Sheila had heard her mother’s over-dramatic screams in the past. Spoilt, shrill, nigh-inhuman screeches that were normally directed at the various passengers of Celia Torrance’s carousel of romance. Dirtbag boyfriends or fuck buddies who, more often than not, would either embarrass her publicly or invariably be caught stealing from the Torrance household in some manner.

Paul being the latest and longest lasting rider was neither a deadbeat or social oaf thus Sheila could assume one of two things:

1. Her mother’s legs have been spreading while Paul is gone at work

or

2. Celia was about to die.

Sheila assuming the latter, but almost hoping for the former, buried her face into her pillow and ventured back into sleep.

Artifice Comics Presents…
ARS MAGNA #3:
Schoolyard Blues
By Ashley Corgan

Three Apothecary Dragoons cornered the thirty-two year old at-home customer service telephone representative. She screamed bloody murder at the scarlet armored trio who had just walked through a space that had formed in the the living room wall of her home.

The center soldier straightened her posture and pointed a single crimson finger at their captive, “You - WHORE!”

“You never loved anyone but yourself,” another solider intoned.

Celia’s eyes deadened as the third dragoon removed the hood that covered her face.

“Sheila”, Celia exhaled.

“Some of us you told your secret, others you hid the truth forever. Your words serve as the motto of the Apothecary Dragoon: You can never truly hate what you have never loved.”

The once cowering woman drew her legs under herself, almost kneeling and then spat in face of the young woman that wore her daughter’s countenance.

***

She didn’t have to shut her eyes this time, nor did she need to envision the Pub with all the faceless patrons, like the first time they met. No, this time it was real. He was real. She could feel the magician’s eyes on her, dancing over her burgeoning features, and for once it felt good to be looked at like this.

“Johann?” she ventured with an almost kitten lilt to her voice.

She didn’t like to sleep under the covers, Cottered had an unusually high level of humidity and thus her only covering was a simple, white threadbare nightshirt she used every night. Now here he was, Johann Weisz, the man who taught her all she knew of magic, sorcery, and the mysteries of the Akashic records.

“Torrance,” he offered back, business as usual.

Sheila couldn’t make eye contact with her mentor. Emerald hopped off Sheila’s bed, the little ancient serpent hissed at Weisz before opening its wings and flying out of the teen’s open window.

“The lizard doesn’t care for me much,” he spoke as he sat down next to her on the bed. He leaned in close to her, his eyes searching hers.

“I d-”, he cut her off by grabbing her roughly by the shoulders.

“Listen Torrance, I need something from you.”

She was speechless, the rough texture of his palms, the sheer desperate grip of his fingers turning her already unnaturally pale skin even whiter as the pressure increased. He felt cold against her warming flesh.

“That night we met at the ‘mystery pub’, I gave you all of my memories, all of them, an entire copy of my sensory history. So I know you know what I want, what I’m after. I’ll - I’ll never be happy… complete without it.”

Sheila dropped her head, her mind swam in their mixed pasts. At her present age of thirteen she already knew how it felt to have someone inside her but with Johann’s memories she knew hot it felt to be inside a woman. The fond memories of his Mother had been the catalyst for her own empowerment, she was the role model not found in her own biological receptacle, Sylvia Torrance.

Johann is the son of Albert Weisz, the original Magenta the Magician, the premiere majestic hero of the occult, more James Bond with an ornate Power Sceptre than stage performer that his name conjures.

He removed his hands from her shoulders and began to place them on the sides of her head.

“No”, she spoke softly, “that’s not how I do that.”

Sheila leaned forward and slowly married her lips to his. Sharing her first kiss with him, she bared her soul to him, every ounce of memory she contained of her own life: the many times she was forgotten at various shopping centers and parking lots, the two birthdays her mother remembered to celebrate, the first time she was left alone with a man, various nights spent babysitting her cousin Mikey while her mom and Aunt went out clubbing, her time with Emerald and every bit of knowledge about the Talismans.

This is what he was after.

Johann lingered a moment more than the 13 years of memories needed to be passed, before drawing his head back, eyes shut. He blinked back the tears that stung his weary eyes.

“Halcyon, you’re after the Gold Scarab… Victoria’s scarab,” Sheila whispered.

“You think it’s the one that finished Golem.”

The young magician cleared his throat and absently licked his cracked, dry lips.

“Ya, I figured it to be a Talisman that was in Mysteria’s possession. She is - gifted, but the scenes where she battled the Winters, she’s not that strong without… help.”

“You have to know Johann that scarabs are-”

“Dung Beetles worshipped by the Egyptians, an immortality symbol of perpetual, resurrection. Yes, I know what you know now, Torrance.”

