1 - Invocation of the Silver Dragon - (Dragon v Silver)

[Kaez]

Invocation of the Silver Dragon - (Dragon v Silver)
Constraint: The following must be the beginning to your story, verbatim:

"Are you sure that's..."
"Yes."
Fumbling through stale, yellowed pages. Creased corners, bookmarks, notes in the margins. "But that's not what Crowley said in the Divi-"
"Crowley was wrong. Shh."
Stammering. Twitches of the brow. A hard swallow, a mouth hung open. Restless fingers, flipping pages. "No, but, Crowley..."
"Fuck Crowley. This is different."
Incense, Egyptian musk. Solomon's Triangle, pentagonal rings and runes of the Will. Thelema invocations. Latin and shadow. Samadhi and vibration.
"Oh God. Oh, God, God."
"No. Not God, Alan. Not Crowley. This is -- oh, yes. Yes. Grace, yes!"

[JMDavis ((Silver))]

"Are you sure that's..."

"Yes."

Fumbling through stale, yellowed pages. Creased corners, bookmarks, notes in the margins. "But that's not what Crowley said in the Divi-"

"Crowley was wrong. Shh."

Stammering. Twitches of the brow. A hard swallow, a mouth hung open. Restless fingers, flipping pages. "No, but, Crowley..."

"Fuck Crowley. This is different."

Incense, Egyptian musk. Solomon's Triangle, pentagonal rings and runes of the Will. Thelema invocations. Latin and shadow. Samadhi and vibration.

"Oh God. Oh, God, God."

"No. Not God, Alan. Not Crowley. This is -- oh, yes. Yes. Grace, yes!"

The heavy incense began to stir and twist and warp. Shadow flashed into dazzling light and deeper darkness. At the center of this stood a woman, pulsing with power, blonde hair whipping about her. The thick robes she wore billowing outward as her the light blossomed from within her. “I… I can’t contain it…” her voice was both hers and not, it was as soft as a whisper and as loud as a gong being struck right next to an ear.

“J-Just… Just r-release it G-Gra-“ Alan began.

“No!” Richard overrode his friend’s frightened words. He stood, the same robes that Grace wore adorning him as he moved into the maelstrom that she was tenuously commanding. Alan just stared, his face pale or painted a vomitous, lumisicent pink – or even more wilder colours as Grace shook with the power. “Concentrate, Grace. Remember. Remember what I told you. Remember what I taught you. Focus,” his words trailed off – babbling out nonsensical Latin mingled with ancient Sanskrit and the occasional dash of Enochian. The wild power which filled the room began to calm, the tempest ebbing and ebbing until a pulsing, soft glow was all that was left alongside the gentle flickering of the barest breeze. “Yes, brilliant! You have it, Grace! You have-“

“Grace isn’t here right now…” the voice was horrible. It was the sound of a thousand starving stomachs, it was a chorus of hunger eternal. It was most decidedly not the lovely sounds of a nineteen year old history major from France studying abroad in England. Her head slowly turned to face Richard. Her eyes – no white, no pupil nor iris – had gone a sickly yellow. The line of her mouth seemed to be far too wide for her face as she – it – stared into Richard’s eyes.

The young man stumbled away from it, his triumphant countenance suddenly gone pale. Though the thing that was once the willowy young blonde was far too busy examining its body to notice. “Hmm…” its purr was the rumbling of a person close to vomiting. It stared at the slender fingers of its pale hand as if affronted by the normalcy of fingers, “So… weak!” it spat, quivering with what seemed to be rage as it felt every inch of the girl’s form. “I cannot even begin to remake her how I wish!”

Alan swallowed, “Who… what…w hat did you do with G-Grace?” His voice shook, sweat was pouring down his features as the visage of what-was-once Grace turned to look at the quivering, overweight thing that dared to speak to it.

