Category: fantasy

hanselman’s school of magic 1

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Prologue pt. 2

Every member of the high council was subdued when the joined to discuss.

Hanselman started the conversation with a small, sad smile.

“So, what do we do with our small magician?”

“She’s strong; she needs to be close to us,” Mage Cicero started.

“She needs a family,” Mage Maclean added.

“She killed her last family,” Cicero responded, sad, not combative.

“She’s only seven,” Maclean answered softly.

“Maclean is right,” Sesling interjected, his voice matching the somber mood of the room. “She needs someone to look after her, but I’m afraid it can’t be just anyone. She’s dangerous and she’s scared.”

“She doesn’t look it,” Cicero commented.

“But do not doubt that she is,” Sesling replied. Hanselman looked down at his desk where the water in his glass moved in waves he created in concentration. He looked up to fill the silent room with his decision.

“Mage Maclean, you should be the girl’s guardian.” Maclean pulled back.

“I know nothing of raising children,” he protested.

“But you know much of caring for people. The child needs a mage to watch her.”

Maclean nodded slowly, aware of the incredible weight of his decision.

“You cannot teach her,” Mage Sesling addressed. Mage Maclean tilted his head in question. “It is a conflict of interest: one wants her to learn, the other wants her safe.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Maclean answered.

“But you know that it is. I will teach the girl.” And Mage Sebastian Sesling left without another word. Mage Maclean was the last to leave the room.

The girl, Sandry, was standing outside as still as she had stood among the remains of her family and the three unlucky bandits. Her lips were pressed tight in what Maclean knew to be worry. She looked at him expectantly.

“Hi, Sandry,” he smiled. “I will be you guardian.” She responded with an
underdeveloped but genuine smile.

“Mage Maclean?” she asked.

“Michael,” he corrected. “Call me Michael,” he requested as he took her hand and led her gently away from her past.

hanselman’s school of magic 0

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Prologue pt 1 – Black Fingers

The esteemed Mage Hanselman noticed a signal assert itself on his charmed map seven years later than he had expected it to appear. There was clearly no time to be spared. He gathered his high council with no explanation, and the two young mages and two old traveled to a nearly uninhabited area of Norway. Mage Hanselman led them to a small house, barely visible under the snow. None, not even Hanselman himself knew what to expect, and none were prepared for what they would find.

Normally when confronted with the sight that met these Mages, one would expect a smell, but the smell had frozen away. Mage Sebastian Sesling was the first to investigate. He rolled over a severed head with his foot.

“There must be quite a story behind this,” he remarked. Mage Maclean pointed past the older Mage.

“Maybe she can tell us.” His voice was no more than a strangled whisper, for what the others had failed to notice until this moment was a girl standing, alive, among seven frozen bodies, one without its head. Mage Hanselman was the first to approach the girl.

Mage Maclean struggled with his stomach and his conscience, each telling him different and completely opposing courses of action. Mage Sesling studied his surroundings, picking things up and moving them around judiciously. Mage Cicero stood stock still, staring only at
the girl. Hanselman knelt next to the girl, successfully ignoring the arm with dead black fingers reaching out behind him.

“What is your name?” he asked softly. A normal seven-year-old might be screaming or crying or running or in fact be doing anything, showing any expression on her face. This girl showed none. This girl did nothing.

“Sandry,” she answered in a flat voice, her eyes falling nowhere, not on the bodies around her and not on Hanselman himself. Hanselman continued as softly as he began.

“What happened, Sandry?” The expression on Sandry’s face was unexpected and alarming to all but Sesling, who seemed more interested in the carnage than the girl. To Hanselman’s inquiry she showed only anger.

“I hurt them. All of them.” Maclean, watching the girl carefully, saw for a moment only an expression of pure agony, quickly replaced by anger, then, nothing. He glanced at Hanselman to see if he had glimpsed the same, but Hanselman would look nowhere but at the girl.