“No, it means it could be a Millennial Talisman. As even if it’s destroyed it’ll come back.”

“You still think it has anything to do with Atlantis?”

“The Akashic records have snippets of memories of the people that were there, they weren’t human, Johann, and I feel it has everything to do with the Imperial Magistrate. Wherever she comes from - they created it and destroyed it, and they used Halcyon to do it.”

“Well isn’t our little Earth so special.”

“You’re leaving me… aren’t you?”

He looked down, he couldn’t look his apprentice in the eye any longer.

“Sheila,” he offered.

And with that he vanished.

“Weisz,” she murmured to the emptiness of her small room.

Sheila settled back into bed, not even his smell remained, only memories.

***

The little green dragon shoved her tapered snout into an overturned garbage can. Stray cats always had the best kind of meat, the little panic and fight in them before the kill always gets their blood hot and flowing.

Emerald spent less and less time in her statuette form for Sheila neither sang the Song of Still Waters nor refused to let the tiny serpent go unfed. Emerald spent over a year in constant vigilance due to this, watching over her young master’s struggles at both home and school.

With no battles to expend the energies of her feedings Emerald spent day after day nestled in Golem’s rocky remains producing minute amounts of Talisman Materia. The Materia is the raw component in the forging and creation of new Talismans, each talisman can only be produced once every hundred years with an eleventh every thousand. The Millennial Talismans were the rarest of their kind. Century Talismans could be destroyed, such as the fate of her partner Golem, but Millennials were never ending wells of energy. They never had to hunt for food, didn’t have to rest, and the Emerald Dragon of the Jade-Leaf Clan was merely a protector of wisdom, a defender of their faith in a dying line of Oriental majesty.

Out of all the dignity and peace that followed her creation, Emerald was left eating untended pets and comforting her partner through the slow fading of his existence. It was with his last spark that their offspring, their materia took shape: two smaller gems, and a single large stone.

Emerald snorted to herself, with all her and Golem’s time together, his boundless strength and her wisdom, their progeny was little more than pebbles.

She spotted the tail of her prey twitching rhythmically. The miniature winged-beast lunged at the furry appendage…

Only to be caught by her own.

“Well, well, well what do I have here?”

He shifted the muscles in his hand, grinding the little tail’s vertebrae against themselves. She let loose a pained hiss but didn’t bother to struggle, she was hungry, weak and in no mood for a fight.

British Rule, the helmeted Lord of Shadows, brought the animated Talisman to his face.

“Boo,” he whispered to his captive.

“I’m on my way to Sheila’s house, I’m going to kill everyone in my way, and you’re not going to-”

Em snapped at his face, her teeth glancing off the nose guard of his half helm.

“No bother.”

Rule whispered to the little a dragon a song she hadn’t heard for a thousand years.

Her body stiffened and slowly her joints locked into place. Emerald’s once warm, textured flesh turned to a cool, polished finish. She would rest once again, but for how long?

Rule hesitated for a moment, the urge to smash the little trinket against the alley’s brickwall subsided, and he pocketed the little curio.

“Here comes the bride…”

***

A malignant beast leapt from roof to roof atop the homes that lined Milne Road. Its great maw salivating, awaiting the gore to come.

Snipe, the singularly named werewoman was eager to complete her mission. As a creation at the hands of one Dr. Gregor Christmas, she wished a life free from her lycanthropic state. As promised, she need only retrieve Sheila Torrance from her bedroom and bring her back to the Center of Advanced Nuances. No more, no less.

And once that was done she would be completely transitioned to humanoid form. no fur, no teeth, no claws, although she secretly hoped to keep her animal sex drive. Having bedded all the male technicians able to overlook the fur and fangs, she provided the Center with litter upon litter of her shape-shifting offspring, more than enough to replace her in the event of her absence.

With glee she landed on the target roof and broke through, landing nimbly in the master bedroom of the Torrance residence.

Man and woman, mid-coitus, the woman already screaming from pleasure. The scene would have inspired a fit of carnal desire for her partner British Rule had not blood-lust won over in her feral form.

Sylvia Torrance’s cries turned into burbling death gasps as Snipe buried a massive set of claws into her mid-bounce. Paul’s eyes shot open in time for the blood spray to blind him. It was over in seconds.

***

“771284?”

Lady tilted her head to the side quietly as she stared at one of her Apothecary Dragoons as she was being addressed.

“What is it 830224?”

Apothecary Dragoon Officer, Lady of Shadows, took the time to adjust the simple scarlet hood that was draped over her unit’s head tenderly.

