The Ripper Affair

A black-clad back, one shoulder hitched high with a heavy hump upon it, claw-like gloved fingers. He stood before a large, squared chunk of obsidian, the lighting from wicks floating in cuplike oil-lamps instead of proper witch- or gaslight.

The wall she could see was of rough stone, the masonry old enough to be the work of the Pax Latium. The sounds were odd–what reached her through the distortion of shimmering sorcerous restraints echoed as if they were underground. Of course, Londinium’s first burning and rebuilding had been courtesy of the Latiums. Even Britannia had not resisted them completely, or forever.

The shape before the obsidian stone–it looked much like an altar, she realised–turned with a queer lurching motion.

At first she feared the sorcerous restraints were affecting her vision, or the foul substance he had used upon the rag had lingering aftereffects. But no. Everything else was in its proper, if shabby and worn, dimensions.

She watched his painful movements. Above the black altar–light fell into the stone and died, no reflection marred its surface–was a shifting, smoky substance hanging, moving in time to a slow beat very much like a sleeping pulse. She studied it more closely, and caught flashes.

Coal-bright eyes, extra-jointed fingers. Dead-pale flesh peeking through shabby coat and worn, knitted gloves. Neatly coiled atop the obsidian was the whip, the sharp barbs at the end of its long fluid flow pulsing as well with sickly blue-white flashes. The knife, slightly curved by much whetting, stood, quivering upright, balanced on its point. Occasionally, the smokelike suggestion reached down to stroke the rough, leather-wrapped handle, and a bloody flush would slide down the gleaming blade.

Ah. I see. It was a marvellous thing, to bring a spirit from nothing in this manner. All it took was the will to do so, and enough ætheric and emotional force. The trouble was, most such spirits tended to be malformed things, working only in a very limited way, as a golem or a Huntington’s Chaser or even a necros vocalis.

Sorcery’s children were cautioned to never let such a spirit grow too strong, for the trembling border between slave to a sorcerer’s will and sentience could be breached after enough time and force had become the creature’s ally.

And then… well. Better to create a new slave than have one grow too powerful and turn against its Maker.

Yes, she decided. Quite interesting. It was most certainly a Promethean. Difficult to create, a thousand things could go awry during the process. Also, it approached sentience very quickly. Why had she not thought of this possibility?

Because a sorcerer would have to be mad to attempt such a thing. It had to be fed, frequently. When those of Disciplines blacker than the Diabolic, malformed but drawing breath just the same, had achieved the status of gods among some benighted primitive clans, the accepted food for such constructs was the most tender and innocent of all, plucked from grieving mothers’ breasts. Without such regular nourishment, the spirit would turn on its creator and roam free, gathering strength from casual, wanton murder. The æther around it would tangle and grow clotted, and it would eventually collapse under the weight of that curdling. Some whispered that the sorcerer queen of Karthago had created such a spirit to wage her desperate war against the Pax Latium, and that the blight surrounding that fabled lost city was a result of her death before she could bring it to a second, monstrous birth.

For there was one thing that set a Promethean apart from other created spirits. It could, if certain conditions were met, merge with its creator, and become something… other. Emma strained her well-trained memory, for once ignoring her own pulse as it quickened. She had, of course, under careful Collegia tutelage, studied several pages of books those of Disciplines other than the Black could not open. Her own Discipline, deeply of the Black, twitched slightly inside her as it recognised something akin to it.

That is why, when I disturbed its feeding-site, it became attuned to me. How very interesting.

“She’s awake.” There was a harsh, grating laugh, and the hunched figure straightened, stretching. Creaks and crackling, bulging and rippling, and parchment-pale hair fell to his shoulders. A terrible raddled face slowly came forward into a circle of smoking lamplight, and she recognised him afresh. “And so prettily, too.”

She knew him. How could she not? The questions that had nagged at her for so long now had an opportunity to be answered.

Broad shoulders, one hitched much higher than the other. The black-clad chest bulged obscenely on one side, the cloth cut away to show a latticework of Alteration: arched ribs of scrolled, delicate iron and the dull reddish glow of a stone, curved on one side and flat on the other.

She recognised that as well.