The Wheel Turns

The wheels always turn. Like begets like, life teaches the old, fate makes its changes, and day turns to night.

As the sun sets, a young woman walks with purpose towards a warehouse in Fife, close to the Ports of Tacoma. Bronze skin and short, black, fluffy hair are washed out as the light of the sun fades away, with her purely black ensemble blending into the night as well. The only thing that isn't washed away by backlight or darkness is the unnatural gleam of her silver eyes, as cold as the winter moon.

Those eyes flash brighter for a moment, as in the woman's vision white and black threads dance across the horizon. Her quarry is ahead.

She takes a breath, steels her nerves, and lets pure energy flow through her body.

"Let the wheel spin."

As she moves swiftly, covered by the darkening sky and the stark shadows of trees and shipping crates, her mission repeats in her mind.

"Do you recall the horde that was vanquished earlier this year?" The quiet tone of her teacher asked. 

"The vampiric sect that invaded Tacoma, yes? The ones that employed flesh-shapers and shadow-weavers?"

"The very same. Many of their host were killed, and many more fled. You were a part of the combat yourself, weren't you, Kali?"

"Yes. However, I was only recently Awakened then, so I only faced the enthralled or minorly changed."

"Hmm, a proper test lies before you, then. One of their number remains, and festers near Tacoma." A handful of reports and photos are tossed onto a desk between them, including one of an almost stereotypically evil-looking man, with dark hair, a sharp beard, and a wry smile.

"Not only does this creature continue to act on his inhumane "philosophies", but he has begun creating a force of the risen dead."

Kali flinched, pushing back a deeper gasp. "To evade punishment and desecrate the dead, it is to laugh in the face of judgment."

"So, young initiate, you understand the severity of his continued existence. And, why you must eliminate him before such atrocities continue."

"It shall be done." She said with a bow.

"See that it is, and you shall continue your destiny within the Euthanitoi."

And so, the duty would be done. But not for membership, status, or the growth of power. Kali Sharma felt only one true obligation: to right the wrongs of the world where she could.

As she skulked closer, she saw all entrances blocked off or thoroughly chained. While she might've been able to render those chains moot, time was not on her side. The vampire would awaken soon, if he hadn't already, and the more waking hours he had the further his machinations spread.

Luckily, there was still one entrance. Perhaps it was kept unchained for the crew, but it was still manned by an armed guard.

Her silver eyes flash, and she sees not only the breath and heartbeat of the guard but the thin "lines of karma", as she called them, emanating from him.

A few were brightly colored, and many were dark. Most of those were tied deeper within.

"A thrall."

It is an obstacle to be wary of, especially when armed, but not the hardest challenge.

Kali stalked close, out of sight, as the lone standard-sized, metal door was lit by a single light. She chose, when every other trace was gone, to step into the very edge of that light.

The guard jumped in shock but did not immediately reach for his gun. He was trained well. "This is private property. If you don't have any business here, leave." He said sternly, as if his soul hadn't almost left his skin a moment prior.

 "I do have business here, but it is my own."

She stepped closer. He reached for his gun.

"You do not have to take action. You are not irredeemable."

"The hell are you talking about?" His hand doesn't move away nor towards her.

"The threads of karma that tie you, many are not your own, but tied to the monster inside. You need not defend him. You can make your own choice here." She took a step closer, face just as stern, but words full of honesty.

The man seems to take a second to think, and takes a hard swallow. "You don't know just how little of a choice I really have." With words full of regret, the gun is drawn and a single shot is fired.

But Kali merely stands still, as the light flickers for the first time, making his aim just off enough for the shot to pass harmlessly. As the light comes back on, she closes the distance and lands a strong strike to the center of his chest, making him lurch over just enough for her to whip around and bring a hammer kick down on his head. 

She made sure to add enough strength to leave him knocked out, and certainly with a painful headache to wake up to, but alive nonetheless. "May your fortune change." She whispers, grabbing the door handle.

She finds it locked still, but a simple bit of magic changes the mechanism aside swiftly and quietly, allowing her to slink into the warehouse.

It wasn't the largest warehouse around, clearly a facility just for storage, but scoping out the open space saw only a sparse amount of larger crates, with a dozen or so people visible. There was a small balcony, with an iron grate floor, overlooking the main floor, but there didn't seem to be anything up there but some rafters.

As far as she could tell, six of them showed no signs of life or karma. Those would be the raised dead, forced to do menial labor. Three of them seemed to be like the guard outside, breathing but tied to something else, while the last three toiling away in the office space seemed to be normal humans through and through.

Kali found it most interesting that there didn't seem to be a piece of technology in the facility. Aside from the overhead lights, there were no cameras to evade, no alert systems, the workers didn't even seem to use more than simple pen and paper as they cataloged the boxes while the undead paced the floor.