“Oh… she’s still here, her consciousness is…” a tongue that seemed far too long slithered from between the thing’s lips, dragging down along her neck. “Hiding deep inside this delicious body of hers… oh, it has been quite long since I tasted this,” a shudder of euphoria passed through her body. Those pus-yellow eyes opened to look down at the two men, “Or maybe… that deliciousness is the two of you I taste on her?” The nervous looks between them caused burbling laughter to erupt from the creature, “Oh my… how naughty of you meatbags…” It took two steps forward before a flare of energy sent it reeling back – a reptilian face formed of shimmering silver light let out a soundless snarl at the creature before vanishing once more.

The brief flare had both Alan and Richard cringing away in fear, before their eyes opened to see the recumbent form of Grace laying flat within the faint markings of runes – etched painstakingly from a thousand cultures and layered with dusts that had cost Richard an arm and a leg, and Alan his a heavy mortgage against his familial estate. Ragged gasps, more the panting of an animal, left her shuddering form. Bonelessly, she arched upward, staring at the two frightened humans. “Oh… oh my… you I see I was not your intended target…” that burbling laughter, “Oh you foolish mortals, this cage was intended for something far more powerful than I.”

Alan and Richard looked to one another, before Richard tentatively spoke up. His voice sounded reedy and quaked far too much for the otherwise cocky young man, “Who – what – are you?”

That gaze focused on him, looking at him as if he were nothing more than a delicious meal on display. “I am the Great Devourer, the All-Consuming Hunger. I was the terror of Ekachakra in ancient times, times when you little morsels were a far more fearsome foe than you ever could be now.” It dream itself up as it spoke, coming to the very edge of its enclosure. It spread the slender arms wide, and all the light in the room seemed to focus on it as a massive shadow of monstrous human proportions and unknowable appendages was thrown up behind it. “I am Bakasura! Demon of hunger!” its voice shook the walls of the small room, looking down upon the two men.

“… Who?” Alan ventured after a few moments of silence.

The creature seemed to deflate slightly, though it still held its pose, “Bakasura… the scourge of Ekachakra, the Great Devourer…” it said again, as if that would be clearer.

“No, no, Alan and I – we understand that bit. But… we just don’t know who you are… or what Ekachakra is,” Richard said, shaking his head as he sat forward. Alan nodding his head beside him, “Though I’m guessing it was… a… river?”

“It… It’s a village,” Bakasura said, deflating more until the only semblance of its otherworldliness were its eyes, voice, and too-long mouth. “A village in India…” it glanced around the room, looking at scrolls and runes with vague outlines of Sanskrit. “How do you not know this? You have writings from there!”

“Well, see, the thing is… none of them talk about specific places in India, they’re all just a bunch of mystical writings on freeing your body and mind and such,” Alan said, the fear being replaced as these two men began to think they were dealing with a non-entity.

“Well… do any of them mention me?” It asked, the strength in its voice being replaced now by a small curiosity. It watched the two men look at each other before they moved about the room, examining scrolls and writings before finally facing Bakasura and shaking their heads. “There… There must be something about me!” It implored, almost touching the walls of its mystical cell again.

Alan departed and returned after a few minutes, a laptop in hand as he sat down on some of the most comfortable chairs and went to Wikipedia. “Right, so, you’re a cannibal demon that was beaten by some guy named Bhima after you ate a bunch of villagers,” he screwed up his face, glancing between that, and then up to the possessed Grace. “Is that it?”

“What do you mean ‘is that it’? I was death incarnate! It took a great hero to defeat me in single combat!” Bakasura puffed his chest up, looking slightly ridiculous considering the slender frame sported by Grace.

Richard leaned over, “Your page is barely a page. You have, literally, three paragraphs dedicated to you.” Alan clicked and scrolled down, “And only three sentences on the page for this Bhima guy. You’re barely a footnote in mythology… history… whatever.” Both men looked at the once again deflated form of the demon. “Sorry pal, but we can’t all be great demon lords…”

“Especially when you’re just the demon of hunger… yeah, that’s a nice and broad spectrum, but honestly – it isn’t very frightening,” Richard paused and thought about it. “Okay, we were frightened at first… but then we found out what you’re all about and, well, I’m sorry – it’s just not impressive. Especially considering who we were trying to summon, I mean – you’re calling forth the power of a silver dragon and instead you get a demonic tape worm… it really wasn’t the perfect time for you. I mean, if we had been trying to summon, like, an imp or something we’d be damn frightened, right Alan?” Richard glanced to his friend who nodded quickly.

