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The magic of the watch defined: https://haunt2003.com/index.php/community/world-of-darkness-2nd-edition-homebrew/wod-artifact-level-spirit-talisman-the-watch-of-amelia-watson/
This work is currently 766 words, compared to the 40,000 word mark for light novels. It's just in rough draft status, pass 0. It has 1 of the required 12 to 20 scenes so far. In total, this work is currently 25,591 words.
P.S. A special thank you to X's Ballistic of the Hooman fandom for being my proofreader. Once writer insomnia hits, it is far more helpful than you might realize.
/salute
Whilst you were sleeping
"Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do." -Voltaire
“Nay, guiltiness Will speak, though tongues were out of use.” -William Shakespeare’s Othello, Act 5, Scene 1
Mori Calliope’s inherited apartment
Tokyo, Japan
November 20, 2019 (16 hours ahead of LA time)
Smoothie and Chonkers were restless. Kiara awoke to Smoothie in her face well before the sun rise.
The Phoenix first thought was that the cat food bowl must be empty. Well, empty in cat terms, which means the bottom of the bowl had become visible.
Kiara knew something was wrong the moment she realized that was not the case. Smoothie jumped off her chest and joined Chonkers.
The cats wandered about the dark inner space of the silent apartment. As Kira went to look, she saw they hoovered near the door to Calli’s bedroom.
Something was wrong. Kiara knew it before she could even feel the cold emanating from the door of the otherwise heated apartment.
It was simple enough to get inside. Calli never felt the need to lock the door, as a Reaper she never really felt threatened by anything. After all, danger was a foreign concept an incarnation of Death itself.
The door opened quietly. The inside was dark and cold. Kiara could see her own breath.
Ironically, she could see Calli’s body covered in sweat. The Reaper tossed and turned, quietly speaking to a nonexistent audience.
Her words were those from two weeks ago. Kiara recognized each word.
Calli silently whispered, “You might need to see the bigger picture here, Kiara.”
Her body pushed against the bed. The Reaper pushed against her pillow silently saying, “You’d be trading one life for an unknown number of victims.”
Her voice took on a tone close to a whine. That or it was some kind of guilty pitch.
She quietly cried out, “Forty-one million people.”
Kiara moved towards the bed. The first thing the Phoenix did was lay on the bed next to the Reaper.
With the magic inside her, Kiara began warming the room. In mere moments, she magically removed the wetness and sweat residue from the bed.
She gently put her hand on Calli’s stomach. Kiara started warming the Reaper’s possessed body, while Calli was struggling in her nightmares.
Kiara silently thought, “Calli, you are too powerful for that human body to survive. You are killing yourself from the inside out.”
Kiara pushed heat inside the body at a safe pace. That said, it felt like a car’s heater futilely trying to warm an entire snow-covered neighborhood from the outside.
The heat felt like it uselessly disappeared. Kiara kept pushing warmth into the body, even when it felt pointless.
Kiara felt guilty, as she could guess why the Reaper was in this state. It still goes back to that conversation for that night.
The Reaper and the Phoenix did save the lady they ran across. That said, it had been two weeks of eighteen-hour days searching for any sign of the vampire presence without any clues.
The Phoenix had successfully argued for the woman to live, rather than be a sacrifice to find the nest. So far, the vampire nest has had two more weeks to slaughter people.
Calli’s mood had been sinking for days. Kiara felt guilty for fighting the dark wisdom of the Reaper’s choice that night.
She did not regret saving the lady that night. Life was sacred to her people after all.
What was harder with each passing day was the knowledge that others were dying in her place. That said, there was no way that Kiara would have ever willingly let an innocent die in front of her eyes.
Kiara focused on her companion. She poured more of herself into her.
Kiara could feel her magical reserves depleting. The process was starting to feel like a hard caffeine crash.
Kiara had already been tired. The effort was like staying awake for days without sleep.
Pushing the cold away took an hour. Kiara made sure Calli’s body was warm and steady.
She could feel the reaper’s possessed body’s lifeforce return. With huge effort, it was safe and stable.
Calli’s breathing returned to normal. The nightmares seemed to stop.
Calli was deep in REM sleep but was no longer in distress. The Phoenix smiled and made a mental note to go back to her room.
That was the tricky part. Movement meant not blacking out from what she had just done.
The Phoenix fell asleep from exhaustion. It was not just all the missed sleep; it was an hour’s worth of hard magical exertion.
