Daddy Does RP

[DaddyLes]

I'm not much of a roleplayer, so I figured I'd start with some storytelling, by way of blog. I'll post it here, too, since Aidan Temple is my DJ's persona.

***

I used to believe in magic.

'Solitary practitioner' was the term, back in the day. Back before the Internet, you were pretty much by yourself, if you didn't have a mentor, or a bunch of like-minded friends. The old adage of a mentor arriving when you are ready for them is true enough, but I didn't need one for very long. Once I had a firm grounding in the fundamentals, I moved on and made do by myself. Too much dogma for my taste, and far too controlling. But she did give me a solid base upon which to build, and for that I should be grateful. She taught me to breathe, and through breath, to focus. To meditate. Through breath, she taught me to draw power, and in the drawing, learn to sense it. And beyond sensing, to control. To shape.

Four years later, I had enough skill to get by. And I did pretty well for myself. With a magician's cultivated good fortune, I had more than enough money to get by. Events conspired naturally in my favour, both the result of my disciplined attitude - for a disciplined mind attracts the circumstances it allows itself to dwell upon - and from the workings I performed from time to time. And with time, I needed to rely on those workings less and less often, as is normal for a magical practitioner. I understood that magic is a thing of subtle influence, and I utilised those influences to get me what I wanted out of life. Better grades at school than I had earned, for example. A string of relationships - both long-term and short - with girls and women who found themselves attracted to me in a way they weren't attracted to other men. An edge over other job applicants. Stuff like that. By the age of thirty-two, I had what I wanted out of life, including a career that balanced ease and lack of responsibility with the kind of wage I wanted, and a wife and a baby daughter who I loved with all my heart.

And then a bug crawled in my mouth while I slept, next to my wife. While our baby girl slept between us.

You know some of what happened next. The onset of the power. The loss - and then learning - of the rudiments of control. I left at the first sign, and I stayed away until I could consciously control the raw power that my newly-transformed body wicked from the very fabric of the universe. Then I focused on learning to control it unconsciously, until I knew that control wouldn't slip from my grasp when I got distracted or angry, or when I was asleep. Being a magician helped with that. I already understood the fundamentals of control and intention, and I had a handle on how to shape energy to my will, albeit on a far smaller scale. But the mechanism is the same - it starts and ends with the control of one's own thoughts, until they are as reliable and dexterous as the fingers on your hand. With my head start, it only took a week, and throughout that time I stayed in touch with Christine. Christine, who already knew about and believed in magic. Christine, who trusted me, as always, to do what was right for our family. Christine, my love.

But on my way home, I got clipped by a car, and knocked into the path of a truck. For us, that first death is often the product of violence, but for me, it was just bad luck. The worst luck, for the man everyone praised for having only good luck. For the man who cultivated luck like a gardener cultivates a garden, with skill and patience and a little finesse. That first death. Terrifying for a moment, and then exhilerating, the pain over and done with so fast it's as though it was never there at all. Retaining consciousness the whole while, and suddenly finding yourself in the drowned world. That magnetic, overwhelming pull from the nearest anima well. The colours flashing back into existence. Clothing yourself with new flesh as easily as thinking, almost without any effort at all. And then you know. You don't believe, you know. You are immortal. You did not just cheat death, or somehow avoid it. Physical death is now impossible, because you are no longer a being dependant on a physical body. Your spiritual self has been so empowered that your physical self is just no longer relevant. It is only a means through which you access the physical realm, and unlike your former self, if your body dies, you create another in an eyeblink. There is no second death now. There is only death, and inevitable resurrection.

For my Christine, that was the limit. Magical influences were just a part of life. Dangerous, physical manifestations of power were a new part of that life, but a part nonetheless, and she could live with those. As long as they weren't a danger to our baby girl. But not this. Not immortality.

To her, the body that was destroyed at the moment of my resurrection was an essential part of me. When I got home,sShe cringed away from me, and started to cry. I told her what happened, and then she told me not to touch her. Not ever again. Her husband was dead, and I was something else. This was not the body she'd made love to so many times. These weren't the hands that had held hers on our wedding day.

