dawn of a new day

There’s a certain truth to the idea that the Apocalypse could have never been predicted.

It started the night I watched myself walk into my own living room, totally naked. She was different than me, in some ways. She had different tattoos, and the mark of the Frankenstein lineage was absent from her left hand. She was just as covered in lilies as I was, and the Orokin text was just as present down her left arm as it ever was, but she was covered in spider webs, and instead of the dragon tattoo on her back, she wove an elegant tapestry of night and day on her skin.

She lacked the scars along her hip, and the marks from cutting that I had, but bore a massive scar present both on her chest and on her back. If I looked closely, I could see some uncomfortably precise burn scars along her, or marks that suggested that at some point her thumbs had been popped off.

She walked with a grace and confidence that I could never muster even if I tried my best to feel like I wasn’t tainted scum of the earth. And once the door was closed, I watched broad wings sprout from her back, and long horns extend from her head. And in her horns, she carried a brilliant solar eclipse, and at the tip of her tail, she balanced a lunar eclipse. When she turned to face me and spread her wings wide, depicted upon them were a stunning sunrise and sunset.

When she leaned in to me, runes of jet black and shining light lit up along her body. Even as somebody acquainted with the supernatural, this was stunning to me. Like witnessing a Totem, or Gaia herself right in front of me. It was strange to look into her eyes and see vivid violet instead of my boring blue.

“Be not afraid,” She told me in my own voice, “of the changing world. Soon your family will be free of the Curse, and you will never have to worry about taint again. Those who are meant to rule will rule, that which was unjust will be rightfully slain. The Heart will return to the Spiral.”

I told her that was really fancy talk for me. She told me it was part of the schtick.

She told me to follow her, to see what she meant. She brought me to the Prince’s penthouse, and went right up to the top without even so much as a notice. She had me watch as she spitefully lifted him by the throat and pierced his heart with a blade made of sunlight, smiling with eyes full of hate. It startled me to see her heartlessly murder someone so important like that.

She told me that to leave him alive in the coming days would see a lot of murder. A lot of torture. She told me that she had experienced it by his hand. I asked her how it would be worse than the Sabbat, and she told me that she was strapped down and ripped apart for three days. All I could imagine was my sister, and I wanted to vomit at the thought.

She gave the seat of the city to the Regent, by “divine authority.” She told her never again to worry about the Tremere Pyramid, or the Camarilla, or the Sabbat. She said that true order would come to those who didn’t add to the problem. But she told her, and me, to prepare for the coming days. The guilty will not go down easy, and the Wyrm will twist and turn in fear. She told us we had another night and day to prepare and make sure our love ones were safe.

Then, she slit her own throat, and gave the blood to the Regent in a tea cup. I’ve never seen a wound, and especially not a neck wound, heal up so fast. She told her to drink deep of the blood of the twilight, the ichor of night and day, and to be free of the binds of Caine’s curse.

I had never seen the Regent so much as accidentally take a breath before that, but when she drank of her blood, she gasped for air as if she had been holding it for four hundred years. Trembling hands grasped at her stomach. Perhaps it was the first time I had seen her cry – real tears, and not vitae. She told us she was in labor, and I wondered how mere blood could turn back her clock four hundred years. She looked overjoyed in her pain, and that night, she finally bore the son she had always hurt for. She named him Vazha, and he looked just like those old illustrations of the gecko.

At that time, this divine reflection of myself dragged me through the shadows to the abode where my husband lived in St. Louis. It was a long way from home for me, but he had business to attend to here and I respected that. He seemed surprised to see me standing there, and even more surprised to see this draconic mirror with me. She leaned down to him just as she leaned down to me, and gave him an ornate vial of blood. She told him to drink deep the blood of the light, just as she had told the Regent with her own.

Just like before, I watched him take his first breaths. He seemed shocked that he could even drink random, unrelated blood to his tastes. I saw color rush back to him, and a glow, a warmth come to his eyes that hadn’t been there before. When I touched him again, he was only vaguely cool to the touch. When I pressed my head to him, I could hear the faintest beating.

She told me she would do the same for my sister, my brother, our housemate. She told me my best friend would find the appreciation he always deserved. She told me freedom was coming, and that she was only the herald. She told me she would see me again, at sunset tomorrow. She told me that this was the eve of the Apocalypse, and that there was a lot of work to do. She urged Jackdaw and I to spend time in the daylight, for the sun was beginning to rise.

He told me he felt no supernatural pull to sleep.

I asked if he would die.

She smiled at me and told me that deep down, I knew the answer to that.

And she leaned in, and breathed the twisting magic of night and day into me. Gave me a Gift that no spirit could grant. She told me that I would need it when the time was right.

She told me that my destiny was greater than I could imagine.

And then she left.

I took Jackdaw, and brought him to the roof. He was scared, but I knew he would give anything to see the sun again even one last time. If she was right about the Apocalypse, then maybe he only stayed with me because he knew he might die either way.

When the sun finally came up over the horizon, he still sat with me, with no pain. To see that smile on his face was to have my every regret lifted. He, too, cried real tears.

I can’t pretend to know what changes are coming.

But after seeing that, I think I welcome them.