Beyond the Tapestry - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

So as you may have noticed, I'm really bad at working on what I'm supposed to be working on! November was supposed to be all about WWDtS, I had a vote for it and everything, but I've had...minimal success with that project 😭.

Still, I haven't done no writing and I do want to give you guys something! This is the project that has captured my limited writing attention this past month or so. Not sure its going to go anywhere yet, but I've really enjoyed working on it so far.

Beyond the Tapestry is sort of a non-quest spiritual revamp of Harvesting the Multiverse, a story I wrote a lot of at the start of this year. To be clear; this story features a different protagonist, a very different AU setting and magic system, and a lot of other changes. Its only the very high level concept that is being reused.

That story has developed a lot of cracks and ended up being terribly unbalanced, but I did really enjoy the initial concept and wanted to iterate on it. Its a Harry Potter/Magic: the Gathering/Multicross fic following an OC Black character (as in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black). The magic system is heavily revamped and based loosely on elements I've loved in other stories, and I've also changed a lot of the mechanics found it HtM to fix some of the problems that I ran into there.

Anyway, I think that's more than enough Author's Note. This is chapter 1/6 that will be coming out in 15 minute increments. Let me know what you think!

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Even hours after the end of her last bout of the day, Dorea’s body throbbed. The physical injuries she’d accumulated throughout the day—a few bruises, a handful of scrapes, and a nasty gash from where she hadn’t quite managed to dodge out of the way of a cutting curse—were long gone, taken care of my the healers on staff with potions and spells in just a few minutes, but there was little they could do about the spiritual side of things. 

It wasn’t like she’d been seriously injured or anything, after all. Just some minor over channeling and a light case of dark magic toxicity, nothing to really worry about. If she was actually in danger there were some radical interventions that could have helped her, but none that were worth contemplating in the face of such mild symptoms. The damage from over channeling would be mostly healed in a few days and the dark magic toxicity would resolve itself soon after.

The problem was, Dorea didn’t have a few days. The semi finals were tomorrow, and the finals—if she made the finals—were scheduled for the very next day. And Dorea was in no shape to duel anyone, much less Hemericus gods damned Lambert.

She ached. Her arms felt like iron bars filled with molten lead, her skin was hot and clammy, and she could barely feel the fingers on her right hand, her wand hand. This wasn’t her first time dealing with over channeling––she’d pushed herself a little bit too hard in training plenty of times––but it had never been this bad. Especially not in both arms at once, though the damage to her off hand was much less severe. 

The healer who’d fixed her arm (or at least the cut on her arm) had said she was just being overdramatic. Very few mages, especially ones as young as her, ever had to deal with channel-burns at all, and they couldn’t possibly be as severe as she was claiming. It took a lot more power than a barely-adult witch could muster to even strain a person’s magic channels, much less actually damage them. 

If she hadn’t been in so much pain already, she would have hexed the misogynistic prick. 

She could hear the party raging outside through the thin walls of the room she’d been provided by the International Youth Dueling Federation. She should be out there with them, celebrating how far she’d come already and unwinding in preparation for the last two days of competition. Instead, she was laid up in bed slowly soaking her sheets through with sweat. Moving hurt, the dark magic she’d been hit with earlier in the day clashing with her own light-aligned magic and the interference sending waves of hot pain throughout her whole body. There were spells she could cast on herself to speed up her recovery and lessen the symptoms, but that would only further inflame the damage in her arms and set her recovery back. Dark magic toxicity was unpleasant, but she could push through it. You couldn’t just push through damaged magic channels. 

The worst part about it was that this was all her own fault. She’d gotten cocky and it had cost her. That no-name colonial muggleborn she’d run into during the round of sixteen should have been an easy win, but she’d been stupid. So gods damned stupid. She should have ended the fight in thirty seconds flat, but instead it had turned into a minutes-long slog that had tired her out and forced her to show off a handful of tricks she’d hoped to save for later rounds. 

She’d beaten him in the end of course. That had never been in question. But that had been her third duel of the day, and less than half an hour later it was time for her quarter final match against Joaquin Alcalde. She’d dueled the Spanish wizard thrice before and beaten him each time, but this time he was practically fresh––he hadn’t participated in the team trios this year, meaning he’d had two days to rest since the end of the full team event––while she was worn out from five consecutive days of competition. 

Once again, she’d come out on top, but it had cost her. And now she was just starting to pay the price. 