And I wasn't the father of her daughter. All the biological material that made me, me, and that I shared with our beautiful little Mia, was gone. I was just shaped like him.

She'll be turning four soon.

-Aidan

[DaddyLes]

The occult community is full of excuses. That's one of the reasons I always avoided it, especially online.

I have heard a demonolator (yes, that word means what you think it means) complain that she is having a bad day, because of "bad planets", without a trace of humour or irony in her voice. She would have you believe that, because of the position of the heavenly bodies, she was feeling anxious and sick. I've also seen empaths - more than one - complain that they have trouble with big crowds, because of their psychic abilities. And don't even think of mentioning that "Mercury is in retrograde" bullshit in my presence.

This kind of talk means one of two things:

1. They somehow managed to dial-up their sensitivity to the unseen world without taking any steps whatsoever to learn to control or mitigate said abilities - in which case, they are fucking useless, or;
2. They have emotional issues, and are using their "abilities" (imagine me really obnoxiously punctuating in the air with my fingers here) as an excuse not to deal with them - in which case, they are fucking useless.


A competent magician has a handle on option 1, because he learned to control his abilities as he learned to develop them. Or she. I'm a he, so I say he. Go hide in your safe space if that bothers you. Option 2 is not an issue for said magician for a similar reason. Control. The exercises that help a novice mage still his mind and emotions so he can properly meditate are uncannily similar to the exercises a psychologist will teach an anxiety patient to help them calm their mind and body during a panic attack. There is a reason for this. Both the anxiety sufferer and the budding magician needs to learn to calm themselves on cue, to silence the mental chatter, and to adopt a state of mind that is conducive to the outcome they need. Control.

After a few months of practice, you no longer hold a mental count to measure the in-breath through the nose, the pause, the out-breath through the mouth. You no longer use the trick of occupying your mind with the words of a mantra, or the pause between words to trick your mind into waiting silently. Two slow, even breaths are enough to trigger the habitual response of calm. You continue to breathe, slowly, evenly, and then you forget all about your breathing and the mental stillness, and you get to the work at hand. You may remember a similar trick, if you've ever read Dune. It's a good trick.

It's particularly good if you're sitting on the dirty carpet of a motel room, about to step through a portal into a place where the air stings your skin and burns your lungs. And don't even get me started on what that shit does to your eyes. My first time in the Hell dimension, I spent the whole damn time blinking away tears. I got my first look at a succubus' mesmerisingly jiggly goods through a film of tears. But hey... saw tits.

I digress. You get used to it. It's amazing what you can get used to.

A neopagan will cry actual tears because Mercury is in retrograde, and that's why he has a flat tyre, his spare is bald and he has no cash for a taxi. And is probably too fat to walk very far. Meanwhile, for us, physical pain stops being a major concern after your first couple of resurrections. When you start killing monsters for fun, profit and advancement, it's a given that something bigger than you is going to bite you. Or crush you. Or hurl you into a rock face (there's a story there), or when a Templar starts a friendly conversation, then shoots you in the face anyway (there is also a story there). Deep Callers have a nasty habit of trying to stick their barnacle-encrusted dicks in their victims, too, and they aren't terribly choosy about gender (there is no story here... do not ask how I know this).

But when the threat of permanent, debilitating and agonising injury is taken off the table, a little short-term pain starts to matter a whole lot less. You are going to be hurt - badly - in the course of your duties. Before long, you start getting all care-factor-zero about it, and start getting hurt very badly in the course of a fun night out, too. It just stops mattering. Just a temporary sensation that will be over soon. As a matter of fact, I know a girl who was once torn in half after I missed a heal (I am a very bad healer) and when her torso hit the ground she groaned, rolled her eyes and gave me the finger, before resurrecting nearby. She doesn't even bother to scream anymore.

