Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition - Absurd Encounter with Fear Episode 2.1
Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition Chronicle:
Absurd Encounter with Fear
CAST
Aleister Marlowe: Dossiestep might be where he could find the missing archmages, but right now he is focused on understanding magick better.
The Cabal returned to LA after a long and mostly silent car ride back from Akbar Shadowchild’s cabin. They all agreed they would need to meet again to pursue their leads further, but all of them had day jobs they needed to tend to. After exchanging contact information they all went to their respective businesses to catch up on what they’d missed over the past day or so.
Reid was eager to get back to the theater and see how things were going. Aleister was stressing about his backlog of cases he knew was building up. Chuck had too much on his mind to really want much other than to be alone with his thoughts for a little while. They agreed to be in touch as they returned to their regular routines.
Aleister Marlowe headed back to his office. Anytime he left for more than a day there was always some incident where someone thought the Mystic Detective was a joke and or vandalized his office door; so it came as no surprise to him as he exiting the elevator for his floor to see the glass window to the door of his office covered with cardboard and duct tape. He barely took notice of the door as he headed in.
His secretary Janet Glass, an elderly blind and nearly deaf woman who had been his secretary since he opened. She was typing away at a mechanical typewriter.
“Oh look who decided to come in today. You are a lazy child some days. I’m not sure what to do with you,” she said without slowing her typing.
“Hi Janet, good to see you too. Any messages while I was out? Also, what happened to the window?”
“Just the usual cases: lady thinks her ex husband is haunting her new lover, a missing lucky shirt, and a handful of requests for contacting the dead. Some bad children came through and thought it would be fun to try to rob the mystic detective. You don’t worry about them though, Mrs Glass show them the error of their ways,” she said as a prideful smile spread across her wrinkled face, “Also that rotten lazy little child that digs through our dumpster is back. Probably looking for more hand outs.”
“Thanks Janet. What would I do without you.” Aleister said heading to his inner office without paying much attention to Janet as he flipped through the messages she handed him
The spartan decor of his inner office consisted of a large wooden desk and chair, a filing cabinet, and a low cabinet that served as his coffee station. The pot on the drip machine was half full and ice cold. He took one sniff of it, grimaced, and tossed the pot out the window. There was a yelp from below the fire escape where he’d dumped the coffee. He saw a young child jumping out of the dumps and shaking coffee off his coat.
Aleister started a new pot of coffee, but every time he started to look at the case work he had to get through he couldn’t focus. His mind kept wandering to the spirit possessed corpse of Akbar Shadowchild. Aleister felt unprepared for whatever was coming next. He knew there would be something big, but wasn’t sure what. He needed help to protect himself, or at the very least help put him back together if he got his butt kicked.
“Janet, I’m heading to meet a guy who has some information I need,” Aleister said as he was passing through the outer office.
“You keep your head clear. Don’t go being a foolish child and getting yourself into trouble,” Janet called after him as he headed down the hall to the elevator.
Aleister headed for 61st and Linden in Long Beach. It was Father O and the 61st Street Knights of a Lesser Boulevard’s territory. When he got to the Crossroads, Aleister called out with a loud howl; which was answered from the backyard of one of the 4 corner houses. Father O had a shipping container with one side open set up with a big chair for him surrounded by a few smaller chairs for the captains of his Knights.
“It’s been a helluva night O. I’m feeling wrecked. I am hoping you can help me with that,” Aleister said as he embraced the man.
“Father O can always help,” he replied.
“I’m trying to come to understand the essence of the living. I’ve spent too much time pursuing the dead and the spirit world, but knowledge of life essence still alludes me,” Aleister said as Father O guided him towards his shipping container.
“I can help you with this, please, step into my home,” he gestured towards a red wooden door at one end of the shipping container.
Father O opened the door for him, but gestured for him to enter the room first. Inside was a large circular room with hallways shooting off in all directions. Red walls and tapestries hung over the archways leading out. The center of the room had a low table with a large hookah on it surrounded by cushions on one side and a couch on the other.
Father O pointed Aleister to the couch as he went behind a glass counter filled with numerous bottles and jars of various herbs, chemicals, and objects. He began pouring ingredients into a mortar and crushing them all together.
“I can give you what you need to know life, but what can you give Father O as payment,” he said without looking up from his work.
Aleister began searching the pockets of his coat. He was only able to find his very empty wallet and a protein bar. It didn’t seem like enough of a payment.
“Well… I got this protein bar. I could transmute it into a valuable metal for you. Maybe a gold protein bar?” Aleister wasn’t sure of himself as he said it.
Father O looked at him from under a raised eyebrow, “Well let’s see your gold then.”
Aleister unwrapped the protein bar and placed it in the palm of his hand. He concentrated all of his focus onto the bar, reaching out with his mystic perceptions to feel the protein bar at a molecular level, and slowly began pushing his will onto the bar in order to affect the change he wanted. The bar began to bubble and shift in his hand. He felt the bar begin change slowly in his hand.
In the next moment the bar melted into a liquid mess, oozing out of his hand onto his jacket. Father O started laughing with a voice that took over the entire room. He continued to laugh as he walked over to the table and began preparing the hookah. After placing the contents of his mortar into the bowl of the hookah and placing a burning red coal on top, he stopped his laughter long enough to look up at Aleister.
“You are a funny man. Not everyone can make Father O laugh,” he said with another chuckle, “It’s your hit, magician.”
Aleister took the hose and began a slow drag while watching the coal glow red. Almost as soon as he filled his lungs with the smoke, he realized he had taken too large a hit. He was sent into a fit of coughing. Throwing his head forward trying to clear his lungs. When he went to lift his head again he found himself standing in an underground river. The water carried him swiftly downstream. He saw a cave ceiling above him as he struggled to keep his head above water.
The distinct roar of a waterfall was approaching faster than Aleister could swim away from it. He saw the tunnel opening into a large room and gave up fighting the current. As he went over the edge he was able to take the whole room in during his plummet to the lake below. The ceiling was covered with a huge network of roots. There was a beach surrounding this lake, but it was entirely enclosed within this enormous cave. There was a tower in the center of the lake.
After getting to the side of the lake, Aleister began to take in the entire situation. The ceiling’s network of roots looked dry and withered. The tower in the center of the lake stretched up just below the lowest hanging roots. He made his way to the top of the tower.
“Let’s see if we can make this tree bloom,” Aleister said, gathering his concentration and focus to aim it at the lake.
The water rushed up in a cyclone around the tower as it roared its way to the ceiling. It formed a large lake held together by the roots. The waterfalls began to fall up to continue to fill the lake on the ceiling. A bright white light began to wash over Aleister’s vision. Just before losing sight of everything, he was able to see a tree larger than a mountain blooming before losing it in the light. When his vision finally cleared enough to see where he was, he found himself laying on the ground in Father O’s backyard, but Father O and his Knights were nowhere to be found.
Aleister stood up and looked around. His head was flooded with information as he looked around. There were 4 mice living in the bush behind the house. A family of alley cats was just on the other side of the fence. The grass was feeling thirsty. The man next door watering his garden has arthritis in his left hand and too much coffee this morning. Aleister shook his head to clear it. He’d decided he’d procrastinated enough and needed to head back to the office to get some work done or he would have to give Janet another IOU and she hit him last time that had to happen.
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