“Damned frightened. But, we weren’t trying to summon one, so now you’re sort of underwhelming,” Alan shrugged apologetically, “Sorry.”

Bakasura sunk down to a seated position, “Oh no, I understand. Well, at least I’m content knowing that if my… my page is so small, that preening fool Ravana probably has nowhere near as close to mine!” Within a minute Bakasura was screaming in rage, “How?! How does he have more than me?!”

“I guess he was just more popular than you,” Richard said sympathetically, moving over to sit next to the mystical cage that sealed in the infuriated demon. “I mean, it seems like he was just a lot more impressive than… well… you.”

Bakasura glowered at Richard, “I should strip you down to your bones for that!”

Richard winced, “Intimidating… but the threat loses its punch once you remember that we’re out here and you’re in there. Now, let’s just cut this entire debacle short. Give us back our friend, you can go off to… to wherever it is you came from, and we can all learn a lot from this. Alan, Grace and I learn proper pronunciation, or enunciation, you learn that… well, maybe you should fix up your resume a bit. Lie a little here and there, fluff yourself up. I mean, if you had monologued instead of letting us look stuff up… we’d still be pissing ourselves, right Alan?”

“Yep, pissing all over ourselves,” Alan said with a nod of his head.

There was a small smile, showing cruelly hooked fangs, “Really?” The demon asked hopefully, hopping forward a bit to just the edge of its prison, “You mean it?”

The two men put on reassuring half-smiles and nodded their heads, “We mean it.” Richard said, forgetting his better judgement as he reached a hand out and patted the shoulder of the possessed Grace lightly.

Bakasura’s mouth opened impossibly wide, biting off the entire arm to the shoulder. Richard fell back, his mouth open in shock and a silent scream as blood fountained and splattered against the runes. The mystical shield flared, spat, then died and the demon lunged out, swallowing Richard whole. The throat of the slender woman it possessed bulged outward like some hideous snake before it thinned down. A belch of contentment left the creature’s bloody maw, before it turned its sickly gaze on the stunned Alan.

“Pissing yourself yet?” it spat with a burbling laugh, walking toward the too-frightened human slowly. It paused in front of him, extending a long finger to tilt his head up and stare into the demon’s eyes. “I won’t kill you, little morsel… I want you to write about this. Write my page, write an epic for me. I want you to tell the world of my return… and how…” it’s body began to bulge and reshape – the first meal doing something to the demon, “And how you are the one who brought forth the demon of hunger…” By the time it had finished speaking, Grace was gone. A hideously large, pallid human stood towering over Alan.

Lank black hair, greasy and ripe with the stench of death clung to its neck, back and shoulders. A low sloping forehead threw its beady yellow eyes into shadow and accented the thick, bulbous nose that sat above its too-large mouth filled with its horrible fangs and grinding molars. The robes Grace had worn still clung to its form, showing off rippling muscles and a grossly swollen gut that threatened to rip the crimson fabric apart. A wide, thick finger with a dirty and cracked nail replaced the slender digit. Beneath the robes, odd appendages writhed, slithering and hissing at their confinement. “Is that understood?”

“Y-Yes…” Alan managed, the thick stench of urine accompanying the sound of robes being soiled.

“Good…” The large hand gripped Alan by the collar of his robes, pulling him up. “Then off we go to slaughter-“

“I’ll need my laptop charger first,” Alan said quickly.

“… Your what-a-what?”

[J.O.N ((Dragonwing))]

"Are you sure that's..."

"Yes."

Fumbling through stale, yellowed pages. Creased corners, bookmarks, notes in the margins. "But that's not what Crowley said in the Divi-"

"Crowley was wrong. Shh."

Stammering. Twitches of the brow. A hard swallow, a mouth hung open. Restless fingers, flipping pages. "No, but, Crowley..."

