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Awaken, Witch!: Lightbeard's School for the Broken, page 1
Awaken, Witch!
LIGHTBEARD’S SCHOOL FOR THE BROKEN
DELTA UNDERGROUND OPERATIVES RETIRED
N.A. GROTEPAS
Awaken, Witch!
Lightbeard’s School for the Broken
Delta Underground Operatives Retired
Copyright © 2024 by N.A Grotepas
v9.22.24
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Book Cover: Dark Imaginarium Art & Design
Format: Twin Phoenix Publishing
For my friend Brandon Ellis
As above, so below.
As within, so without.
I call forth the light of Ra,
The wisdom, healing, and love of Isis,
To fill these words
And light the way for all who read them…
And so it is.
Pro liberatione omnium entium
— LIGHTBEARD’S SCHOOL FOR THE BROKEN
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Acknowledgments
Afterword
More Titles From N.A. Grotepas
More Titles From the Duoverse
Prologue
AMANITA
“Pie! Pie! To my shoulder,” Lightbeard shouted, as the gale intensified.
Heavy, black clouds hung over the coast of Ireland where we found ourselves locked in battle with the Cailleach that had been terrorizing villagers. The blue giantess swung her hammer and slammed it into the sand. The ground rumbled and shook. The earthquake caused the tide to rush away from the shore.
“We need to get to higher ground,” I yelled into the wind.
“Not yet,” Lightbeard roared. “Not without Pie!”
My partner’s familiar, a magpie, would be a casualty of Beira’s wrath if the bird didn’t get into the bubble of protection the sorcerer had cast. The black and white bird folded its wings and tumbled and twirled, trying to surf along the invisible currents.
“I told you not to bring Pie on this one!” I yelled over the howling winds. I crinkled my nose against the biting tang of the sea. Stinging sand blasted against my cheeks. “He’s going to get killed and it’ll be your fault!”
“Where I go, the bird goes, Amanita,” Lightbeard roared at me, his dark blue eyes flashing beneath his bushy eyebrows. “You of all people should understand that, considering you won’t go anywhere without me.”
A gust of wind knocked into me, nearly causing me to lose my footing. I lowered my head and fought my way across the meager five yards that separated us until I passed into the protective sphere Lightbeard had cast.
The raging energy of the storm dropped away like a cloak of snow slipping from my body. I sighed.
“I’m not leaving you so you can off me with a flip of your coin,” I said. I nocked another arrow. They were, ahem, sort of useless in the wind, but I was trying to run backup for Lightbeard’s powers, which weren’t useless in the wind.
“It’s you who would kill me! I’ve watched you staring at your ring longer than any emotionally healthy person would!” The old man’s said piercing gaze flicked to the first finger on my right hand. The ring was a coin. My coin. The coin that connected me to the Puddle, an ancient source of power that bonded Lightbeard and me and gave us access to unheard of magical strength. When he used his own coin and we accessed it together, we were like gods. If one of us accessed it alone, it would kill our partner.
I’d never do that to Lightbeard—not that I hadn’t been tempted many times by his general surliness and how he looked down his Roman nose at me for being a witch. “Practical magic is as good as no magic,” he would say.
Lightbeard was older than even I knew. A druid, he spoke with a soft Irish accent that, for me at least, was irresistible. Probably the only thing about him I found alluring, because we were always at each other’s throats.
Granted, when we fought side-by-side like we were doing, I couldn’t help but admire him. When we were together in battle, it was a dance, and even with my preference for metal bands, drummers, and all things modern, there was something irresistible about the stuffy sorcerer act. Lightbeard would never dance with me for real—though I imagined it from time to time, us doing the tango—and so I’d take what I could get. I’d been trying to get a real dance out of him the seven years we’d been together.
We were good in so many ways, but when we were bad, we were ugly. Like, throwing dishes at each other ugly.
“Enough about the damn ring, Lightbeard. Let’s take care of Beira and get out of here. That tide just pulled back and it’s not going to be pretty when it returns.”
“Pie!” he shouted again as the bird continued to fight against the storm.
“For crying out loud!” I said, putting the poison-tipped arrow back in the quiver strapped across my back. I slipped the string of my recurve bow over my chest.
“What are you doing, Nita?”
“Going after Pie.”
“Pie will make it. Just give him a few seconds.”
“And watch him die?”
“He’s stronger than you think.”
“He’s a bird, Lightbeard. Birds die in storms like this. And I won’t watch Pie die.”
“He won’t die! Amanita, if you go back out there, I can’t protect you.”
“What are you waiting for? Let’s flip our rings, use our bonded power, and kill this bitch and save Pie.”
