“What could Master Eldrich possibly have been thinking?” she wondered. Serena Vervaine or Seven as she preferred to call herself when using her powers was currently wind-riding high above Wessex’s famous Dragon’s Gate, having just departed from her ‘interview’ with The Balance and was now heading back to Eldrich’s old tenement building in the University district of the city. The interview had been just plain weird, she thought.
When she’d first been sent to Claremont Academy Old Man Summers had asked Adrian Eldrich to be her mentor in the mystical arts. Now, Eldrich could be stuffy, even pompous at times, but he was also intelligent, insightful, brave, and quite charming when he wanted to be. She had grown used to his peculiar habits and she had to admit she had learnt a lot under his tutorage. Okay, under his Egyptian manservant Sallah’s tutorage initially, but as her power had grown, Eldrich had taken over more and more of her training.
Hardly surprising, Adrian Eldrich was this world’s Master Mage, a member of the Parliament of the Dawn, a Librarian Supreme and one of the Seven Ravens (in fact he was the current Merlin). He was usually all business, and took little time to relax and socialise, although he could sometimes be pried away from his dusty tomes for an hour or two, to show her how to shape reality with her magic. However, he always had something on his mind and at least two or three different things vying for his attention, so it was unsurprising that he seemed distracted and impatient sometimes.
He had recently admitted that he had been teaching her to help him to secretly stand guard over the thresholds into Earth’s reality, to repel the invaders that wished to magically reshape this reality to their own ends.
In fact, his house sat atop just such a “nexus,” a confluence of dimensional barriers and magical energies that threatened to spiral out and taint this world, if left unguarded. The house’s mystical wards contained the nexus for now however its presence made the building an unusual place to visit.
She’d always assumed that when it came time for her to train with a hero or team that it would naturally be with him so when he informed her that he’d arranged for her to be interviewed by The Balance she was seriously shocked.
What really surprised her though was Eldrich’s choice of who should be her mentor… The departures of Young Sam and Locker left only three members on the team, two of whom had links to the mystical world. So why had he suggested Mace, the magic-blind, unpowered member of the team?
She took a few seconds to consider the question. Akira was the most mystically powered and knowledgeable of the arcane, a reality-shaper whose meta abilities had combined with his mystical gifts but he relied primarily on his innate powers and summoning. His abilities allowed him to instinctively alter reality; to create his shields he altered the atomic structure of the surrounding air, hardening it into a barrier or he could transform it into a lighter than air platform to enable him to fly. He mixed this with his often shambolic knowledge of esoteric rituals, a disordered collection of rites, which primarily relied on summoning the powers and gifts of extradimensional beings of all shades.
Learning under him would be problematic and chaotic to say the least.
Interestingly, he was also of Vervaine heritage, through there was a dark edge to his aura that indicated he was directly descended from Khalid Maghribi Al-Zhedma’s own lineage; the darkness of ‘de éternel’ threatened to taint his soul. That did not match with her destiny. No, Akira was not a good match for her.
The other mystical team member was Banshee. Seven’s second sight confirmed that she was really a merger of Sidhe and human, surprisingly in equal partnership. She had never thought such a thing was even possible. Not since meeting Adrian Eldrich had she beheld such a pure manifestation of thaumaturgical energy in a human.
Oh, she had encountered her share of changeling, fey who had cast out the spirits of humans into the Dreaming and now inhabited their mortal husks but she had never encountered such a symbiotic partnership before. Banshee was unique and even more so in her mortal form where she appeared to be a hundred-year-old bag lady. Unfortunately, all of Banshee’s powers were inherent to that merger and therefore unteachable. The human side did have some mystical ability – primarily hedge magic of the Celtic tradition, nothing that she couldn’t learn for herself in time.
That left the archer Mace, a mundane without any mystical ability and Eldrich’s choice as her mentor. Why? Then she had a moment of insight. Mace had made a place for herself amongst such powerful supers by her training, her unstoppable determination and strength of will, which made her an extremely formidable opponent. She maintained her body at its peak conditioning and was a genius-Level Intellect. Those same traits were also essential for anyone training to become a master mage.
Perhaps Eldrich wanted her to be Mace’s protégée in order to develop those same abilities or was this a test to make her realise that if she wanted to stay with him, she needed to develop similar traits to Mace on her own? Only time would tell if the interview had been for real or another of Eldrich’s many obscure tests.
Before Serena could think about the situation any further, a graffiti tag on a half demolished wall below caught her attention. To her second sight, the off-yellow coloured mark radiated total evil.
Something about the sigil raised her hackles and she knew she had to investigate. Her dilemma over whether her internship would be with Mace or with Master Eldrich would have to wait until another time; there was something about the graffiti design that she found extremely threatening and troubling. It was time for this seventh generation witch to investigate…
Serena’s family history can be found at https://claremontacademy.uk/2018/03/25/school-history
Growing up Meta, UK-Style! 