"Fuck Crowley. This is different."

Incense, Egyptian musk. Solomon's Triangle, pentagonal rings and runes of the Will. Thelema invocations. Latin and shadow. Samadhi and vibration.

"Oh God. Oh, God, God."

"No. Not God, Alan. Not Crowley. This is -- oh, yes. Yes. Grace, yes!"

The woman called Grace tried to move behind Abraham so she could see over his shoulder, but he snapped the book shut. The motion disturbing the century old dust it was caked in.

“You could at least let us look at it” She said in a Dublin accent. Unlike her brother, Alan, Grace seemed more interested than disturbed by their new discovery; although she was more wary than the excited Abraham.

“What difference would it make, you can’t read Cantonese” Abrahams voice was dismissive, and distant. His mind seemed filled with whatever he had read from the Chinese book.

The three of them; Grace, Alan and the enigmatic Abraham considered themselves the true disciples of Aleister Crowley. Since a young age they had been brought up under the principles of Thelema, and Alan especially took it to heart.

“We came all the way down here, the arse end of the fucking globe and we don’t even get to know what’s in the stupid book?” Alan was rather direct by nature; he was also the most cautious of them, holding them back while Abraham tried to drag them forward.
Abraham turned to look at Alan, his face a mask of surprise. He had been too distracted to notice the other man’s impatience and annoyance.

“It tells us everything we need to know, both the invocation itself and the history of the Silver Dragon.”

The siblings stood in silence for a moment, processing the information they had received. Two years of searching and the thing they were looking for had been tucked away in a colonial era museum in Melbourne Australia.

They had originally come across the idea of the Silver Dragon when searching the old Thelema house in Sicily. It was supposed to be some sort of wish giver, something that manifested your will. Crowley had briefly mentioned its importance in his Divinations, but he had been scant on details and to find out that the invocation was originally Chinese, as opposed to Egyptian, was surprising and unsettling.

“Crowley never mentioned anything by the Chinese, why would something like this be in some dead Chinamen’s diary?!” Alan snapped, his patience wearing thin. Ever since they began their search, Alan had been uneasy. He had begun to feel as if their search was offending the teachings of Crowley.

“Oh shut up Alan,” Alan stared at Abraham in shock. It was the first time that the man had actually voiced his disdain for Alan’s opinions.

“How dare yo-“

“It’s explained here, and with this diary we can finally undertake the invocation. I will not have your cowardliness ruin this night’s triumph.”

The air was thick with contention between the two men and Grace stood silently aside for a moment before deciding the break the tension.

“What does it say about the Silver Dragon, Abraham?”

Abraham glanced at Grace, his coal black eyes peeling away from Alan’s furious green ones. He nodded slightly.

“It tells the story of how thousands of years prior to Christ, a group of Chinese mystics found themselves in the court of an Egyptian king. Apparently this king ruled the lower Nile, while another ruled the upper.

It seems the king had the mystics write him an invocation that would allow him to become a living god; but something went wrong, and whilst imbibing him with great power, it sealed him away to a celestial plane. This invocation will release him and with the right tools and circles, we can bind him to our will…”

Abraham’s voice trailed at the end, it was mixed with a little wonder and a lot of hunger.

Finally Grace spoke.

“And you are sure we have the tools to bind it?”

“I doubt it” dismissed Alan.

Abraham glared at Alan, before ignoring him, instead focusing on Grace.

“I can assure you, with what this book tells me, we can do it here, tonight.”

His voice had slipped in to a dark undertone, but one with rising excitement.

Before either Grace or Alan could respond, Abraham turned away from the broken display case, where the book had been previously held, and strode out of the exhibition hall. Drawing his large dark and ragged coat around him, he slipped into the darkness of the hallway. Alan looked at Grace with a deep frown.

“You seriously think we can trust him?”

Grace just shrugged.

“The guy is going off the deep end! He has no care for the teachings of Crowley, bastard child of his or not.”

“He hasn’t led us astray yet, neither has he actually shown any evidence of going astray” Grace replied softly. “He may be… Eccentric, or driven. But he is focused on us achieving this great undertaking, and I’m with him.”