“We mustn’t kill Beira, just subdue her. Her lover cheated on her and they quarreled. If we kill her, we impact the natural cycles of weather here.”
“Alder said to do what was necessary to save the villagers.” Beira’s rage had already killed forty-three of them. In a town of around 8,500, that number made a dent.
“And we will.”
“I’m going after Pie, Lightbeard, and you can’t stop me.”
I jumped away from him before he could grab me and left the safety of his shell of solitude.
LIGHTBEARD
Amanita Damonica would be the death of me.
I’d seen the vision once upon a time during a deep meditation. I knew it the way I had known that my fate was entangled with her in every manner from the moment we met. These knowings were gifts from the other planes of existence. Running from them was what mortals did because their flesh was clay, their fears whips and cattle prods, their terror of death, chains.
I was not mortal.
Sometimes I didn’t know what to do with my knowings. Sometimes they felt less like light and knowledge and more like iron shackles around my heart.
Nita would not be my death now. I also knew this.
Nevertheless, the moment she ran out of the sphere of protection I’d cast to shield us during the battle with the spoiled Beira—poor misunderstood, murderous spirit—I feared that something terrible would happen.
Not to me, to Nita.
I raged. “Nita! Return this instant. Pie has trained for battles like this. He will be alright.”
She didn’t listen, though I amplified my voice with a simple magnification spell, tapping into a charged crystal in the pocket of my robe to use it.
The ocean salt in the air from the storm crackled with electricity as lightning webbed across the slate and obsidian sky. Beira, dark blue and sorrowful, let out a rumble like thunder and raised her hammer to the sky in a gesture of futility. Mogh Roith had been unfaithful (again) and Beira was taking it out on the world.
Not an unusual response to learning about a lover’s infidelity, but not a mission I was accustomed to Alder sending Nita and me to handle. I suspected the reason he sent us was the druid connection. Alder was also a druid, though his partner had died ages ago. The cases Nita and I were sent on were usually the quiet sort. Sneak into a theater and stealthily off a leader, quiet-like, not an action-packed loud battle with a giant.
The Cailleach, lost in her anguish, rumbled again and the power in her voice almost broke through my protection spell. Something imposing glittered to my right as more flashes of lightning rippled across the black clouds.
The mountainous, slow-moving monster undulated on its way toward the beach, where our battle with Beira had culminated. It had begun inland where we’d attempted to surprise her as she perched, howling like a banshee, upon the clock tower. She’d been a twelve-foot giant then. Now she was twenty-feet tall and each crash of her hammer created earthquakes which reshaped the landscape and caused hills and mountains to form, and now, tidal waves.
What could I do?
Beira was a potent energy spirit. She was in misery, but I could not destroy her outright. There were repercussions for meddling with nature like that. As a druid, I knew this. Alder wanted us to save the village. He was right about that.
It was time to make a choice.
Crystals in my robe pockets clashed against my thighs as I moved to the edge of the sphere. Crystals! One crystal, in particular. I had minutes to act and that margin was narrowing quickly.
Leaving Nita and Pie to their own devices, I withdrew a quartz crystal sphere nearly the size of my palm and then pulled it out of the velvet satchel protecting it. This crystal was empty.
Other crystals I brought with me contained spells that I tapped amidst the heat of battle. My sorcery was at its most powerful when I treated it this way and stacked my abilities accordingly. Before leaving home to come to Ireland to handle the Cailleach, at the very last minute, I’d grabbed the empty quartz sphere.
I stared at it.
I looked up at Beira.
I glanced toward the rolling tide.
I regarded the crystal on the beach at the center of my spell of protection. I held my hand out toward it. “I command you to keep the walls up.”
I stepped through the shell and was immediately blasted with the full strength of the storm. The winds and sand attempted to annihilate me, to strip my robes from my body and the flesh from my bones.
“Beira!” I roared. With my peripheral vision I saw Nita wrap her arms around Pie and cradle him into her chest. “You have raged enough!”
I could not fix the spirit’s broken heart, but I could contain her. Time heals all wounds, as the saying went.
“End these dramatics!”
Her answer was to wail louder, dramatically lost in the throes of heartbreak. Beira had worked herself into a dismal state indeed, bereft of everything but the abyss of her suffering.
That was my answer—I would use her oblivion to my advantage.
With one hand clutching the beautiful quartz sphere and the other holding up the hem of my robes like some 17th-century milkmaid, I raced across the sandy beach, heading straight for the giant.
She continued to wail, shriek, and slam her hammer down. I fought to keep my footing and leapt over small chasms where the tide had ripped away the sand.
Suddenly, the giantess noticed me. Her one eye opened wide and her lips pulled back into a sneer, showing her rust-colored teeth.
