Boy Sorceress Pt. 01

Since it was a weekday and I had seen no other hikers, or cyclists, I felt free enough to take off my clothes and towel myself dry in a patch of sunlight. I put on fresh undies and got dressed. I put my wet things into a bag and stuffed the bag into the bottom of the backpack, making a mental note to wash and dry them as soon as I got home. I carefully stretched out my muscles to keep them from getting sore the next day. I ate some more snacks and took a big swig of water. I hefted my backpack and was ready to go back down the mountain. But not terribly willing.

The promontory on the east side seemed to beckon me and I made the effort to climb it. The view was as beautiful as ever. The entire valley was laid out before my eyes. Fields where tons of wheat and corn had been grown were now barren and they looked like they had been painted all over the valley. The river ran along the horizon from my left. Right where Riverside was barely visible in the hazy distance, the river made a bend to vanish beyond the horizon. When I turned right, I could see the outline of Springfield to the south. Birds were lazily circling overhead, catching thermals.

As I enjoyed the view, I found my mind wandering from topic to topic. It seemed eager to make up for being serene during the climb. At length, it found a topic to sink its teeth in. Ashley and her betrayal. I could still scarcely believe she had done that. She had seemed like such a nice girl. She had begged me not to tell anyone. She had begged me to forgive her. As I had driven off to the hospital, she had screamed after me to not tell anyone about what she had so clumsily done. She had sworn to keep it a secret.

Why the fuck hadn't she kept her word?

It bugged me. It bugged me to annoyance. She had been the undisputed ruler of our school. Aside from being a perfect mix of cute, sexy and the girl-next-door kind of beautiful, she was also genuinely popular because she was nice to almost everyone. Everyone liked her. She never abused her power and that made her even more secure on the throne. She could have literally told everyone to mind their own business and they would have. An entire generation would have obeyed her wishes. Why did she start such a horrible rumor about me?

What else had she done? She had obviously sanctioned the quarterback and the rest of the team mocking me behind my back, or they never would have dared to do it. Did she order the other girls to stay away from me, or did they just keep their distance out of fear of my supposedly mutilated appendage and respect for her?

I squinted as I pondered that. Nah, if a typical teenaged girl heard a guy had a reattached dick, she'd want to be the first to see it and brag about it to her girlfriends. My senior year of solitude must have been Ashley's doing.

Ashley fucking Williams. I dwelled on her and lost track of time as I looked out at the valley. Everything looked so neat from up there. Neat and simple. I wished my life was like that, too.

I heard a strange noise and it drew my attention back to my surroundings. I didn't know what the noise was, but I looked for its source, all the same. I felt like I should find it. I turned away from the view and looked through the trees to see if the noise was coming from the clearing.

As I faced west, I saw that the sun was pretty low on the horizon. I hadn't realized it was that late because the cloud cover had broken up and moved to the north. The increased light fooled me into thinking it was nearer to mid-day than it was. It would be dark soon, perhaps in as little as an hour. I had started too late in the day, been too slow on the climb up and taken far too long to stare at the valley. Now I was going to walk down a mountain after dark and I didn't bring a flashlight.

To make matters worse, I couldn't remember when exactly I had last charged my cellphone.

I huffed. The strange noise came again and drew my attention, though I still couldn't identify it. I leaned forward to take a better look at the clearing. My mouth fell open when I saw the source of the noise. A man was shoving another man towards the center of the clearing. The shoved man was gagged and his arms were bound behind his back. The noise I had half-heard was his muffled voice, pleading for something.

As the bound man was shoved further, I saw the shover's hands. He was using one to shove the gagged dude and holding a gun in the other. My heart started beating so hard my whole body was shaking. Before I could even try to make sense of what I was seeing, more people showed up. They were all coming up the narrow, steep trail. I looked down the trail I had climbed and saw no one coming from that direction. I let out a sigh of relief. If anyone had been climbing from that direction, they would have seen me from a hundred yards away. My relief was short-lived since I realized that I would be easily seen by anyone on the clearing if I was to climb off the promontory and try to go down the way I had come up. I was stuck behind the tall trees hiding me from the clearing proper.