She needed this win. She needed it. Hogwarts’ senior team had gotten flattened in the seven-on-seven stage and her trio had barely made top thirty-two in that event. She was a good duelist, a great duelist even, but they’d gotten unlucky with the pairings and the rest of her team was just total rubbish. Malfoy was a disgrace to his family name, Diggle barely knew which way to point his wand, Goldstein couldn’t keep his head under pressure, Rookwood knew too many spells and didn’t know when to use them, and the less said about Bones and Wigley the better. 

The singles tournament was her only chance to scrape out a win this year, and she needed a win. That was the deal she’d made with uncle Sirius. If she could prove that she had what it took to go pro, she could contribute to the family’s standing that way. If she couldn’t, she’d be married off to that boorish oaf Charlus Potter by the end of the summer. 

That wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t care that the Potters were making money hand over fist off their new exclusive deal with St. Mungo’s. She didn’t care that Sirius had been trying to negotiate an alliance with Henry Potter for going on five years now. And she certainly didn’t care that Charlus Potter had turned down a half-dozen of her cousins saying it was only her that he wanted. He could fuck right off because he wasn’t going to get her! 

She was Dorea Andromeda Black, daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. She could trace her line back to the god-pharaohs of Egypt and counted kings, emperors, and even the bloody Morrigan herself (may she bring ruin to her enemies and victory to her children) among her direct ancestors. She was not a gods damned Potter, no matter how noble those upstart merchants and death cultists thought they were!

…but at this rate, she was going to be one very soon.

Dorea collapsed back against her pillows, hot tears prickling her eyes and threatening to spill down her cheeks. Her arms hurt too much to wipe them away, almost too much to worry about what was going to happen. It was hard to think about future pain when the present felt plenty bad already.

She was going to be a Potter. A thrice-damned Potter. It would be one thing if she was marrying into the main line—she could live with marrying to become a lady of the Wizengamot, even if it was of a far lesser house than her own—but Charlus was a third son not poised to inherit anything of merit. Certainly he was a favored third son, spoiled rotten by his parents, grandparents, and godparents, but that just made things worse.

She balled her hands into fists, or tried too at any rate. The first three fingers of her right hand wouldn’t quite listen right, twitching stiffly instead of curling down to join her ring finger and pinky. 

Damn it, damn it, damn it! This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. There had to be something she could do, some way to fix this, but she couldn’t think of anything. Over channeling was a bad idea for a reason. Wizardry was very good at healing damage you could see, but much less effective on internal injuries, and there were few things more internal than damage inside your very magic.

But there had to be something. There had to be. She racked her brain, mentally zipping back and forth from useless potion to useless spell. What good was a decade of magical education if it couldn’t help her when it really counted? What good was any of what she’d done if she was going to end up married out to a chauvinistic, stupid, bigoted prick like Charlus Potter who’d never let her do anything interesting for the rest of her gods forsaken life!

She was broken out of her spiraling thoughts by a soft knock on the door. “Dorea?” a familiar voice called. “Are you in there? Are you awake?”

For a moment, Dorea seriously considered playing mum. She did not want to talk to anyone, much less Darius Rookwood who’d completely blown her chances in the trios event with his inability to distinguish between a dark severing curse and a completely dissimilar wide-angle shield breaker. 

The knock came again. “Dorea, it's Darius.” His voice was quiet, soft enough that it wouldn’t have woken her up if she really had been asleep. “No one’s seen you all night so I know you’re in there. Can I come in?”

Dorea tilted her head back and squeezed her eyes shut, her teeth clenched so tightly together she could feel her jaw creaking. 

There was a third knock.

“Oh fine!” she called, exhaling violently on the second word. She regretted it instantly, the harsh movement sending a renewed wave of discomfort through her chest and arms. “Agh,” she choked, “get in here before you break the bloody door down.”

The door opened with a soft click and Darius sauntered into her room, a crooked grin on his lips. He was tall for a noble, just breaking six feet, with long black hair pulled up into a high ponytail, a narrow face, and soft gray eyes. He’d changed out of his dueling robes into something much more casual, a simple black robe embroidered with countless stylized corvids done in a blue thread so dark it blended in with the black. It was rather conservative for a party, but Rookwood was just like that.

Dorea didn’t mind Rookwood most of the time. He was one of her cousins and they’d spent a lot of time together growing up. His mother had been a Black before she’d married out of the house (like she was going to be doing all too soon, damn it) and they’d both ended up in Slytherin like Blacks—even unofficial Blacks—almost always did. He was smart, funny, and they usually ended up partnering up in runes and potions classes. Between that and the dueling team, there weren’t many of her classmates that Dorea knew better.

