Daimona's Journal

Sunday, Sept. 19, 2004

I’m starting this diary because Ms. Edith suggested doing so as a way to straighten out my thoughts. Things at the sanctuary have become all twisted around on me. I always thought the Headmaster would protect me from the vampires, but he led us right to one. And I had to go all stupid and go looking for one. I know what those fucking things can do and I went chasing after them. Damn it I can’t believe how dumb I am. I almost got Alexis killed, just like Marie was. And when that Bitch of a Vampire started attacking us the first thing I did was run. Damn it I would have left them all to die there. I just couldn’t face one of them I guess I am more than a bit of a coward. I just keep seeing what Ron did to Marie and I have such an easy time seeing Anna doing the same thing to me or Alexis, and there was nothing I could do. Everyone else tried to stay and fight, but I just couldn’t. I don’t think I even deserve to be at the sanctuary, even with the magic I still can’t actually do anything. Every time I try I fail unless I am just trying to protect myself.

But, God I love the magic. Being able to see things no one else can is such a rush, what we are doing so much better than anything I have ever done before. And I know that soon we will be able to do so much more, and I can’t even imagine what that will be like. There are times when I forget anything but being at the sanctuary, when I forget that there’s anything but the magic and those are the most wonderful times ever. And there are even times when I catch myself thinking that everything I went through, even watching Marie’s death, was worth it; just to have the magic. And I hate myself for that, that I can be so selfish that I feel that the death of my best friend was worth being able to use the magic. I hate that I can be happy when I lost everyone I cared for to come here. I don’t deserve this.

Ah hell, I’ve got to go. I can hear Alexis knocking on my door.

Arc 1, Chapter X

Ok my life is seriously fucked up some days. Take what happened a few days ago. We were invited to a meeting by this other cabal, the Evangelists. We had to get all kinds of dressed up because Korre didn’t want us to be looking like we came in off the street, which I can understand sort of. So she took me into this fancy department store and bought me a sweater that fucking cost $100. So we go to a fancy meeting with the Evangelists, and the talk this big talk about all the shit they could do for the city, and then they offer us what could be only considered one hell of a bribe. So I really don’t care about all this political bullshit as long as someone starts getting things organized before we all become “Feast of Wisdom, the 2nd course.” Problem is I don’t think the cabal is going to be able to stay out of politics.

As if my already fucked up evening couldn’t get any worse, when we drop Korre off we get shot at in a fucking drive by. If I wanted to deal with this shit I would spend my time in New Orleans mooning the police. We managed to get rid of the fuckers but not before we were both shot and, Claire, Korres maid was killed. We called in some favors and got patched up, but attracted a fair bit of attention from the other mages in doing so. So like only two goddamn days later we come across a magic bum beating the crap out of another mage. So we fight him off while Promachus pulls out his knife and stabs the bum. Naturally we get picked up by the police. Luckily the cop already knows mage exist and just wants to keep the hell out of things so we never even get near the police station. Oh yeah and A mafia boss wants Promachuses hide. Well fuck me sideways with a barbed pole. Do you ever get the feeling that life just hates you somedays?

So if all this isn’t enough we go to visit the guy we rescued and he tells us that the rest of the mages are getting suspicious about us. Seems we have been the center of trouble one too many times. We have already confronted the magic bums multiple times, not once through any purposeful action. In many ways that has been way too fucking convenient. The only people to have the funky dreams in the Asylum are from our Cabal, despite repeated investigations from others. We discovered the obscure clue that no one can make head or tails of. Hell we discovered the Asylum in the first place, we were all trained by an Apostate, a well respected Apostate, but still. And we all just sort of wander into town, and aren’t particularly well known to anyone. Oh yeah and Promachus and I have both had funky dreams.Now I know we aren’t behind this, but maybe some others think we are.

The problem with this is everyone else thinks it’s nothing to worry about. Now my nasty and suspicious mind can’t help but wonder if maybe there is something to the concerns to the other mages. Maybe there is a reason we are getting all the weird shit. Maybe some other mage is setting us up to take the fall for this, or maybe whatever ate the other mages is targeting us next. For all I know some sadistic deity is taking a great deal of pleasure watching us squirm, like this is all some sick little game. Whatever it is I think that I no longer believe in coincidences, since those are made to happen by mages. And I am so fucking frustrated by the fact that no one else will see what a problem this could be. If the other mages start to believe that we are behind this shit then the only way to prove we are not will be to find whatever is causing all the problems.