I'm digressing again. Two breaths are enough to bring the surface of my mind to stillness. Continuing to breathe, but not really noticing that I am, my muscles automatically begin to relax. I don't feel fatigue anymore, of course, but the weight of concern falls from my shoulders just the same. I am relaxed and alert. My focus is aimed inward, and everything is slowing down. I sink deeper for a moment, allowing myself to switch from alpha to beta, and then the drop to theta. Then the sudden spike to gamma and back, flipping a few times as I align myself with my purpose. I bring myself back up, and my attention switches outward, beginning to expand. Touch. Grimy carpet beneath me. My clothes are pretty filthy, but not a concern right now. My next res will take care of that for me, and there's a good chance I'm going to die soon. Not a concern. The cold exists, but cannot touch me in any meaningful way. Also not a concern. The currents of air in the room around me. Those touching my skin, and those touching the walls. The floor. The ceiling. I ignore the currents of energy, seething in this place, and laden with unearthly gunk. It can touch me in a meaningful way, but there's nothing for it right now, so it is not a concern. Bit by bit, I open up. Notice things. Become aware of them, and maintain that awareness as I expand to become aware of more things. Bit by bit, I allow my mind and senses to encompass all, within the stillness. This is mindfulness. It is also a good trick for what is coming soon.

My pistols - invisible, vast in my inner vision and immensely heavy. My shotgun on my back, also unseen, but known.

I'm almost done acclimatising to the half-nude sensation of my damage talismans. There was a time in my life when a talisman was a carefully crafted piece of occult artwork. Painstakingly drawn on virgin parchment (yes, I mean animal skin, not paper) at a precisely calculated time on a particular day. Or even etched, engraved, scratched or otherwise scrawled on to a piece of a particular type of metal, which was purchased without haggling, etc, etc, etc.

It wasn't too many years after that that I was scribbling equally effective tallies on a post-it note, and hiding it in a drawer so I could forget about it and let it do its work. Or sticking it to the inside of my wallet, to keep it fresh in mind, depending on the type of working. Needless to say, none of these were a patch on the comparatively "weak" items I walked out of Illuminati HQ with after my first visit. And those trinkets were nothing compared with the beauties burning against my skin now. Each one huge in my inner eye, brilliant and drawing crazy amounts of power. I'm going "glass" tonight. All brute force, and no protection. Exposed to injury, but wielding the hand of God. Even the symbol scrawled with invisible ashes on my forehead, blindingly powerful.

Ten minutes is all it takes. My companions don't mind. They know me. Two of the four are also sitting cross-legged, following my example. Preparing. Maggie, our tank, grins down at me when I blink away the leftovers of the light trance. I grin back. And petite little Maggie, who knows me best of all, doesn't comment that my smile doesn't reach my eyes. Maggie, who doesn't even scream when she's ripped in half by a single swipe of the Ur Draug's immense, fish-stinking paw, lets her grin relax into a reassuring smile. She squeezes my shoulder.

Daddy's off to hunt more monsters, Mia. And though these ones aren't trying to destroy the Earth - the original event, the first "run" through their particular part of hell forever froze a piece of time that can be replayed over and over by those who can open the door - I'm here for a reason. I can run through that same piece of hell over and over, and kill those same monsters, time and again. And take back more resources each time. More experience. More power.

And one day, when I've become so powerful that no beast can stand before me - when no faction or legion or secret society can challenge me or hurt those I care about - I'm coming home. For you.

My palms are slick against the grips of my pistols. Not fear. Excitement. Now is not the time for calm. This is why I have skateboard tape on the grip panels, anyway. Thanks for the idea, Clarice.

I take a final slow, deep breath through my nose, and let it hiss through my teeth. My lips curl back, and my chest starts to heave. Two breaths through the nose, slow and even, are enough to initiate the response of calm. The hissing out-breath through the teeth and two gulped inhalations are enough to fire the forced adrenaline response. The shakes start. My eyes well up.

I'm no longer looking at Maggie, but I know the smile isn't touching her eyes anymore. Doesn't matter. If I can't die, she has nothing to worry about.

And neither do I.

The portal shrieks, and I charge forward. And then I'm shrieking, too.