Right now though, Dorea could barely stand to look at him. He’d apologized profusely after the match—they both knew that he’d been the one who’d fucked up—and she probably would forgive him sooner rather than later, but she certainly wasn’t ready to do so yet. Unfortunately they were both staying in the same set of rooms that had been assigned to the Hogwarts team and competing in the same tournament so she couldn’t really avoid him particularly well.

“Finely,” Darius drawled, “I was starting to think you’d—“ his voice caught in his throat as he finally caught sight of her, his eyes widening. “Merlin, Dorea, are you alright?”

Trying to smile hurt, but she thought she’d managed something that looked more like a grin than a grimace. She was probably quite a sight, all wrapped up in blankets and propped up on pillows. She was always pale, but dark magic toxicity always exacerbated that pallor, making her look weak and sickly even when she wasn’t feeling all that bad. Given how sick she felt, it was probably safe to say she looked even more horrendous than usual.

Darius stared at her for a moment, then cursed under his breath. “Morgana’s tits, I thought I was coming to drag you away from whatever book you’d buried your head in, but you look just about ready to get buried properly! What the hell happened? Should I call a healer?”

“Wouldn’t help,” Dorea mumbled, hating how weak and reedy her voice sounded. Her words were slow and halting, but she could fucking talk, damn it! “Dark magic toxicity and over channeling. I already took a potion for the pain,” not that it had particularly helped, but she still gestured towards an empty glass vial lying on her bedside table with her head, “and they can’t do fuck all about the rest of it.”

Darius stared down at her blankly. “Over channeling and dark magic toxicity doesn’t look like that,” he told her doubtfully.

Fucking prick. “It does when you overdo it as badly as I did,” she all but growled. 

“I mean…you look half dead! Are you sure the healers didn’t miss some kind of curse or something?”

This time she did growl. “I know what the difference between curse damage and over channeling feels like, Rookwood.”

“Yeah, of course you do,” he quickly corrected himself, “but like, there are some really subtle curses out there and…”

Dorea painfully extricated her hands from beneath the sheets and opened her hands, revealing the white lines on her palms and fingers. They’d be completely gone in a few days—just as soon as she burned away the excess dark magic lingering in her blood and bones and could finally heal them properly—but for now they remained as a testament of how far she’d had to push herself to beat Alcalde.

Rookwood’s mouth closed with a click. He leaned forward, studying the marks intently, then ruefully shook his head. “Damn,” he whistled, “you are one hard core bitch, Black, you know that?” Dorea’s grimace turned toothy. “How the hell did you do that without anyone—“ he snapped his fingers, “Oh! I thought it was weird that you’ve been dueling in proper gloves all week when you almost never wear them at practice. I thought you’d just finally given in to Ogden’s,” their team’s faculty sponsor, “nagging about proper uniforms, but you were being sneaky! Where the hell did you learn to do that?”

Dorea didn’t answer, not that Darius would have really expected one. That kind of blood magic was rather illegal in Britain without the right license—a license Dorea definitely didn’t have. But Vienna was hosting the IYDF summer tournament this year, and it was being run under ICW dueling rules, which were laxer about some kinds of magic than British law was. Magics like the kind of self-sacrificial blood magic that Dorea had used to channel so much magic into her spells she’d managed to injure herself. It wasn’t common or widely accepted, but it wasn’t against the rules. 

She was trying to avoid using too much such magic. She’d be going home soon and it was a bad habit to get into, not to mention what the press might report. The ministry couldn’t punish her for using it outside of the country––the Wizengamot would never allow it––but the knowledge of what she’d done could still be used against her and the family at large in subtler ways. 

Dorea paused, something about that nagging in the back of her head. She tried to think, but Darius was talking again.

“I don’t know much about that kind of stuff,” and he wasn’t going to admit it out loud even if he did. There was a reason Dorea had just shown him some mostly healed cuts on her hands instead of saying anything outright, “but I doubt the same trick will work two more days in a row. You look really bad, are you going to be fine to duel tomorrow?”

Dorea hid her hands back under the warm sheets, muted spikes of agony shooting down her arms from the motion, before answering. “I’m going to have to be.”

Darius looked worried, not reassured in the slightest by her answer. “Lambert isn’t going to go easy on you just because you’re not at one-hundred percent. The safety wards are good, but accidents do happen. If you’re not up to dueling tomorrow, you should resign or you might be stuck in bed for a lot longer than a night or two. Or worse.”

Dorea snarled, half rising from the pillows despite how much doing so hurt. Darius didn’t deserve her anger; he was probably right and just trying to look after her, but the idea of just giving up, of lying down and resigning herself to her fate, was utterly intolerable. “I’m not going to give up, Rookwood.”