Oh Yeah, and I wish to hell that everyone would stop pulling knives every time violence happens. Sticking someone who pissed you off is not the answer. And stabbing the people who you are trying to talk to will not make them like you.

Arc 1, Chapter X

Ok first off I hate bullshit politics, I hate people who try and use me and I hate people who think that spying into peoples minds is okay. Also vampires suck, and I don’t care what anyone else thinks I am not going to leave those pieces of garbage alone in the long run. For now though I won’t bother them, we have too many other fucking problems. This entry is not about any of that shit.

So after the great dinner fiasco, everyone was being sort of dumb. I mean Marbus was being Marbus, Kore had run off in a huff, and well everyone else was ignoring shit, so I pulled on some decent clothes and took off.

When I went to APT (one of my favorite clubs) and I was pissed as hell to see one of those goddamn little apple stickers on them. So then I went to Sliver and I saw another of those fucking stickers. S.O.B’s – sticker. The loft – sticker. R&R – sticker. By this point I was starting to get fucking pissed. The fuckers even had Crobar. It’s bad enough that the vampires were in the city but they had kicked me out of my favorite night spots. So I ended up in Level V which is not my first choice but I don’t fucking get my first choice do I. Damn vampires. I mean Level V is okay if you like that whole swanky money falling out of my ass while I dance to music that really wants to be good and up to date kind of shit. Anyway I went in and danced to a few song and with a few okay guys. And then I met this fucking hot guy. I mean he was like six three, six four something like that and he was built. The man obviously worked out not one of those scary steroid freaks either but I could feel his six pack while we were dancing. And he had this nice kind of spikey black hair, that didn’t look like it was soaked in gel. And he is one of the people who should be allowed to wear tight fitting leather. So we dance until four in the morning, and then we went back to his place and fucked all night. I woke up a few hours after he woke up, slipped out of bed and into my clothes and then I snuck out of his apartment. His place wasn’t to far from home so I had a nice morning run back.

You know I can just hear what Kore would say about my doing this. “Daimona, this isn’t at all proper, you hardly know these men.” And you know she’s got a point, but what the hell else am I supposed to do. I’m fucking 18 and I like sex. And there is no way in hell I can have a relationship. I am not about to sleep with any one else in the Cabal, and there is no way in hell I am going to date some sleeper and bring him into this mess we are involved with, sorry but I have a bit more sense then Storm on this. So what else can I do, if I want to be with anyone it has to be some good looking stranger. And I can’t even begin to say how much I am looking forward to when Violet and Marbus have a falling out. Two mage who are in a pissy break up, oh that should be so much fun. Not.

Between Arc 1 nd Arc 2

I don’t even know where to begin. Things are just so fucked up. Oh God. That insane fuck was just toying with us. He captured Kore and Promachus, cut us off from every last one of the magical community and lured us straight into one hell of a trap. The bastard violated our minds took control of our bodies and forced us into the minds of the insane. The fuck made me see through this woman’s eyes as she was beaten by her psychotic boyfriend, he made me live it as if I were her. I would hate him for that alone, even if nothing else had happened. We struggled out of his snare, and it was hard so incredibly hard but we did it, and confronted him in his own mind. We angered him and he threw us out, back into our bodies. And then we fought him, and he killed Violet. There I wrote it down, the fucker just killed Violet. He used his magic to shred her mind. And so I used my magic to make the bastard burn, I covered him in gasoline and I lit him on fire, and then I used my magic to really turn the heat on. Even doing that it wasn’t enough to take him out, but it distracted him enough for Marbus to knock him out. And then I stood there and watched while Marbus beat him until the mans skull no longer existed. No I need to be honest. I knocked the orderlies cold so they couldn’t wake up to stop us. And if Marbus hadn’t done it I would have grabbed one Violet’s knives and slit the bastards throat.