“No wonder Mogh Roith cheated,” I muttered, flinching at the ghastly sight. The words were ripped away on the wind, as was the air from my lungs. I heaved and panted, trying to be as fast as possible.
Fifteen feet till contact.
She lifted her hammer.
Seven feet.
The hammer dropped.
Two feet.
I dove and rolled.
The hammer crashed down where I’d been ten seconds before. The ground cracked and fissures spread like a network of ice crystals across glass. A growing roar to my right told me the tidal wave was close now.
I rolled to a stop on my belly right next to Beira’s feet. She wore no shoes, allowing me to touch her nearest toe and its cracked nail with the quartz crystal. As I did, I commanded the crystal ball to pull the giant spirit in and contain her.
Though Beira was an enormous mass of seething energy, the sphere pulled her in. The effect was instantaneous. One moment she towered above me, and the next she was gone. I got to my feet quickly, holding the clear sphere in my hand. It now had a soft blue glow that cast an intriguing light into the storm-induced darkness.
There was no time to celebrate. The tidal wave rumbled toward the beach.
“Amanita! To the bubble of protection!” I cried and raced back across the beach, leaping over chasms and fissures.
She began sprinting, clutching Pie against her chest. Time slowed. My entire life flashed before my eyes. Countless years. Hundreds of unrealized dreams. The faces of former lovers. Their deaths. And then… I dove for the safety of my sphere of protection. Nita was already within, depositing Pie carefully on the sand. She smoothed his black iridescent wings and then turned back to me as I crashed to my elbows and sprawled out.
“Your feet are still outside the sphere,” Nita said calmly.
I rolled to my back and yanked them in just as the nightmarish black water swallowed the sphere, engulfing us in a darkness illuminated only by the glowing blue crystal.
My sorcerer slippers didn’t make it.
“Blast,” I grumbled, thinking of a hike back to the village without shoes.
“Doc Martins next time. They would have survived the tidal wave.”
“Never. A horrid option.” I shook my head.
Amanita knelt beside me and let out a sigh.
I got to my knees and faced her, then pulled her into a hug.
“Never do that again, Nita.”
“I’ll do no such thing. Pie was worth it.”
Chapter
One
Ihate magpies, I thought, the minute I walked into the bookshop and it softly cried at me. The place was also a cafe, and though I was pretty certain it was against health department codes to have an uncaged bird inside a cafe, it wasn’t like I was a health inspector or something, so I took it in stride.
The bird stood on a wooden perch in a corner of the shop featuring a half bookcase, a window, and a furniture arrangement. Its beady black eyes stared at me. The thing was motionless, so motionless I began to wonder if it wasn’t stuffed and that I’d imagined it making a noise in the first place.
The aroma of spices and hot coffee wafted through the air. There was also that faint fragrance of a bookshop. Books were fine and all, but I came for the coffee—though I wouldn’t have minded perusing a few titles as I sipped on a dirty chai latte or the like. Somehow I’d never noticed the shop in all my time living in my little corner of Salt Lake County. It took up the bottom floor of a yellow brick building tucked away in the historic part of Draper at the south end of the valley.
Books and Broomsticks 2.
Where is one, I wondered.
No one should be alone at Christmas, and yet here I was. My first Christmas without my kids, and there was a hole in my heart and my gut the size of Connecticut—my home state. At the moment, I wanted to be back there with my parents as a salve for the pain, but I wasn’t going to fly out for only a few days and then return in a rush to be with my kids on the 27th. This was the first day of the holiday that they were gone with their father, and everything in me ached. Honestly, I didn’t want to be anywhere. If I had to make a choice, I would be nowhere. I would turn off each time they left to be with their dad, powering down, and then I would wake up when it was time to get them again, when the sun came back into my life.
A heavy snow fell outside the large windows lining the front of the shop creating a cozy, sheltered feeling within. The day was dark from the storm even though it was only two in the afternoon. I stood on the rug and shook my peacoat off, then removed it and hooked it on the freestanding coatrack next to the door. Everything was still as I moved. I felt the magpie’s gaze on the back of my head as I took off my scarf.
Had I inadvertently entered the Twilight Zone? Had the rapture occurred, leaving only me and the magpie behind? Would I live out the rest of my sad days carving out a meager existence with the bird as my only companion?
I sighed into the silence, realizing there wasn’t even a hint of music playing. I found myself tiptoeing as I explored, fearing even disturbing the bird whose gaze felt malevolent at this point.
“Is this your shop?” I asked as I got closer to it. I didn’t usually talk to birds, but this one had it in for me.
“Hello!” a female voice said, rising from an open doorway into another room. “Be right there. Make yourself at home.”
