre from its sheath and admired the beauty of the blade for a moment. The blade was made of a combination of meteoritic steel and orichalum. The black runes etched into the blade made the perfect contrast to the shining metal of the blade. The hilt was of meteoritic steel and just as shiny. The green emerald set into the pommel was worth a small fortune all by itself. Lacy lied upon the bed holding the sword by her side. After meditating a few moments, the last vestiges of disappointment and anger disappeared and she slipped from her body into the astral plane. The young mage first checked the wards that she had set up to shield her apartment. From the looks of them they would probably hold another week, then she would have to redo them. Lacy willed her clothing to change into black leathers and a black leather longcoat. White high-heel leather boots and a black scabbard, hanging from a white leather belt, appeared next. Putting the sword into the scabbard, she propelled herself into the astral space beyond the barriers with a thought.

While astral travel was rather taxing and had its own inherent risks, Lacy did it frequently. Her first thought had been to check up on Rocky, to see if he was being straight with her. That would be a hard task, and frankly she really didn’t want to know the answer at the moment. Instead, the young mage just observed the auras of the people in the street. Paying attention to the astral landmarks, she drifted from block to block, observing the different colors in the metahumans that were walking to various destinations. Idly she looked around to identify any active astral entities such as herself. Besides a watcher spirit sitting in a doorway to an apartment building, the astral space was devoid of such creatures.

Not knowing what the watcher spirit was charged with, Lacy kept a good distance from it, traveling down the street to admire the emanations of a group of children playing stickball in the street. She basked in the glow of pure happiness and joy that radiated from the gathering of kids. An orc youngster had just stepped up to hit the ball. His aura emanated a sense of determination that mingled with the contentment of socializing with the other children. Lacy then noticed that a spirit form had entered the immediate vicinity, and was making its way toward the group of ball players. The spirit emanated a vile, evil radiation. It appeared to be a sick conglomeration of hate, anger, jealousy, and rage. Drawing her sword, Lacy put herself in between the group of children and the approaching spirit.

"State your intentions," Lacy said in commanding voice.

The swirling mass of negative emotions replied, in a voice that reminded Lacy of rusty machinery being activated after long disuse, "Interfere at your peril, mortal. I have a mission to carry out and I shall."

Intuitively grasping that someone or something had sent this monstrosity to wreak havoc on these children, Lacy assumed an engarde position. She knew the spirit would be difficult to banish so she decided that disrupting it would be the way to go. She brushed away the sudden surge of fear and stilled her mind for the conflict to come. The spirit growled, the sound of a hundred beer bottles breaking. It lashed out at the mage with a tendril of its own essence, seeking to obliterate the sudden obstacle to accomplishing its mission.

Lacy deftly riposted the attack with her mageblade and lunged toward the nauseating spirit, skewering him and striking first blood. The spirit screamed a sound reminiscent of two fast moving cars colliding head-on. Lacy ignored the sound and pressed her attack. Her next few strokes missing the mark.

"Drek, this abomination is fast," thought Lacy, "What the frag have I got myself into?"

A bit of fear reentered Lacy’s mind as one of the spirits tendril attacks scored, ripping at her essence sending waves of pain shooting throughout her. This wasn’t some simple watcher spirit, what it was exactly, she didn’t know. What she did know was that it was evil, fast and quite powerful. She thought about running, but she couldn’t leave the children at the mercy of such a creature. Gathering all her energy, Lacy began a series of swift lunges and slashes scoring several hits on her magical opponent. Each hit brought another screeching wail from the spirit.

The spirit was torn. It knew it was being defeated. It wanted out of its present situation. But the compulsion to slay the children, especially the orc one, couldn’t be resisted. Rallying its energies, the malicious spirit began its final assault, on the mage that was obstructing it. It sent tendril after tendril of destructive force trying to obliterate the interfering mortal.

Lacy took the assault in stride. She knew she had the upper hand, and began to concentrate on parrying the spirit's attacks. She was looking for the opening that would end this combat and hoping the spirit would give it to her soon. Between the astral travel, the combat and the injury, she did not want to be here any longer then necessary. Her physical body would mirror the wound she had taken on the astral and she would need some energy left to heal the wound. After parrying a plethora of wild strikes, Lacy saw the opening she needed. Lunging deep, she drove the blade into the heart of the evil maelstrom of negative emotions. With a final grating screech the spirit dissolved, flowing back into the metaplane it came from.