But what freaks me the fuck out, is I don’t feel bad about the death of the psycho mage. Not even one little fucking drop of guilt. When he died the first thoughts that went through my mind wasn’t hatred or disgust, it was pure exhilaration. I mean I felt really great after the fight, I felt alive, I felt the magic humming through me. I felt like I could run 20 miles or do anything. And that sickens me. What kind of fucking monster am I that I can feel good at someone dying, that I can fell pleasure that they are dead and that I am alive. There has to be something wrong with me, I know it. I can feel so much sorrow and guild that Violet died, that she walked with me into a trap, but I can’t make myself feel sorry that the psycho is dead. Damn it, I should feel something there and I don’t. I know that he needed to die, but shouldn’t I feel at least some guild that I helped kill him? And I can’t talk to anyone about this, Storm wouldn’t understand, Violets dead, Kore well she is with there mother and she would be horrified, and Promachus is still in a Coma. And I can’t talk to Marbus, not after what he did to the mad mage. I think he might understand a bit to well.

I can’t deal with this right now. I am going to go dancing, I am going to get mind blowingly drunk, and then I am going to find someone to fuck me until I can forget that I killed a man. And until I can forget that I enjoyed it.

Arc 2, Chapter X

I can’t sleep tonight, so I am writing. I fucking hate politics and I hate vampires. But everything I do lately seems to deal with one or the other of these damned things. I am not going to write about the political bullshit going on lately, other then to say I had to stab some people I consider friends in the back to help protect them from the consequences of what they were doing. And I hated every minute of it but I had no god damned choice in the matter. And I feel like I don’t understand anything that is going on. I don’t understand or like politics, I know I was used, but what choices do I have. I need to find someone who can help me, someone who won’t use me and I don’t think any of my Cabal mates have the ability to really aid me with this. I just need to find someone I can go to. Ah, fuck it. I can figure that out tomorrow. But you know that’s nothing compared to the other shit going on.

A couple of nights ago, Kelly came over to visit when she received a phone call an had to go. Things were a bit suspicious so Marbus, Storm and I started looking into what was going on with her. I decided to follow her and was told by Marbus that she had been bitten by a vampire. So we followed her to this old house, and after she went in we went up and knocked on the front door, and demanded to talk to what ever vampire was screwing with her. So this ancient crone of a vampire comes out and starts talking shit to us, when all we did was ask her to free Kelly. And when we said we wouldn’t leave the bitch attacked us. So we fought her and we killed her, it hurt and she fucked with my mind and made Marbus try and kill me. But I burned her and Marbus hit her until she stopped moving, the two of us seem to be pretty damn good at fucking up shit that messes with us. Yeah, we sure can kill things, fucking wonderful. Anyway we rescued Kelly but not before that damn vamp drained her near to death. Luckily Storm was with us and we dragged her back to covenstead.

The thing is I can’t stop thinking about that night. Kelly could have died, and we just followed her in. We could have stopped her, explained what we had seen and then gone in to talk to the Vampire, but instead we fucking let her walk in. We put her at risk to find out what was going on, damn it I feel like such complete scum for doing that. And after the fight was over, after the vampire was dead I seriously considered killing the Vampires servants. Hell the only reason I didn’t was because I wasn’t sure it would accomplish anything or help to protect us. But didn’t they deserve to die, I mean they were helping a gods damned vampire to feed. I mean it wouldn’t have been really wrong for me to get rid of them, I would be protecting other people right? But, I knew Storm wouldn’t approve and I didn’t know, not for sure anyway, that killing them would accomplish a damn thing. So I didn’t do it, but every instinct in me screamed at me to make sure, and I still can’t say that those instincts were wrong. Damn it all. I think I need a drink, maybe that will help get some sleep.