“Grace I cann-“

“No Alan. Think back to when we were children, to when we were being raised in Ireland. This spell, this invocation; it is everything we were taught. The very concept of manifesting our will.”

Alan was silent, and he seemed to have a hurt look on his face. Like his sister Alan had blonde hair; and like her and Abrahams black hair, his hair was messy, long and knotted, evidence of their homeless and rough journey they had had. It made his furious but pained eyes stand out more on his dirty and bearded face.

“Sorry Alan, but you know how much this spell can help us” Grace responded, feeling guilty towards her snappy reply. Alan said nothing.

“Father wouldn’t have died if we had this power. With it we can protect each other and not have to worry about hunger or disease…”
“Do you think Abraham is going to share this with us, did you not see the hunger in his eyes when he read that?!” He snarled, before turning from Grace, his own cloak whipping around him.

“It’s about time we confront him, and make him translate that book for us.” Storming out of the room, he left Grace standing in the darkness, her lamp the only source of light for her.

“Damnit Alan” She hissed before chasing after him. While he had rarely ever seen eye to eye with Abraham, normally she could get him to calm down before he came to blows with the other man.

Dashing out into the hallway, she managed to catch up to Alan as he stormed through the dark building towards the inner courtyard. A single yellow light shining through the glass doors that led to it showed that it was where Abraham had gone. They didn’t have to worry about the buildings security; they had dealt with the guards when they first entered.

Alan wasn’t slowing down for the door. He hit it open with a swing of his arm and burst through it, his face a storm. Abraham on the other hand didn’t even blink as he looked up. He had just finished off drawing a circle of binding in the middle of courtyard with his chalk.

“Enough Abraham, I’ve had enough!” Snapped Alan; not slowing his pace until he was up in Abrahams face.
“Alan, what has gotten into you?”

Abraham wasn’t concerned at all at Alan’s anger, in fact, he was smiling.

“Fuck you Abraham, if you think you can just drag us around as if we were your own personal disciples? You never really gave a shit about Crowley’s messages did you?!”

Abraham just reached out and placed his left hand on Alan’s shoulder.

“Of course I don’t Alan, do you really think I gave a shit about what my weak father had to say?”

And then Abraham stabbed Alan.

For Grace, the blade had come out of nowhere. One moment Abraham’s right hand was rested at his side and in the next, it was plunging the dagger hidden up his sleeve deep into Alan’s stomach. With a sadistic grin, he wrenched the blade to the side, disembowelling Alan. Her brother was unable to speak; the pain and shock overwhelming him.

His legs gave way from under him and he collapsed before Abraham, clutching an arm to his guts, trying to keep them inside of himself. Black, heartless eyes stared into the frightened green ones as Abraham brought the dagger to Alan’s throat and cut it. The man was dead before his head hit the ground.

From the doorway, Grace just watched in shock. Feeling the emotion drain from her, she felt no desire to shout out or even react. It was just emptiness as she collapsed to her knees as well, cold hands gripping at the door frame for support.
“Alan…” Her voiced cracked, a half sob managing to escape.

Abraham looked up at her, his blade dripping with her brother’s blood and clutched in the blood soaked hand. His face still had the soulless grin on it.

“Don’t worry; I don’t need to kill you as well.”

“Why” she said, stone faced.

“It was for a perfectly good reason, there needs to be a sacrifice for the invocation.”

Grace looked on at the lifeless corpse of her former brother. She barely registered Abraham turning back to start the ritual, her mind was too full of her memories of her brother. This wasn’t what she wanted; they were going live happily ever after. This journey was going to bring them everything they wanted, and liberate them from the curse of suffering.

Abraham Stood over the sacrifice and began the incantation. It was a mix of Ancient Egyptian and Chinese, daring the Silver Dragon to come forth. As he chanted, his tone a drone, the wind began to pick up and howl down into the courtyard. Above them, dark rumbling storm clouds began to coalesce above them. Ribbons of lightning danced and twisted within them; each branch being drawn towards the maelstrom that had formed directly over the circle.