Of the six undead, two of them had crude weapons, a steel pipe, and a messy bat, while the other four were busying themselves with lifting and arranging boxes. But the three thralls had pistols visible on them as well. Weaponry to be wary of, but not the worst to face.

She repeats her tactics from outside, dodging between walls and starker shadows until such a time comes that she's able to slip into the ideal starting position undetected, and steps towards the gathered crew.

When she descends, the air hangs around her so still that her presence isn't even noticed until she allows her steps to be heard. But when that happens, all of the thralls turn to attention, drawing their guns immediately.

"A reasonable response, since I have stolen into here."

"I give you one chance to lay down your weapons and leave from here. You are not irredeemable, and you are not required to throw your life away for the thing that has bound you to it." She announced, with more stern confidence this time.

"Save the sermon for someone who gives a shit! Get them!" One of the larger thralls commanded, playing a shrill note on a black whistle. At the sound, the two armed zombies rushed erratically forward, ready to strike with their weapons.

But, with Quintessence still empowering her body, and enhanced gloves cushioning the blow, Kali catches the pipe and the bat in her hands, rips them away from the assailant's arms, and jumps back to give herself distance from their putrid, decaying bodies.

"Very well then. Let the wheel spin." With a violet spark of magick the metal and wood of the weapons disassembled, and quickly reassembled into a weapon Kali found favorable, a sharp scythe with a proper grip. A farmer's tool refined to a keen edge.

"That happened far too quickly, especially around Sleeper witnesses. Could it be that they're already familiar with acts of transmutation?"

She had no time to consider the further ramifications of this act, however, as the raised dead had been given an order. Perhaps a Kindred, or a normal human, would've had trouble with these. Their tenacity makes them deadly and their lack of mental facilities leaves them immune to mental manipulation.

But to an Awakened, a trained fighter, it was child's play. The two disarmed ones went first, with their decayed forms being sliced through with one wide slash clean through their midsections. With the assault beginning, the bullets began to fly as well, as Kali's eyes shone silver, and the threads of karma shone once more.

As she rushed toward the armed crew, more undead got in her way. A twirl of her scythe gives her the momentum to slice one at the neck diagonally before she uses the follow-through to stick the pole of the scythe to the ground and use it to flip herself up with a spin.

The force of the spin gives her the speed to evade the first round of bullets, and she's able to cut the next undead from stomach to skull directly through. As she lands though, she has to take a moment to regain her stability, dodging another array of shots, with one of them grazing her shoulder. Luckily, not her dominant one.

Another stroke of luck, as the final two undead in the warehouse came at her in a line, allowing her to push her quintessence into her legs and launch forward with higher speed, dashing past them while bisecting them with the scythe.

There was a moment of silence, as the thralls assumed that the zombies would get back up, despite the injury. However, the Euthanitoi are experts on necromancy, both to use it and vanquish it. While Kali had little skills in those arts, she knew which threads to cut.

"Final chance." She said, flicking putrid gore off of her scythe.

That was enough to make one of the thralls cut and run, one freeze where they were, but the largest one still aimed their gun, ready to fire.

An invisible knife of entropic energy formed in Kali's free hand, and she threw it forward towards him. It did not cut him and did no damage, but as he went to fire his gun, it jammed.

By the time he realized nothing was going to happen, Kali already closed the difference, and leaped towards him, using the length of the scythe against his neck as leverage, as she whipped behind him and flipped him to the ground with a powerful thud. 

Silence echoed once more, broken only by the slamming of the door from the fleeing thrall. The office workers had come out to see what was going on but were still cowering near the office space.

"You there," She began to address the remaining thrall. "Where is your master? The vile necromancer responsible for this desecration?" She asked, pointing towards the re-dead.

"F-Further in." They pointed to a door behind them, leading into another room in the warehouse.

"Is this a trap, or falsehood of any kind?" Her silver eyes flared.

"N-No! Honest! Sometimes, people don't come back out, but I don't know what happens in there. I just know it's Mr. Fermi's office." No dark strands of misdeed came from them at this response, so Kali figured it was the truth as they knew it.

"Leave, along with those three there. Do not turn back, do not come looking for me or your vile master. Take this chance to readjust your life choices." She turned her pointing towards the door, and as if let off a leash the last thrall and the three office workers fled the warehouse. 

"One left. Brooks Fermi."

She walked towards that final pathway, scythe still in hand, and opened that final door, finding it surprisingly unlocked.

There was no hallway, only an entrance into a small, pure white room, with a single professional desk and chair at the other end. "I take it you are the one who has been causing such a ruckus in there tonight?" The figure at the desk did not even look up from his writing.

"And you, the one who has desecrated the sanctity of life?"

An almost disappointed sigh filled the room. "You're one of those types, I see."