Arc 2, Chapter X

I haven’t written in a while because I don’t know how to say everything that’s going on. Things keep shifting and swirling about me without any way to follow the threads of it all, I feel like everything is in flux. I know that’s not really the way things are but it certainly feels like it. I mean even not counting all the shit that’s going on with the feast of wisdom, or the city vampires or new cabals coming in or any of that other crazy psychotic shit, life is still kicking my ass all over the place. SO a while back, I decided that I need money really badly. We never had enough money, for cabs, Lourdes needed to be paid and It’s sort of hard to buy a Jack and Coke with goddamn empty pockets. And well I don’t have any real job skills, and there is no way in hell I am fucking going to flip burgers in this city. I mean come on, I’m a fucking mage, there has to be a better way to earn money then a shit job. So the only things that the Mysterium trained me to do was use my magic and steal shit. And since I DO NOT want the Guardians crawling all over my ass, I figured I would need to pick up cash in a way that was fairly subtle. So I picked out a couple of major banks and started popping the locks on ATM’s using magic. The nice thing about it is that the way I did it makes it look like a job done by some sort of inside man. So I figure I grab a few thousand from a bank that has millions, and the bank is a bit short on profits. Boo fucking hoo. I bet they make that up in one day on outrageous fees alone. There was only one problem. The gods damned fucking Hierarch has interests in the bank I robbed. To say she was pissed is an understatement.

So I needed a quick and easy way to get the money back from her. I know I say, I’ll get the money from a Criminal. I’ll just go and rob one particular asshole mob boss. I mean what the hell could be worse then the hit he already has out on Promachus? One person was already killed in a drive by he was responsible for. So I have no problems taking a hell of a lot of money from this bastard. Everything went fine, with just one slight problem. He reports to the Lord of the Underworld. And when I say Lord of the Underworld. I don’t meant some little Italian Kingpin. I mean worshipped-as-a-God-by-the-Greeks Motherfucking Hades, Lord of the Underworld. Now Hades was pretty cool about the whole thing, and didn’t even ask for the Money that we stole, but he ends up building a permanent Connection to the entire Cabal.

Ok so the First time I try and steal any real money, I get caught By the Hirearch. The second time I get caught by an fucking God. What happens If I try and steal a third time? Do I piss off an entire order or Pantheon? I get it already, stealing is wrong. I don’t need any more concrete examples. If I try and rob anyplace that doesn’t hurt decent people it will piss off someone else, or cause them problems. I mean robbing the banks seemed okay until I realized I was causing the Hierarch problems. And really anytime I steal something I am going to end up hurting some one. It’s not like I have any more right to it then they do.

But! The Mysterium fucking trained me to use my magic to steal. How the hell is that so different? I mean what makes stealing Atlantean artifacts so god damned different. I’m still taking something that isn’t mine, and that the only right I have to it is because I’m a mage. But the student who had the time amulet got me thinking. I mean if he never had the thing, or If I had fucking gotten to him before he had become a sleepwalker, he would still be alive. And there is a lot of stuff out their that is just plain nasty if used improperly. Not to mention the dangers of Paradox from an imbued object. Hell if things go badly enough Paradox could end up killing some poor sleeper or sleepwalker. And it occurs to me that there is a lot of shit that the people who “own” it would be better off not having. And I don’t mean just dangerous magical stuff. But there are things that people just shouldn’t have. Kore told me about this story called “The Pearl” by some guy named Stinebeck. The idea is this guy found this really valuable pearl, and at the end of it his kid ended up getting killed because other people wanted it. And shit like this happens all the time. People will get a hold of something, and hold onto it because it’s important to them, without ever considering whether or not it’s any good for them.

So maybe just maybe, the difference between good and bad stealing has nothing to do with the person taking it. Maybe it’s all about the impact on the person who has the object taken from them. Maybe If I only stole things when it was to benefit someone other then me, I could know that what I was doing was righteous. And so I don’t think I’m going to steal things to make my life easier. If I need money, or some piece of jewelry, I’ll just fucking earn it or buy it. Now if lives depend on it or someone has some deadly magical object all bets are off. And If I think stealing something would benefit a person, I’ll do that too. But I’m not going to profit off of it.