I stood stock still and prayed the armed people would keep going and march their prisoners up either trail that was on offer, leaving me free to call 911. Within seconds, my hopes were dashed, as the first man forced his captive down onto his knees. The others followed suit. There was a lot of them and they were all armed, their captives all bound and gagged.

They grouped their captives on the far side of the clearing. I took the chance to do a quick headcount. There were eight armed men and five armed women. Their thirteen captives were also eight men and five women. They all looked like average people and I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. Was this a drug war of some kind? The only thing of note that I could see was that all of the thirteen armed people were wearing pants, sneakers and backpacks, whereas the prisoners looked like they had been plucked from everyday life. Their expressions of mortal fear lent credence to that supposition. The thirteen armed people split into two groups. One stood guard over the prisoners, while the other began gathering fallen branches.

As the gatherers spread out, I realized they would soon be able to see me. I couldn't fight that many people with guns. I didn't know who these armed people were, but I was well aware of the fact that I was too big a target to miss. I couldn't escape them even if I had two good knees. My only option was to hide in the trees that stood between the clearing and the promontory.

I picked the thickest bare branch I could see and carefully timed my jump so the apex was on the branch itself. I jumped up onto the branch, barely shaking the tree, and grabbed two other branches for stability. I held my breath and froze, even as my heart went into overdrive. Each beat was painful against my jaw as I waited to see if anyone noticed my maneuver.

Time lost all meaning. My head filled with unspoken prayers to anyone, or anything, that would listen.

Just before I could pass out, I slowly exhaled and peeked with one eye. None of the thirteen armed people had seen anything. Three of them walked right under me as they were gathering wood. I was completely visible from the base of my tree. I stared down as if I was watching my own execution. No one looked up. I resumed breathing.

The gatherers started assembling the wood into a pyre in the middle of the clearing, some twenty-five feet away from my perch. My legs trembled as I drew in a big breath of relief. I gently eased myself into a sitting position and braced my back against the trunk of the tree. The backpack acted like a cushion.

I guessed I was twelve feet above the ground. I was obscured on every side of the world by leafy walls, but I could see what they were doing through gaps in the leaves. Feeling somewhat sure I wasn't going to be spotted in the immediate future, I slowly, ever so carefully, inched my backpack off one shoulder. I held myself steady against the trunk of the tree as I rotated the backpack around my other shoulder. I perched the backpack between my bent knees and fumbled with the side pocket's zipper. After a few tense seconds, I managed to undo the zipper and reached in for my phone.

Its battery was completely empty. Calling 911 was off the table. I soundlessly swore at myself for not paying attention and charging it up. My only option now was to run down the trail I had climbed up, break into an empty lodge that was some three miles away from here, and see if there was a phone there to call 911 with, or a CB radio, at the very least. Failing that, I needed to walk all the way down the mountain to get help. Climbing higher was out of the question. I replaced my phone in the pocket and carefully, slowly put my backpack on my back again. I took the chance to tighten the straps in anticipation of needing to run for my life in the immediate future.

I gazed up at the sky. The sun was going to set soon. I wondered if I should wait for that. The darkness might let me sneak away from the people with guns and get help, but it might also lead me to make a wrong step and fuck up my knee again. I didn't want to find out how long it took to crawl down Stony Mountain. I beat myself up over the matter, knowing that every moment I delayed was a moment those bound and gagged people below me got closer to whatever the armed ones had in store for them. Ultimately, I stayed on my perch, knowing I didn't stand a chance of sneaking away while it was still light out. I may have been a very fast linebacker, but I knew I couldn't outrun all the bullets thirteen guns can send my way. Getting myself killed didn't help those people kneeling and sobbing in the clearing.