“Will you come with us, Sandry?” he asked. Maclean expected a wisecrack from Sesling about the girl’s lack of choice in the matter, but Sesling, who was watching Sandry in an uncharacteristically serious way, said nothing. “We can teach you not to hurt people. If that’s what you want.”

It was impossible to tell where she looked, if she looked anywhere at all as she considered, or seemed to consider Hanselman’s offer. After a few long moments, she nodded slowly and sullenly. Mage Maclean, still fighting the battle between his stomach and his heart, led the way out and Sandry began to follow, but as she crossed the threshold, Mage Sebastian Sesling leaned down and pulled a small, round ordinary-looking rock from the frozen-solid ground outside the door and held it out to Sandry.

“Never forget where you came from, girl,” he advised. She looked at him for a few long seconds and took the stone, sliding it into her pocket. But she never looked back as she left behind the only home she had ever known.

quarantine 5

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Neal could not say that it got easier. In fact, if you had asked him that Friday morning, he would tell you that it had gotten harder because now he was asked, ordered really, to join in. His boots were not as hungry as Acardi’s and he didn’t smile at blood like Mycha, but he had done his share of handcuffing, holding down, and trying desperately to steel his nerves.

He felt alone in his struggle against his conscience. It seemed every other guard was able to silence or even kill what he had been wrestling with since the moment he passed through this godforsaken gate. But it was Friday. They would free the fox today. He took small solace in that, but it wasn’t enough to stop the feeling that started as a small knot in his stomach and now had taken over his heart and his neck. That feeling was his to suffer alone.

quarantine 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

The Resistance, as it was so originally called, had started in the depths of this very compound with the few shapeshifters who roamed freely and the guards whose consciences ate away at their sleep. Viktor Nicklaus Hartmann had been a part of the organization since its inception, and it so happened that he was one of the guards whose conscience ate at his sleep. His conscience was a little less hungry these days, but it still nibbled at him sometimes.

The Resistance was so small and so secret that its resistance often went unnoticed. Viktor’s goal was not a revolution, but simply, as the name implied, resistance. His focus was on getting as many of these shapeshifters out as possible. He had connections on the mainland and many of them involved shifters he himself had freed. 

When he was thirteen, the government had decided that the large population of shapeshifters was not, as many had thought, a blessing or a gift from the gods, but a threat. Viktor had already started security school when they started Collection, as they called it, but if he had started any later, Viktor might not have started at all. As it was, he was now an accomplice of what he knew would one day be a crime against humanity; he was an accessory. To other guards his night-work would be unthinkable. To Viktor Nicklaus Hartmann it was unquestionable. 

It was this that he explained to Neal Grover, the new recruit. The boy seemed less scared afterwards. 

Still there was not much time; there was a new subject to extract, and the Resistance needed this Neal Grover. But he needed to be on board. Viktor walked out to where Neal stood in the empty space between the table and the door. He pulled a small pocketknife out of his pocket.

“Are you prepared to swear in?” he asked. The boy looked slightly apprehensive, but there was no time for that. The boy was what they needed. He would swear in. Viktor sliced his own palm first, where it had been cut many times before, once for each new member. He held out his other hand for Neal’s. Neal hesitantly held out his hand. Viktor wasted no time. He grabbed the boy’s wrist, sliced the palm, and offered his hand. They shook, one time curtly and firmly, and Neal had joined the Resistance. Acardi offered him a Band-Aid, which he gratefully accepted, but Viktor let his cut bleed. 

He folded his hands together and once more commanded the room. 

“Now,” he started, “we have plans to finalize.” He spread out a few ink-stained pages that were sitting on the table. “We must prepare for the immediate extraction of the subject know as Vulpes macrotis, the kit fox.” Neal opened his mouth and looked at Acardi questioningly. Was that the girl from earlier? Acardi nodded. Neal looked back at Viktor. “The full extraction, regretfully, can not be immediate, but we should be able to bring her to a secure location in the compound. Grover, Acardi, you will be taking the afternoon off that day. 