Arc 2, Chapter 9

(This Journal is Written as Daimona sits in Goblins room, during the hours before dawn, as she watches him sleep)

Tomorrow is midsummer, no excuse me today is Midsummer, and I am afraid. A year ago the mages of this city disappeared with no real trace, most of the sleepwalkers were brutally murdered. And we still don’t know how it happened. We think we know what did it. The Cannibal Terror. We think it ate their souls, their learning, their collected wisdom. But we don’t know how. In all our explorations, with everything we have learned, we still don’t know what the fuck we are facing here or how to defend against it. And I believe that it is without a doubt coming for us, and we still don’t know how to fight it. And I know that something will happen today, something horrible. Something is coming for us, whether it’s the Cannibal Terror, or some servant or even just an echo of the first feast of wisdom., something is coming. And I don’t know how we can fight it. I… I don’t know how I can fight it, how I can fight something that feeds on others. I don’t think we can win this, I don’t think we are prepared enough. All I want to do is run, but I have too many friends here. Too many people who depend on me. I can’t back down from this. I have to face it. But I don’t think I am going to survive this. I have to try, but I really think I am going to fail at this.

Damn it, if we can’t even defend ourselves, how the hell are we supposed to protect the sleepwalkers who depend on us. Damn it why did Kore allow Ms. Edith to come into town. Why don’t Promachus and Storm send Jake and Kelly away? We all saw what happened before, how the sleepwalkers were brutally murdered. Why the hell is everyone letting the people they love be close to them? How the hell can they do that? We can’t shield them, and when the Feast happens all over again they will just be killed. Can’t they see it, if you get close to people who can’t defend themselves then all that will happen is that you will see them die. That if you are lucky you will die defending them? Don’t they understand? When we fight this thing, if we lose, everyone we love in this city will die.

And I don’t see how we can win when a city full of powerful entrenched mages was destroyed without a whimper. The Cannibal Terror is coming and I don’t see how we can win. But I am willing to die trying.

Shortly After Arc 2

I'm still alive. That's something isn't it?

I don’t know where the fuck to start this entry. Midsummer was two nights ago, and things became royally fucked up. Hordes of fucking zombies attacked. Yeah, I said it. Zombies. You think I would get used to this bullshit, but I don’t. Not really. We were prepared for just about anything, but not the fucking night of the godamned living dead. So all of the cabal managed to survive, but it was close at times. And we had a werewolf helping us. So a Werewolf ripped apart some of the fucking zombies. Fuck, that sounds like a bad movie, Werewolf Zombie Massacre or some shit. So you know survival, and I guess that is good and all.

But GOD DAMNIT we fucked everything else up. We took too long getting our bearings, and we fucking let Louise die. We could have saved her if we hadn’t spent so much go damned time figuring out what the fuck was going on. But instead of moving to protect the people that mattered we fucking dithered, and tried to defend our Sanctum. We should have moved faster, we should have done something differently. I can’t help but think that her death is my god damned fault.

But… part of me knows that even if we had saved her, we might have lost someone else. Maybe if we had known everything that was happening right off the bat we could have fucking done something to protect everyone. We tried our best and it still wasn’t fucking enough. I think that no matter how hard we try, when the fucked up shit is going down we are going to lose people. I mean fucking Valdus got his throat torn up, and he is one of the most bad assed mages we know. And if we hadn’t done what we did a lot more people would have died. So I just don’t know what to think. Fuck it. I’m gonna go get something to drink.

Shortly Before Arc 3

It’s been a crazy few months. Homeland Security, Curfews, the Army and the occasional riot have made New York a truly fucked up place to live. I guess I can’t blame the government for freaking the fuck out after Midsummer. I mean we all freaked the fuck out, and we knew what the fuck was going on. Having that kind of shit happen without a real explanation must be even worse. And it’s not like we could walk up to the FBI and explain things. The best result is that we would be locked up in Wakefield for being fucking crazy. The worst possible result is that they might fucking believe us. Well fuck all that noise. It’s not like I really want to talk about that shit anyway. I mean people can read all about it in the fucking paper anyway.

So one hell of a lot has happened since that drunken journal entry after midsummer. I own a business now. Which is so entirely fucked up, me running a business, before you know it I’ll be thinking about joining the Silver Ladder. So now I run Guardian Angel Securities, I help stop people from stealing shit, which has to be the most fucking ironic thing ever. I mean I started off swiping stuff, and then the Mysterium trained me to steal for them, and then I taught myself even better ways of doing it, and now I am going to do my do my best to stop other people from stealing. As I said, Ironic as hell.