“Come forth, Come forth from Amun’s breast and deliver yourself to my will, be bound at my feet. Enslave yourself to me!” Abraham cried one final time in English, forcing his will into the words.

With a sense of finality, the night was shattered by a huge bolt of lightning screaming down into the ground, heat and light bathing the courtyard. Yet unlike natural lightning, it did not ground, instead it seemed alive, twisting and crackling as if it was trying to break away from the mortal realm. Slowly, but with gaining speed, energy seemed to flow in and around the branch of electricity, giving it form.

It had a serpent like body, long and reaching into the sky, with scales and spines running along it; with Powerful and clawed limbs reaching out like terrible hands. Finally it gained a draconic head, like one from Chinese fables; large and terrifying, with a long black beard, a colour that clashed with the silver tone of the rest of its body. Just like Abraham, its eyes were coal black.
“You are bound to my will oh terrible one!” Abraham roared over the sound of the wind and lightning. The dragon turned its head down to Abraham and stared at him.

You will not do.

Its voice was loud, unimaginably so. But it was not like a normal voice; it screamed and roared in Grace’s head, drowning everything out.

Before Abraham could react, the energy of the circle snapped with a crack and the dragon dove forward and engulfed him in its mouth. Grace watched as his body was torn apart within the jaws of the beast, its energy ripping his body to shreds leaving nothing behind.

Step forward foolish girl.

Some part of her mind screamed to run, but Grace had no control of her legs, and instead she half stumbled and half crawled until she was before the monster.

Yes, your mind is broken and weak. You will do.

“What… What do you mean?” she whispered, as she stared helpless into its eyes.

You will be my new vessel so I may finally walk on this plane. It is time I finally claim what is my right.

And with that, it dove forward, and the last sight grace ever saw was the bright burning light descending on her before eternal darkness.

[ASGetty ((Zovo))]

I had a tough time with this round as each story definitely had it's merits and it flaws.

Silver, I wasn't sure about yours to begin with. It started out with a sort of horror vibe which was working but then took a turn into a really entertaining dialogue with the demon. It was a fun twist and, oddly, a not unbelievable one. I could totally see an ancient demon being really vain and petty about his/her/its reputation. It was comical in the way the human characters became really underwhelmed by the actual demon they had summoned and began offering advice and such. Ultimately, I really enjoyed it. The end, though, felt a little forced. Even though the two guys were laughing at the demon, up until a certain point they didn't ever seem to lose focus on the fact that they -were- dealing with a demon; but then for seemingly no real reason one of them opted to offer a sympathetic arm to a creature which deserved no sympathy and it became their undoing. It felt contrived and led to a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion.

Dragon, your piece definitely felt more focused and written with a greater attention to detail. I could tell you put some effort into it, spent at least a little time with Wikipedia and had a definite idea of where you wanted it to go. It didn't feel like you necessarily knew how you were going to get there, though. I didn't really buy the friction between Alan and Abraham. I think because it was sort of just handed to me without much in the way of context. I never really understood -why- they disliked each other which didn't really put me in a place where I could take one side or the other or become invested in either character. I couldn't tell if Alan disliked Abraham because of his smug aloofness, or if that smugness was a product of an previously existing grudge between them. Which is unfortunate because you had the missing piece right there; a little subtext presenting Grace as a mutual love interest or similar point of conflict would have gone a long way... And would have alleviated your other weak point; the fact that Grace felt more like furniture than a character. Which made me wonder why the Dragon ultimately picked her, was it just because she was the last one standing?

Oddly enough, you both chose very similar conclusions, neither one of which really resonated with me. They were both pretty typical, "Mess with the Demon, you'll get the horn." sort of endings which was/is the way these types of stories typically play out. I was kind of hoping for something a little different.

Ultimately, Dragon, your attention to detail and descriptions, choice of words and adjectives, and the deliberate pacing all came together really well, the characters just didn't do it for me. I'm going to give this one to Silver just on pure entertainment value. I had a good time reading it, even if the end made me go "meh."

Silver is the winner of this round.