“Grover, your job is to bring the subject to the secure location and conduct the pre-extraction interview and lead the subject to the extraction location where Acardi will be ready with the car. Norv will show Grover the secure location where we’ll keep the subject. 

“As soon as they notice that she’s missing, they’ll sweep the compound, find nothing, and send out as search party. Once they do that, Grover, you’ll get a signal. I’ll page for you to come to my office. It’s close to the overseer’s but not too close. You’ll bring the girl in handcuffs, but explain to her that you’re there to help. Gods know, she’s gone through enough in the past week; she doesn’t need to suffer any more.” 

Viktor bit his lip and looked down at the table. And in that moment, Neal didn’t see Viktor Nicklaus Hartmann, fearless leader of the Resistance, he saw an older brother, a cousin, maybe an uncle; he saw someone who cared. Viktor shook off that moment an instant later.

“In my office she’ll change into respectable civilian clothes. From then on she’s your cousin, picking you and Acardi up for a family reunion. Extraction happens in two days, Grover, on a Friday. Be ready.” He stuck out his still bloody hand. “Can I count on you?”

“Yes, sir,” Neal answered. Viktor laughed.

“I like the green ones. They’re always so formal. That’s all for tonight. Dismissed.” And the group scattered through vents, doors, and ladders. The Resistance would meet again soon.

quarantine 1

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

The air of the cavern-like dining hall was literally filled with insects: butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, but no bees or horseflies. The ground was carpeted with small, harmless furry animals: rabbits, mice, ferrets, gerbils, and everything in between. But the benches were
also filled, with humans.

Mycha started to walk through the fray.

“This is the Harmless Animal Sector, pretty self explanatory,” she explained, as she dodged a butterfly and stepped over a rabbit. “We don’t have to worry about them much. They know that one foot, or antenna, out that door and who knows what could happen? If someone happened to swat them or, god forbid, step on them, it would be such a tragic
accident. But after all, only an accident, of course.” Mycha’s smile made the air seem colder, and harder.

Next was the Semi-Harmful Animal Sector. It was bigger and felt a little less homey.

They walked through multiple sub-sections: stinging insects, biting insects, venom-less snakes, wild dogs, birds of prey. There were even more in the wings, Mycha told him.

After that, Mycha, who smiled too often and too cold, took him to the Dangerous
Animal Sector.

And this section felt like a prison. The air was somehow even harder. The walls were grey cement, the only furniture was hard and metallic, and hardly anyone was around, especially not in animal form.

Mycha motioned Neal into a smaller hallway decorated with its own set of locked stainless steel doors. Mycha pushed him through a smaller door at the end of the hallway. It was lead to a stairway and a small observation room with a one-way window. Even before he looked, Neal didn’t want to see through that window. Mycha gave him another chilly smirk.

“They were waiting for you. How nice.” She held down the intercom button.

“Bring her in, Vanessa.”

“Acardi, call me Acardi. We’re not on a first name basis, Barton.” Mycha released the intercom and shook her head, still smiling.

“Oh, Vanessa, always so formal.” But Neal wasn’t watching Mycha anymore. He was
looking through the window, and he knew he would regret it.

The guard called Acardi came through a cleverly hidden door on the far side of the room, roughly pushing a girl, short and almost too thin to be healthy. Neal guessed that it wasn’t by choice.

From the high observation window, he felt like he was watching a movie. No, dolls.

He was watching a game of make-believe that felt all too real. [He dissociates here] He was far away, so much bigger than that small, struggling figure, but he felt so close.

But he kept his jaw steel and his face hard. Mycha was grinning.

“You know, it’s your first day, let’s get closer.” Neal wanted to shake his head quickly and back away, like the shy kid he had been just a few years ago, but he [suppressed the instinct and] instead he gave his sadistic colleague a curt nod and followed her down a narrow metal ladder that took them to the stage of the scene that had started just minutes ago. And Neal looked where he knew he would regret.