Darius was undeterred. “Better to give up than give Lambert a chance to pummel you. I’ve heard he’s a vindictive bastard and I doubt he’s forgiven you for embarrassing him last year.” 

Dorea looked away, the red of her cheeks bright against her pallid skin. She hadn’t meant to make an enemy, but apparently Lambert didn’t take rejection well. She hadn’t even realized he was propositioning her, or else she would have turned him down quietly and in private. Stupid bloody spaniards. And the worst part was that he was famous enough back home that it had turned into a whole thing. Uncle Sirius had not been amused.

Darius was silent for several long moments, then sighed heavily. “Damn it, Dory.” He flicked his wrist, his wand falling into his hand from its holster on his forearm, then swept it around the room, leaving a pale blue trail along the walls where he was pointing. A moment later, the sounds of the partying vanished as the silencing paling sprang up around her room. He sighed heavily. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll make sure no one bothers you till lunch and you can call an elf if you need something. You need as much time to heal as you can get.”

Something tightened in Dorea’s chest. “Thanks Dary,” she mumbled, her voice half swallowed by her pillows but still clearly audible in the sudden silence.

“Just…” he fumbled for words, then sighed again. “Kick Lambert’s ass for me, okay?”

“I’ll do it for myself, thank you very much,” Dorea shot back. 

Darius threw his hands up in disgust and turned to leave. He paused in the doorway and stuck his head back through the translucent sound barrier he’d made. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay? You’re ten times the mage Lambert will ever be and a single loss won’t change that. If it looks like you’re going to lose, you resign, okay? I don’t want to have to explain to Lord Black what happened to his favorite niece. Or the Aurors, for that matter.”

Dorea snorted, more out of amusement of someone calling her Sirius’s favorite niece than anything else, but Darius seemed to take it as a positive sign. He nodded sharply then withdrew, closing the door behind him. A moment later, there was a pulse of magic and the lock clicked. Dorea appreciated the courtesy—one visitor tonight was already more than enough, thank you very much, but hadn’t wanted to risk further hurting herself by casting a locking spell.

She closed her eyes and lay back, her mind lingering on what Darius had said at the end. Nothing stupid, huh. Something he might need to explain to the Aurors. 

She was pretty sure he meant that she needed to make sure not to resort to any illegal wizardry, the sort her aunts, uncles, and parents taught her under the cover of Castle Black’s ancient wards. The kind of spells banned from sanctioned duels and often criminalized for being too deadly, too dangerous, or too hard to heal from.

But those were not the only kinds of frowned upon or illegal magics she knew. She was Black, after all, and the House of Black did not think much of the Ministry of Magic and the International Confederation of Wizard’s restrictions on what kinds of magic they could and could not practice.

She’d been very worn out going into the last round and had utilized a sacrifice of blood and pain to make up the difference and give her the strength to keep going. She absolutely couldn’t use the same approach again tomorrow—it might actually kill or permanently cripple her if she tried it—but perhaps something else might be able to do the trick. 

She didn’t need a miracle. If the next round was delayed by so much as a single day she’d be healthy enough to slap Lambert around like a muggleborn first-year (though she’d probably end up back in bed in even worse shape soon after). She just needed something to patch her up and tide her over. Something to clear up her damaged channels and get her back in fighting shape. Something…

Dorea’s eyes snapped open. She had it! It wasn’t anything she’d tried before, and it wasn’t exactly designed with this in mind, but if she was remembering the listed effects correctly, it might just do the trick.

“Tipsey,” she called sharply, desperate hope shining in her eyes.

There was a soft pop and a small, lanky creature appeared beside her bed. She was a little under four feet tall with skinny arms and legs, huge eyes and ears, and wore a pristine white towel embroidered with the emblem of the House of Black wrapped around her like a toga. 

She looked up at Dorea, her eyes wide and inquisitive. “Mistress Dorea be calling Tipsey?”

“I need one of Cassiopeia’s journals from the library, the ones with blue-dyed covers. Either the third or fourth volume, I can’t remember which,” Dorea instructed briskly.

“Tipsey knows the ones. She be bring both.” She vanished with another pop.

Dorea smiled painfully. She really hoped she was remembering the details correctly. It had been nearly a year since she’d gone through the journals, and she’d only skimmed most of them, but she had a good feeling about this. She needed to double check the details and getting everything ready in time was going to hurt, but maybe, just maybe, this could work. 

She was very glad Darius had come by, almost enough to forgive him for his uselessness earlier in the week. It would be…less than ideal if someone came to check up on her or overhead the wrong thing, but he’d hopefully eliminated both issues. If she won this thing—when she won––she’d make sure to thank him. For now though, she needed to get to work. Time was ticking.