"The boy is gone." Lillian Plow slammed her palms onto the table, and laughed. "The boy is gone!"
A meek looking woman, haughty, and smug, smiled at Lillian. "Do no harm."
"Do no harm?" Lillian laughed sharply, almost cackling. "Beatrice MacAllan, you mean and if it harms none, do what you will."
"You're talking about lashing out against the order. It is suicide."
"Is this the opinion of the circle?"
Lazarus Harmon nodded. "Lillian Plow, we are bound by our faith. We do no harm... and those of us who will, suffer."
Lillian huffed. "Please. The law of threefold return? Hah! Fuck Isis. Fuck the horned god!"
"Warlock! Traitor!" Amos Caverly stood, fists balled at his side.
Lillian stood, climbing onto the table, and standing. "Mirth. Reverence. Honor. Humility. Beauty. Compassion. Beauty - beauty? Strength. Strength! What do any of you know of strength?"
"Get down, Lillian Plow!"
"Lester Fairchild, hypocrite! I will not! Wicca... Druidism. Shamanism. Rules! Laws! Whose laws? Yours? Theirs?" Lillian pointed out a window. She leapt from the table to the floor, raced to Beatrice MacAllen, drew a dagger, and put it to her throat.
"Lillian Plow!" Amos began to move, and Lillian pressed the blade into Beatrice, drawing beads of blood.
"It is better you should rush upon this blade, than enter this circle with fear in your heart! Are you afraid, Beatrice?"
Beatrice tried to swallow, could not, and whimpered. Lillian dropped the dagger on the woman's lap.
"Fear. You're all afraid. If I killed you now, no one would stop me. Not Isis, or your horned god. None of your heathen gods will protect you, and if so, where are they?"
The circle sat in silence.
"Magic. Magick. It is an ocean! Your gods let you sip from trickling brooks, and taste it, but who among you found wealth yet? True power? Who among you are not afraid?"
Silence.
Lillian paced around the table, passing Beatrice, and Lazarus. When she arrived at Amos, she stared him in the face, staring up at his height. "Amos Caverly, sit down!"
Amos obeyed.
"We are the victims, hiding in the shadows from their Order! Their limitless wealth, and resources! They believe they have power, but will not - and cannot - wield the power at our command! Will you sip from the trickling brooks, or will you follow me, and take power? Real power?"
Her circle cast their eyes down at the table.
"Get out. All of you. Let them hunt you. Kill you. Go. Run! because if they don't kill you, you're going to wish you were dead when I find you."
✟ ☧ ✟
Lillian stood between the two winding tower - towers of dizzying height - tusks that led down beneath the glassy black sands of the desert to The Dead God, and in them, the tower's keeper. With him, within those towers, the black source, an awesome power not meant for her world.
In it was an ocean of magic, it's endless depths infinite.
Lillian closed her eyes, and opened them.
Greasy red-black light surrounded her from within the chamber of The Keeper, and in the chamber, the keeper himself; a frail looking old man in a threadbare tattered robe with wild, wispy white hair, and a haggard beard.
"Lillian Plow." His voice was old, dried parchment, rotting flowers, and dead moths. His voice was grinding glass, and tearing iron.
Lillian dropped to her knees, her incorporeal body shaking uncontrollably.
"You want the ocean. You want the seas, and the sky, and the stars."
Lillian whimpered.
"They are yours." The keeper flickered out of existence, and appeared at her side. As he knelt, his bones cracked, and popped, shifting beneath his robe. "Power like this comes with a price."
"Give it."
"It is not a gift. This is a curse. Your curse." The keeper placed a hand on her back. He produced a black shard of faceted glass in his other hand. "Your soul will scar, and bleed. Unhealing lacerations what will drive you onward toward madness. What will be eventually your wholly undoing."
Lillian willed herself to look up, and stared into the wild eyes of The Keeper. "Give it."
The keeper drew his hand from her back, taking the shard into both hands.
Outside the towers, Lillian's screams echoed endlessly into the infinite span of the Dead God's realm.
Nobody heard her.
Nobody cared.