The young mage looked around for any further signs of trouble. The playing children, oblivious to what was going on in the ethereal double of their plane of existence had continued their game. The young orc boy hit a line drive and had made it to second base. The earlier emanations of joy and contentment continued to radiate from the gathering. Lacy paused for a moment and bathed in the shining energies, and then propelled herself back towards her physical shell.

As she entered her body, Lacy groaned. A long gash on her upper right arm was bleeding profusely and throbbed painfully. Pulling herself up into a sitting position, she gathered the requisite energies and channeled them into a spell of healing. After a few minutes of maintaining the weave of the spell, the flesh began to knit itself back together. After several more minutes of concentration, Lacy realized that the spell had mended what it could mend. She ended the spell and looked at her handiwork. The gash had become nothing more than a light pinkish line. While the muscles were stiff, she could move the arm with a minimum of pain. Lying back down, Lacy felt the waves of exhaustion overcome her. Channeling that much mana had drained her mightily. Rest was what she needed now.

Closing her eyes, the young Japanese mage began to go over the recent events and try to put them into perspective. She had prevented a catastrophe, that she was sure. She had also interfered with someone's plans. Who was that someone? The creature she had fought was a spirit. But what kind was it? Toxic spirit of some type, perhaps? As she had never seen one, she couldn't say for sure. Who would have it in for a bunch of kids? Some bent magic user, or a terrorist group or… who? Whatever the case, Lacy could figure she had put her foot in it. It might not be a bad idea to reinforce the wards around her apartment and summon up a little help. She would have to be more careful until she figured out if she had pissed someone off bad enough for payback. That was a certainty.

"All that will have to wait," thought Lacy groggily, "The first thing I need is some rest."

Heedless of the blood on her clothes and bed, and not even bothering to sheath he prized sword, the young mage drifted towards sleep. As the fog of Morpheus enshrouded her, she realized that the watcher spirit she had seen, had been gone when the battle had finished. Where had it gone? Just another question on a list of questions that Lacy would be wise to answer.

Sitting at the table in his research room, Deweber received the report from the final watcher spirit. The elf's visage held a troubled gaze. It seemed that someone was going to great lengths to stir up racial strife in the Seattle area. It wasn't that racial strife was uncommon in the city. But Deweber was seeing a pattern, and he didn't like what he saw. Banishing the watcher spirit with a gesture, he turned his attention to the statistics that some of the Tir's best deckers had compiled. The model he saw was frightening. In the last three weeks, violent crimes against metahumans had increased about thirty-three percent. While it all seemed the usual random violence spawned by hate, the deckers had picked out the threads that made it obvious. These were strategic strikes aimed at maximizing unrest and turmoil among the metahumans of Seattle. To what purpose, no one had determined yet. At least some of the attempts had been foiled. Some attempts had been foiled by the Order's design. Some attempts had been prevented by independent people, who had chanced onto the scene. Deweber stood up from the table and made his way to the telecom, his azure robes rustling about his slender frame. After dialing the number, he waited for the signal that the line was secure. Punching in his code, he waited for the chirp that announced the machine was ready to record his message.

"Quincy, I hate to say this, but it looks like one of our erstwhile purist groups are up to something big. We need to call a complete convocation of the Order and soon. And get some people to research the attacks in the last week. Both the ones that failed, and the ones that succeeded. Especially the two, that involved the kids of that Telestrian suit and the attack on that orc politico's kid. Thank the stars that those two failed. Get back to me as soon as possible. And Quince, tell everyone to be careful, I have a real bad feeling about this."

Deweber walked back to the table and began to go over the data model once again. The more he looked at it, the more his sense of dread increased. He just hoped that they could figure out what was happening, and stop it in time.

In another part of the Seattle metroplex, in an old abandoned factory full of toxic waste and rusty machinery, a lone shaman howled in frustration. He had felt the dissolution of the toxic city spirit that he had sent to kill the child. He knew his patron would not be happy. He was not happy, himself. A lot of energy had gone into the summoning of that spirit. The toxic shaman screamed again in rage. Someone was going to pay for this. Whoever had thwarted him would suffer agonies undreamed of. The shaman promised himself this. The twisted shaman stalked back to his medicine lodge his mind full of thoughts of retribution.