Below me, the bonfire was lit. Each of the thirteen armed people grabbed a prisoner that matched their gender and age. They arranged them to kneel in a circle around the bonfire. The captors then helped each other bind their captives' legs. The sun was setting and I realized that the fire was burning bright enough to illuminate the entire clearing, including my escape route. Even without the bonfire, the full moon might be enough to aim a gun by. Worse than that, with the thirteen armed people standing in a circle, at least three of them were facing that way.

I was fucked. Either I spent the night on my branch, or I descended into gunfire and death.

After the prisoners were secured, the thirteen captors did the strangest thing. They holstered their guns into proper holsters on their hips. None of them stuck their guns into the waistbands of their pants, or a pocket. That was just weird. Each of them had a holster on their hip that I had completely failed to spot up until then.

The holstering of the firearms gave me some small measure of hope that I might yet get away in time to get help. A new rush of adrenaline struck me and I forced myself to visualize my actions, just like a football play. There were still eyes looking my way. The fire was still bright. The moon shone quite brightly. If I jumped off the promontory to run, my knee would surely give way and I'd die. If I tried to climb down...that's a several seconds long window of opportunity for someone to draw their sidearm and shoot me.

"Fuck," I hissed.

My futile deliberations ended when the thirteen began to chant. They chanted in some strange, guttural language and the sound of it made a chill creep under my skin. That's when I knew for sure that this was going to end in blood. I felt like shit, cowering on my perch as evil ran rampant down below me. I was so powerless to do anything about it.

The thirteen chanted as one, while their victims sobbed and struggled before them. After a short while, one of the thirteen, a fat, plain-looking, middle-aged woman, started chanting alone. The other twelve then repeated her words as one. They did this for a short while and then all thirteen chanted as one again. A little later, another of the thirteen took up leading the chant, with the others echoing his words back at him.

They went on like this until each of the thirteen had had a chance to lead the chant by themselves. It was always interspersed with all thirteen of them chanting as one. Their common chant changed and they began to yell it out loud. They drew knives and held them high above their screaming, struggling victims. The struggles were useless. The thirteen held their victims by the hair and were standing on the binds that tied their legs together.

I watched with impotent dread as their chant rose into a series of shrieks that drowned out the desperate, muffled noises of the sacrifices. I realized that I was witnessing a sacrifice. These were some crazy cultists and they were making human sacrifices. I could do nothing to save those people. I was so powerless, sitting on my branch, and I hated myself for it.

The chant turned into the thirteen screaming out the same word, over and over again, until they plunged their blades down. I flinched, but couldn't look away. The thirteen stabbed their sacrifices in the neck and then drew their weapons across, slitting their throats. I could hear the strangled gasps from where I was sitting. The thirteen pulled back on their victims' heads and blood came spurting out of their necks, pumped so hard it actually hissed as it was consumed by the roaring flames in the center of the clearing. The sounds threatened to make me throw up. I shut my eyes and drew slow, deep breaths through my nose, like I used to do to stop myself from throwing up whenever I got a concussion.

What happened next is very hard to describe with words. I'll give it a shot anyway.

Reality ceased to exist.

That's the best way to describe it. Given the benefit of hindsight, I'd say that I ceased to exist in reality, not that all of reality ceased to exist, but that was what it had felt like at the time. Like the Earth and everyone on it was gone. Like the whole universe had never even existed in the first place.

I existed, but only as a blueprint of myself. I couldn't think, couldn't feel, couldn't even panic at this new state of existence. All I could do was record it for future remembrance. There was no light, no darkness, no eyes for me to perceive either, even if they did exist. I had no body or anything. Time and space didn't exist for me.

At some point I was made aware of another being. This awareness of the other being had come in the form of me feeling like I was in a specimen jar that was picked up by a scientist for examination. Again, there was no jar, no scientist, it's just the closest I can come to explaining the sensation I had at the time. It was like when you get the feeling that you're being watched, only this was the most certain feeling I've ever had.

This other entity seemed surprised to see me and then proceeded to query my mind for my greatest desire. It didn't ask me what I wanted. It didn't allow me the time, or opportunity, to think about it and deliver my answer. It just inputted the query into my mind and my mind answered on reflex. It was more like I was Google returning search results, than like I was being asked anything.

