Spell
The Lantern of Low Hollow was a spell used to keep The Churning Storm at bay.
Description
The old story of The Lantern of Low Hollow says there was a blacksmith whose wife had become possessed, ranting and raving, hurting herself and other people, cursing god and swearing allegiance to the devil. Her doctor wanted to perform trepanation. Their community wanted her drowned. Their friends and family abandoned them. Desperate, the blacksmith wrote a prayer, a poem, that he hoped God would hear. He hoped it would help reveal that she wasn’t possessed, but rather controlled by some other force. Perhaps she was the victim of some more earthly form of revenge. With the poem, he created a way to hear “voices on the wind.”
History
During the 1998 Ascender’s correspondence with Mountaineers, he mentioned that a recruit named Luminor found a poem hidden in Fragment 3. Ascender had come across the same poem in a book about witchcraft and the history of magical myth, which had been given to him by Benefactor. The page contained an illustration of a snake. This was the same snake that surrounded the Record of Loss poem from Fragment 3. The poem they found was “The Lantern of Low Hollow.” After Ascender was attacked in Missouri and the other Mountaineers had been taken by the Storm, he wondered if the Storm was controlled by something or someone external to itself. To test his theory, he lured out the Storm and cast the Lantern of Low Hollow, which caused him to hear a voice telling it to “seek them and take their minds until none remain who know.” Ascender continued to use the spell on the Storm, learning more with each lighting of the Lantern.
After a hint from the modern-day Benefactor, recruits found The Lost Athenaeum to be updated with a new spell—one half of the Lantern of Low Hollow. They soon realized that while they held one half of the spell, Ascender held the other.
In his next correspondence, Ascender told the Mountaineers that he had had a pen and paper near him when he lured out the storm, and also that his laptop was open to the forum. He began writing what the Storm was commanded to do.
Towards the end of his communications with the Mountaineers, he was nearly caught by the Storm and told recruits that he had finally realized where voices within the Storm came from. They were the thoughts of people whose minds had been wiped by the Storm. After having been given the other half of the Lantern spell by Mountaineers, he realized he could harness it to control the Storm, but he decided instead to rely on the modern-day Mountaineers, and chose to erase his memories of them, using the bastard hex, so the Storm would never find out their plan.
In the post titled “Mr. Wideawake”, Mr. Wideawake told Deirdre Green that The Monarchs used the lantern spell to listen in on the Storm’s plans, and that it was the Monarchs who sent the spell to the Mountaineers.
Lost Athenaeum Description
The Lantern of Low Hollow – Incomplete
[Historical/Lost/Incomplete/Puritanism/New World Magiq]
Only a partial diary entry and the last three stanzas of this spell story have been found. Without the first half, the spell seems to be inert. The remains of the poem seem to imply that its purpose was first to hear the “commanding voice” of a magiq user on the wind, and then to take control or hijack the voice, whereupon one could either control the suffering or break the malevolent hold over them.
This spell is steeped in the new world witch hunts of the 17th century.
It has worked. Evelyn is not possessed. There is a voice on the air that commands her to do these things. To howl and hurt herself and those around her. I have heard it. Just tonight. My ears prick at its whisper. My pen scratches out its thoughts. I know now that someone has taken the reins of my beloved’s mind.
There is a verse on the tip of my tongue and the edges of my fingers. A verse that might allow me to break the voice’s hold, to usurp its command. But though I have the worldly skills to bend its voice to me, I do not have the strength to break its will.
I lack both skill and sufficient power to rid my bride of this curse. Some demented force beyond these walls seeks to drive her to madness, to drag me tooth and nail behind her, and all that I am able to do is listen as it tears her apart. What I would be, or break, to have rid of it.
Though it seems the second half of the spell story was finally designed (referred below), the first half of this accidental spell has never been recovered.
I cast all ill intent aside
The song begins to wane
As dark dominion loses hold
And burns upon my flame
I am become the voice aloft
High above the ashes
Ringing in the darkened eaves
And slipping through the sashes
The reins are now belong to me
To stay or turn to ill
To set the dark devoted free
Or do with as I will
Ascender’s Half of the Spell
The voice on waves of aether’s air
Be drawn upon the light
I call you from the nether’s lair
To bring you into sight
Whisper toward the lantern, mine
A fire burning clear
Your shadow thoughts are bending now
And turning to my ear
That sullen song is echoing
Black bell that has been rung
Your words are at my fingertips
And spilling from my tongue