So to open my shop I had to go even further in debt to Marcus. I guess I don’t mind doing that, but it kind of worries me. I don’t like owing someone as much as I owe him. If I know Marcus at all, he will probably ask me to do something I really want to do, but that my cabal would disapprove of. I can’t exactly say that the idea of fucking up some vampires doesn’t appeal to me, but it’s probably more trouble then it’s worth. Well fuck it, at least I don’t owe Palia. Now that would just be scary. Brrrrr.

Well, I really like my shop. It may be this little hole in the wall office just outside of China Town, but it’s mine. I haven’t had a whole lot of business yet, just some Chinese guys who needed some locks changed. They looked absolutely shocked to see a fucking pierced white chick when they walked through the door, but hearing me speak Cantonese seemed to impress the hell out of them. I think I just might be able to make this whole mess work. And to think I though I was going to live a life committing exciting crimes.

Shortly Before Arc 3

So I love my shop, but this thing keeps fucking bothering me. Here I am helping to protect other people’s valuables. But I was a thief, hell by most peoples definition I still am. I stole cars, robbed ATM’s, fucking ripped off a Mafia boss, and I did it without being caught by anything mundane. Hell the only reason I stopped stealing was because of the how much I was pissing off the supernatural community, most of the people I ripped off had it coming in one way or another. But It didn’t take me to long to realize that the people I was stealing from were not the only people getting fucked. Hell I couldn’t care less about big bad Mafia boss(the bastard still has it coming), but his daughter didn’t deserve what happened. And so I pretty much gave up the whole stealing thing. Hell, I even did the whole ABC family special scared straight thing and went into the security business.

But the thing is, it’s not like I stopped stealing. I’m still doing it for the Mysterium. Hell, I know that if they asked me to I would fucking rob someone I built a security system for. So how much of a hypocrite does that make me. Help people defend their valuables with one hand, rob them blind with the other? Fuck, it’s not like the Mysterium even pretends that the brought me into the order for any other reason. They recruited me to “recover” Artifacts. The thing is, most of the time it’s not Indiana Jones style shit or even what I did down in NOLA after the Hurricane. It’s fucking robbing collectors or museums. Hell, I suspect that for the right stuff they would ask me to rob another Mage. And this is the only job they ask me to do, it’s not like I’m needed for research or some shit. I can’t do that shit half as well the Kore can, and that’s when she hasn’t slept in a week.

So it seems like half the time when I steal stuff people get on my case for it because it’s wrong, or people get hurt. The rest of the time, it’s okay because the Mysterium tells me to do it. So what the fuck makes it okay to steal some of the time and not others. I can’t even say that stealing for myself is wrong and other types of stealing is right, because It’s not like I haven’t fucking profited from my work for the Mysterium. Maybe, right and wrong has less to do with who is ripping people off and everything to do with the person getting ripped off. Not so much if they deserve it or not, because the goomba fucking deserved it, but his daughter really didn’t. But sometimes people have shit that’s just going to hurt them in the long run. And getting that stuff out of their hands is doing them a fucking favor even if they don’t know it. Fuck I might even be saving their life.

Fuck me! I think that’s it. If I’m helping the person by stealing stuff from them it’s not wrong. And not just shit like stealing mystical artifacts that can eat their head. It can’t be a bad thing to take a bottle of alcohol from a drunk who is about to fall of the wagon, or maybe just stealing his keys before he gets in the car after boozing it up. And maybe it’s okay to steal something from someone if they would use it to fuck someone’s shit up. Or if this collector is sitting on a powerful Atlantean Artifact that could help people, and they don’t even know what it does.

I think it all comes down to the why. If I am stealing something for myself, for profit then that’s going to be wrong. But If I am doing it for a purpose, to help someone, then maybe it ceases to be wrong. Hell, maybe under the right circumstances, stealing wouldn’t just be the right thing to do, it would practically be sacred, downright supernal. I don’t think I am going to only be able to steal when it is the right thing do to. There are going to be fucking times when I have to do it to survive, when stealing is going to hurt someone. Well fuck it, if I am willing to call down the lightning on someone I can certainly pick their pocket if I need to. And maybe being aware of the why of the right and wrong will be enough to keep from screwing it up.