Every desire I ever had was laid bare before this other entity, ranked by some unknown criteria. In a distant third place was my desire to not be a fatso anymore. Two other desires tied for first and second place and each of them far outweighed every other desire I had ever had.

One was my desire to never again be so powerless. The other was Ashley Williams. Her perfect body floated in my mind's eye, her golden hair trailing behind her, her shapely lips curved into a serene smile, her nails trimmed to non-existence, her tits firm and perky, her ass tight behind her wide hips, her slender legs ending in cute feet. I had never seen Ashley fully naked before and didn't know if this was the real Ashley, or just my idealized version of her. It didn't matter. I felt like I had an eternity to devour this vision that was playing in my mind's eye.

Without any warning, or fanfare, reality resumed its regularly scheduled service. I found myself right where I had been an instant ago. I was perched on a tree branch, overlooking the scene of a mass human sacrifice. There was one significant difference between regular reality, or reality 1.0, and the one I was in right now. Reality 1.1 featured a flower existing in my brain.

I'm not kidding, a flower existed inside my brain. It was in full bloom and its petals touched my gray matter, while its stem extended all the way down to the top of my spine. The petals were a deep, intense blue, the kind that painters call cerulean. On each of the petals was a symbol, traced in faint, glowing, green lines. I recognized a few of the symbols; the ankh, the yin-yang thingy, the ouroboros, the triquetra...but there were two dozen others I couldn't even begin to place.

Isn't that the weirdest shit of all time? The fact that I couldsee something that wasinside my brain?

Before I could properly deal with the fact that there was a flower occupying the same physical space as my brain, or the weird fact that I was aware of it, I was interrupted by a scream from the clearing.

It started as a scream, but it slowly turned into a howl that made my blood curdle in my veins. One of the thirteen crazies changed into a werewolf. I could see it plainly, since the bonfire was still going. His clothes ripped off him and he stood tall to howl at the full moon rising above the horizon. He was as tall as he had been in human form, but his body was now covered in brown fur. A shaggy, brown mane extended from the top of his head down to his shoulders, obscuring his neck and looking like a fur cowl. His torso was huge and his abdomen concave. His limbs were long and sinewy, while his face was that of a short-snouted wolf. A pair of big wolf ears stuck out from the sides of his head, angled upwards. To say that I was stunned would be an understatement.

Another of the thirteen changed into a humanoid feline creature that reminded me of the Kilrathi from the Wing Commander games. It had tawny fur and a face that was a cross between a tiger's and a human's. Its mane was just like that of the werewolf, only it was more tawny than brown. It stood up straight and I saw it was almost seven feet tall. Tight muscles encased its long limbs. The fur on its abdomen was white. It roared and I almost shit myself at the sound. It suddenly bounded away from the ring of firelight and disappeared in the surrounding darkness.

I had to keep my hoodie from slipping off my shoulders at that point. The legs of my sweatpants seemed to slip past my feet. I kept staring down at the clearing, too shocked by what I was seeing to pay my immediate surroundings any mind. I did notice that it felt like I was lighter on my branch. It wasn't bending under my weight as much.

One of the thirteen waved his hands around and suddenly started to levitate. Another, a pretty girl, laughed and mimicked his gestures to lift off the ground, too. They flew off into the night air and I couldn't see where they went for all the leaves around me. My gaze fell back down to the clearing. Two more of the thirteen vanished into the surrounding darkness with impossible speed.

Another member drew my eye as pale flames erupted from his hands and feet. The flames didn't appear to burn him and he pointed his hands at the ground. The flames turned into jets and he took off. His howl of joy echoed over the small scorch mark he left to mark where he had stood a moment ago.

Two large backpacks suddenly ripped themselves open and a bunch of metal piping flew out of them to hover in the air behind another of the thirteen. He casually stepped onto the hovering platform and said something I couldn't quite make out to the rest of the gathering. His flying carpet made out of tent stakes floated off.