Acardi had forced or maybe allowed the short, thin, handcuffed girl to fall to her
knees. Neal pursed his lips.

“Those handcuffs look…different,” he noted. Mycha shrugged.

“Iron, stops them from shifting as long as they’re touching it.” Neal nodded but he
wanted to scream.

“This is the fox that’s been causing all the trouble,” Mycha smirked. “Used to be a
Semi-Harmful animal, now she’s a little bit more, and gets her own…special treatment.” Acardi kicked the girl with her rubber boot. The girl barely flinched. She looked so broken; Neal doubted they could break her anymore.

“No moving,” Acardi ordered. The fox’s eyes were clenched shut and she didn’t
move. Acardi nodded at the door. “Subject ready.” Neal wanted to shiver but he was already
cold, hard, steel. A man in a white lab coat came through the door with a petri dish, a
scalpel, and some tweezers. The fox’s back was facing Neal, so he was forced to look where
he would regret. The man pulled the stretched and bloody collar of her T-shirt down to
expose her shoulder blade. He made an unceremonious incision. The blood started again,
Neal supposed, to flow. The fox flinched her eyes shut tighter but made no sound, and she
did not move. The man was not done. He pushed the tweezers even less ceremoniously into
the incision and pulled. The flesh ripped. The girl’s lip curled up, but still she did not move
and she made no sound.

“Flesh sample,” Mycha grinned.

Neal knew his eyes were wide, but at least his jaw was still steel. He wanted to
throw up.

The flesh sample went into the petri dish and out the door with the man in the white
lab coat who was too bored for the blood that poured down the back of this small
unmoving fox-girl. Acardi forced the girl off her knees. The blood still ran on pale skin like
wax, but it was too fast for dripping.

Neal wanted to do something that he hadn’t done, or even thought about, for years, almost a decade. Neal Grover wanted to cry

viviocentrism + vampires 5

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You flick open your pocketknife and grip the handle. It’s two in the morning. Your friend’s breathing has finally slowed. You’ve eased him over, but the back of his head is not looking at you, not yet. In your other hand, you clench a wrinkled Wikipedia article. Your lips press themselves together as you read again: 

The alp also possesses an “evil eye” whose gaze will inflict illness and misfortune. Removing or damaging this eye also removes the alp’s malicious intentions.

The back of his head blinks at you. It then stays open, frozen as if in fear. You cough, bile catching at the back of your throat. You grip your knife even tighter by its sweaty hilt and pose it over a soot-colored iris.  

“It is our responsibility to preserve the most lives possible in any given situation,” you whisper, a reassurance. Holding your breath, you plunge the knife home to its gelatinous target. Your hands splatter black with blood. This is what you can do. This is what you have become. 

vivocentrism + vampires 4

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You leave the room to your friend’s triumphant slap on the back. 

“Told you I’d see you in semi’s.” You take his praise in your usual joking way, but you then continue to stare. Your gaze, though you don’t know it, holds sadness and fear in equal measure. Your friend pulls back and scrunches his face at you. “What’s your problem, man?” he snaps, like he has communicated nothing out of the ordinary. You shake your head. 

“Nothing, just…thinking.” He shrugs and turns away. And the back of his head winks at you. 

viviocentrism + vampires 2

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

You hear sirens and run. Within the characterless walls of the high school hosting this big-deal national tournament ring the sounds of disgust and fear.

Everyone is running away, but you, through some inexplicable self-destructive urge, run towards the sounds of fear.

You come across one victim and you come across another, and the only word you can think of no matter how inhumane is littered. The first you see is a man, his shirt ripped open at the front. His heaving chest marks him as still alive, barely. Below his collarbone and above his navel the man is bleeding, bitten, from his nipples.