She launched forward, ready to take his neck, but still without looking forward, the body of the villainous vampire erupted into a wave of liquid shadow. Luckily, her force landed her against the wall past him rather than in contact with the erupting shadows, but she quickly had to launch herself back out of the entrance as the darkness began to flood and whip around the room.

Reentering the main warehouse once more, the shadows followed, as a mass of almost ink-like darkness carpeted the space like a two-dimensional octopus reaching for its prey.

As the shadow moved through the open space, it enveloped the knocked-out thrall on the ground, making their skin tighten and putrefy in a matter of seconds, choking any sign of life out of him.

"The 'sanctity of life' is as meaningless as it is ephemeral in the face of results." His form stood out in the center of this image sprawling across the ground, the shadows beginning to creep up his own body, accentuating his sharp features.

"What results could possibly justify the atrocities you commit? The karma on you is nearly as black as the shadows you wield!" She steeled her nerves, not knowing how well her defenses would hold up to the tendrils beneath her feet.

"Karma, justice, fate, divine judgment, do you know what they all have in common?"

The tendrils flinch, catching Kali's eye.

"They are formless, base concepts! Nothing more!" The shadow rockets all in towards Kali, but her eyes catch their movement in time to leap away from them.

"Show me an ounce of karma, a crumb of justice! You can't, can you!?" The shadows launch forward with each point he feels he makes, but Kali evades them as much as she stays firm in her mindset.

"But wealth, power, status, and achievement, those are physical, palpable victories. If I'm going to stake my life on anything, it'll be what's real."

As she continues to evade, she is able to jump towards a ladder, using her scythe as a lever to launch herself upwards. Unfortunately, the shadow follows, with Brooks himself becoming one with it.

Once she reached the top of the ladder, the shadow had fully climbed up the wall, and he came bursting from it, clawed hand grasping towards her.

She is barely able to dodge, swinging her scythe towards him. However, what she seeks to cut is not his body.

The Euthanitoi rule over the magic sphere of Entropy, which deals with fate, predetermination, and most importantly, chance. The karmic lines that Kali saw and believed in were unrelated to her magic. It's an ability that had awakened years before her other powers ever did. 

But, they did work in tandem. For while Kali's true magic was in fate and chance, the greater her target's karmic weight, the greater her level of control over their luck. All she had to do was loosen the threads,

And let the wheel turn.

What was really cut was the mass of umber threads around the vampire. However, for Kali, the force was real enough, adding enough spin to her launch to send her to the iron grate floor of the balcony atop the stairs, overlooking the warehouse floor.

Not knowing anything had happened, Brooks rushed forward once more. But, luck had already begun to bend. 

Perhaps the force that caused it was his nature as a Lasombra, as their inherent curse made technology erratic, but the light above them flickered on, pushing the shadows down onto the floor beneath them through the grate, fully missing Kali as she dodged his body as well.

This last piece also made up her mind for the next course of action.

She leaped upward, grabbing onto the metal rafter that held up the lights, and enacted her next, final spell.

"You decry karma and justice as ephemeral concepts, and maybe you are right," she began, as Brooks recovered himself, struggling to manifest his shadows solidly on the grate.

However, she did not struggle. Entropy had been working its way to aid in her success. Her minor power in Forces let her better understand the energy she wanted, and Matter allowed her to transmute it. All it took was the final push.

"But if they are not real enough for you, then allow me to be their will, MADE MANIFEST!" With the mighty declaration, her spell was enacted, turning the light from simple room lighting to a mighty radiant pillar that would compete with a stadium spotlight, directly down onto Brooks.

The light was bright enough to dispel his shadows completely and blind him all the while. The intensity made the light crackle and burn out in a matter of seconds, but that's all Kali needed.

She dropped down, scythe still in hand, as Brooks scrambled to recover. But he would be too slow, as she put all of her strength into a final strike, bringing her blade fully, physically, down on his neck.

Silence rang, as everything waited.

"If you are an agent of fate," Brooks began, in a quiet wheeze. "Then you are merely its puppet." He turned back with a wry smirk.

"The wheel will turn for you too." 

Kali turned around in surprise, as she had not uttered those words aloud to him, but when she moved the outcome of the battle was apparent. His head slid off from his neck, and the second it was separated decades of unlife caught up to him, decaying him to little more than bones in a matter of seconds.

She was left with nothing but silence to ruminate on his words. After a minute or so, she put that aside, returning her scythe to its base materials once more, and slinking back into the cover of night.

After making sure those who had fled did in fact leave the premises, she too made her way back to her mentor. But those final words would echo inside for some time.

For as much as she could see with her eyes, with her powers, she could not see her own lines of karma and fate. She could only live and try her best. But no matter how virtuous or noble you are, for each being who lives, and thinks, and acts, the tide is ever in flow.

For good, or bad, the wheel will always turn.