“Ahhh, Sheila Eleanor Torrance and Celia Torrance have been acquired.”

“Have ‘Eleanor’ marked and placed with one of the Imperial Alchemists, ASAP.”

Dragoon 830224 was not one used regularly for combat. She was more of an assistant to Lady, 830224 being one of the far and few ‘Sheila Torrance’ instances without a history of abuse or torment, this was due in part to the childbirth-related death of her mother. Rescued from simple neglect at the hands of a state upbringing, 830224 was under the personal tutelage of Lady of Shadows.

“What of her… Mother?”, Dragoon 830224 asked as if she’d have a chance to meet this maternal doppelganger. Lady knew the truth behind Mothers and quickly dismissed the inquiry with a command.

“Process her - remains into the Materia, like all the others.”

Lady sat back in the command chair of the Interdictor Class Imperial vessel as it began the entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Yes, this Earth was different, special perhaps, an anomaly classified by the Imperial Magistrate herself. Lower-Earth 746387 was a place not to be belied by its primitive nature. Inside this blue-green bauble lay wonders and horrors not yet ripe enough to pick clean just yet. No, the plan as far as Lady knew it was to let it destroy itself. But they needed something very important from it first.

With one last open seat of the Imperial Alchemists and none of her dragoon willing to fill the void they were desperate. Every single dragoon never had close contact with the Talismans, no bonds formed, no mystical link to the protective little wretches. Lady of Shadows even took it upon her young self to face all hybrids alone in combat. Those abominations, the permanent corporeal alliance of Master and Talisman. Oh yes, as ordered by the bitch of a ruler, Lady laid waste to all who defy the natural law.

As the vessel descended past the cloud line, a spell was initiated, and the whole ship was enveloped by darkening clouds. Rain began to assault the dry Australian city below them.

Something clicked in her mind, an ever growing presence of her husband.

Rule was here.

“830024!”

“Yes, Lady?”

“Prepare the Dragoon, have them battle-ready but do not allow them to descend just yet.”

“Why?”, she asked innocently enough. 830224 was the only one who was allowed to get away with the occasional questioning of orders.

“Because, 830224, I want to see this one for myself.”

***

The screaming and grunting ended earlier than usual for a Friday night.

Rain pattered on the floor beneath her open bedroom window. She wondered where Emerald was, Em was not one to stand for rain.

Sheila rolled off her bed, skirted the baby puddles, and shut the window. Sucks to be Em, she thought to herself as she opened her bedroom door and ventured to the kitchen for a late night snack to help her mull things over.

The night coupled with the rain storm pounding, unusually loud, against the roof made the house more a tomb than living quarters. She shuffled through the house, narrowly avoiding walls and furnishings, and made her way to the kitchen specifically right in front of the icebox door. The small light inside the ivory colored device parted the darkness as she fished out a jar of pickled beets, mayonnaise, processed cheese slices, and some butcher paper wrapped deli meat that smelt of questionable levels of tolerable spoilage.

Upon shutting the door the darkness returned and a voice began to speak:

“Sheila Torrance of Lower-Earth 746387, I hereby induct you into the Order of the Imperial Alchemists as decreed by the illustrious Imperial Magistrate.”

Sheila immediately took a step back only to have backed into a wall that wasn’t there but a second ago. She looked behind herself and saw nothing, but implicitly felt an even, unmoving force pressed against her back.

“Resistance will be met with equal measure…,” Lady let the envelope of shadow dissolve and what was once only an inky blackness there now stood an armored scarlet figure of near equal height and build to the nightshirt clad teen.

“Who are you?” Sheila mustered an assertive tone.

“I am your keeper, Apothecary Dragoon Officer, Lady of Shadows,” Lady thought for a second before continuing on.

“Cheryl Torrance of Lower-Earth 771284 and Wi-”

A throaty growl reported from the stop of the stairs.

“Wife of British Rule, Lord of Shadows. Yes, I know who you are you little witch,” Snipe snarled at the helmeted figure as her monstrous form, covered in the carnage that took place only minutes before, sauntered down the stairs on all fours.

Sheila could feel a strong weight of dread on her chest, this sensation of impending doom reserved for lax grades on her end of quarter school reports or the introduction of an all new boyfriend of her mother’s.

“What in the Imperial Presence are you, beast?”, Lady spat back.

“Rule’s new, improved lover, you little Loli-”

Sheila threw the jar of pickled beets at the armored girl and mayonnaise jar at the talking monster. She threw out an open palm to the living room and the parasol that once hung on a coat hook by the front door flew into her hand. Lady let a pocket of darkness open and swallow the jar before it hit her and within the same hand gesture produced a parasol of her own from out of thin air. Snipe on the other hand moaned as the jar smashed open on her snout and vinegar and salt solution assaulted her eyes and keen sense of smell.