Even through your senseless horror, you continue forward in a torrent unquelled. The shut-eyed, almost-dead victims continue to litter the grimy floor as you follow them to their source and some sort of explanation. Only the females do not bleed, but bite marks still punch in, dark purple around their breasts, clearer and deeper along the edge of the nipple.

You reach the epicenter in trance-like agitation. Your friend is there, amidst the ambulances and squad cars. You run up to talk to him, but he is in handcuffs, and the officers are pulling him back. He opens his mouth to you, blood spilling from his gums. 

“This is what could happen,” he warns you. “This is what I can become.” 

quarantine 3

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Neal was drifting in and out of sleep in his austere grey room with a bed that looked like a cot. He didn’t want to think about the scenes of that day, but they kept drifting into his sleeping eyes and kept insisting that he scream at them, silently, one more time. 

He was alone, waking and sleeping. Even Acardi had learned silence and inaction and in his silent screaming, he was alone. 

He woke to a scurrying in the vents. He groaned and rolled over. On top of all this, the compound had a vermin problem. The next moment, the scurrying seemed closer, like it was on the ground next to his bed, whatever it was. 

And a hand closed over his mouth. He meant to yell, but the hand was clamped tight over his lips.

“No sounds,” the reedy voice whispered. “It’s very secret. You act like a guard, lead me down the hall. I am handcuffed. But I lead you. Then you’ll sleep better. You’ll see.” A scrawny girl handed Neal a pair of iron handcuffs, then turned away and offered him her hands. His hands were shaking as he closed the iron over her thin wrists, but what choice did he have? 

Neal Grover only paused to pull on a pair of jeans and tuck in his white undershirt before following this strange girl down the hall, wherever she led him.  

She made him push her along a couple times so it looked like he was leading her, but it didn’t matter. The halls were deserted. Neal didn’t know his way well enough even to know what sector he was in when the girl stopped abruptly in front of a door that looked exactly the same as all the others and passed him the handcuff key. He freed her wrists and she opened the door with another key from her pocket.

She slipped in, barely opening the door, forcing Neal to edge his way through awkwardly behind her. 

The room was well lit and furnished with a round table and chairs whose occupants were of all shapes and sizes. Among them was Vanessa Acardi. A man with a beard that was barely more than stubble stood up and looked expectantly at Acardi. She nodded.

“He’s the one.” Neal tried to keep himself steel, but his eyes never obeyed. Now they were wide with alarm. The man nodded curtly at the scrawny girl who had brought Neal here.

“Good job, Norv, as always,” he complimented. Norv smiled crookedly.

“See. Rat’s are good for something.” She turned her smile sideways to Neal. “Aren’t they?” Neal was too confused to respond, and whether he would admit it or not, he was scared. 

“What’s going on?” he snapped. The man’s figure commanded the room as he looked at Neal with direct, but not harsh, eyes. 

“My name is Viktor Nicklaus Hartmann and this is the Resistance.”

quarantine 2

Sophi NielsenLeave a comment

Neal was sitting in the break room, still wanting to cry. He had no duties yet, so he was waiting, but he wasn’t sure what for. Vanessa Acardi came into the small room and got herself coffee as stiff as she always was, but that didn’t stop Neal, or the words that tumbled out of his mouth desperately, almost tearfully. 

“How do you do it?”  Acardi turned towards him and raised her eyebrows.

“Do what?” she asked.

“What you just did. When that guy just…” he shook his head, “and you just stood there.” The guard thought about it as she stirred half-and-half into a small styrofoam coffee cup. 

“Just like you did,” she answered.

“What?” 

“Like you did,” she repeated. “Stand still, say nothing, do nothing.” Neal shook his head.

“But how do you just let that happen, right in front of you?” Acardi opened her mouth, about to answer, but changed her mind. She paused with her eyes on this new guard, scared and desperate, and she looked almost sorry. She apologized with a sad smile. 

“You learn,” she said, and left.