“WHORE!” the beast-woman roared as she slashed about randomly into the kitchen.

Sheila backed away and began driving the tip of the umbrella into the matted down carpeting, etching arcane symbols into ill-cared for retro orange mottled carpeting.

Large, ornate blades erupted from the floor of the kitchen and impaled the feral hell-beast. Snipe gave a long, pained, pathetic cry as the blades held her up off the ground. Her own massive weight keeping her secured to each thick edge.

“Impressive work… for an apprentice, but don’t think for one moment that will have any effect on my intent 746387.”

Lady prodded at one of Snipe’s wounds with her combat parasol and chuckled softly to herself.

“I’m not going anywhere with you… Cheryl,” Sheila said, her assertiveness gone from her voice.

“Thats right, love. You’re coming home to Daddy…” British Rule appeared from the same well of shadows the armored girl Sheila faced appeared from, “and then you’re coming home with me.”

“Listen you daft fool, I’ve already claim to her in the name-”

“Yes, yes my little wife, but I already have the highest claim to Imperial Magistrate’s little pet here. Remember I gave her you in trade for this little poppet here.”

Rule motioned at Sheila and suddenly she became quite sleepy and her last thoughts was half a wonder what happened to Paul.

***

“Hello, Sheila!”, a warm pleasant voice greeted her ears.

Sheila ventured her eyes open into a half squint, eyelids heavy she stared up and saw a canopy, the post ornately carved and polished. She could hear the crackle of a fireplace in the background.

The smell of jasmine wafted across her face. She turned to spy the origin and found a beautiful woman sitting at the bedside.

“Hello there,” she cooed again, a genuine smile spread across her fine features.

“H-hi,” Sheila managed to reply.

The woman ran her fingers through Sheila’s hair briefly before taking a gorgeous ivory hair clip from her own golden locks.

“Here you go sweetie, this was given to me by your Father it should really belong with you.”

She felt a brief discomfort on her scalp where the hair clip grazed her head but after a moment a wave of warmth spread from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

“Father? I don’t ha-”

“Oh but you do my child. You so very much do.”

A tall, blonde, handsome gentleman walked into the room. Piercing blue eyes dazzled Sheila for a moment, her mind playing it up to a trick of the firelight.

“My name is Gregor Christmas, I had a tryst with your Mother many years ago. You must understand your Mother was so very much brighter and carefree when I met her, and my life was so dry and cold. I needed the levity she afforded me, but my family’s fortune, your inheritance, hinged on a quiet dismissal.”

He spoke all this not so much looking at Sheila but as if peering directly into his past, his eyes so cerulean and yet void.

“A few years after your birth your Mother returned to me demanding help supporting you. The compensation I provided for your care she quickly squandered on the luxuries she thought she deserved.”

Gregor placed a hand, lightly, on the woman’s shoulder.

“My Mother, your Grandmother discovered your existence and wanted you a part of the Family but by then Sylvia kept moving you around, wishing no contact just further funds.”

The man’s eyes were bordering on tears, his voice breaking as he spoke again.

“A few years later she sent me tapes… of- of you and-”

Sheila’s eyes widened.

“No,” she spoke to herself.

Sheila always lied to herself that Sylvia was never involved in or knew about the abuses she’d been suffering over the years from the men that would come in and out of Sylvia’s love life. She’d try to chalk up the presence of a redlight blinking in the darkened rooms to just bad dreams or poor memory recollection addled by child-like fantasy.

“So when we discovered you were in Cottered attending the Jerrod Academy we sent someone to bring you home, my dear.”

Home.

“Mary here,” the beautiful blond woman that he stood behind tilted her head and seemed to beam.

“She is my wife, we were married not too long ago. And you’ve also yet to meet your Aunt Willa and your Grandmother, Richmond.”

Sheila suddenly felt herself forced up into a reclined sitting position. The warmth of the room quickly turned into a sterile cold.

“Richmond?”, the teen spoke aloud to herself, again.

The scene dissolved around her. Sheila no longer occupied a lavish estate bedroom but found herself strapped to a padded examination table. She tried to move her head around but felt a tugging from the top of her head and the sound of clacking, hard objects colliding above her

She shifted her eyes about and spotted Gregor and Mary standing by her side, they were each dressed in scrubs and wearing surgical masks. Gregor’s deep blue eyes made him easily recognizable.

“Welcome home, Sheila. We’ve been waiting for you.”