The swirling chaos spun up into a tight multi-colored vortex, spinning and gathering more magic. The top of the funnel glowed like a rainbow as magic, condensed and drawn into the top of the spinning chaos left off bursts of light that traveled along the lines of power. The colors spun around the axis, giving the storm a ghastly greenish tinge where it rested on the earth. The fury that the spinning tornado of magic was terrifying, and worst of all to Logan Spooner, was the complete silence. Not a single peep or whistle of noise accompanied the complete devastation, nothing other than his parents laughter at the destruction their spell was causing.
The small town of Spoonerville, Oregon was directly in the path of the chaos, and as the spinning chaos reached the edge, buildings winked out of existence, trees, yards, animals, all vanished and added their essence to the growing vortex.
“Look at it Niche! Look at it!” Andor Spooner shouted with glee. “Take it! Take it all!” He levered himself off the ground and stood up, panting hard. His ratty grey-blue ‘Northern Exposure’ shirt hung on his emaciated frame a couple of sizes too large. He’d lost himself in the excitement of the casting, burning out his energy and life to create the swirling chaos destroying the town named after his great-grandfather. He held up his blue jeans with one hand to keep them from falling down around his ankles.
His wife Nichole was in worse shape, having been the conduit for all the magic. She’d been pulled deeper due to her being the focal point, the coven leader. She was the one who had to control the energy, direct its form, and set its path. All this put a strain on her body, which aged visibly from her youthful twenties to something closer to a withered sixty. Her robes did a better job of concealing all the damage as it was already loose fitting.
The other eleven members were not so lucky. They were a few yards behind the couple, completely drained of life. Their former twenty-something lives were now just dry shrunken skin stretched taut over thin bones as there were no muscles or fat left.
Magick, real Magick had reappeared with a proverbial ‘bang’ just a week prior. Now everyone was casting spells like Andor and Nichole Spooner and for all kinds of reasons. Some cast a spell to get rich, or find love, or for revenge, or anything people could think of. The Spooners were no different in this.
They were the leaders of a ‘back to nature’ group that condemned the ‘rape’ of the land and the pollution spewed by the ‘evil’ faceless and soulless corporations. Spoonerville, on eastern side of the Coast Ranges and roughly mid-way between Eugen and Roseberg near Interstate five, had grown up around a silver mine. The single mine had blossomed into four different mines that followed the silver and found other minerals in commercial quantities. Spooner mining employed around two thousand people and Spoonerville was the company town that housed the miners and their families.
The problem was the runoff of the chemicals used to leach these valuable minerals from the rock they were found in. The slurry poisoned the creeks, and as the mines expanded so did the requirements for more chemicals. Spoonerville and other small towns dotting the Coast and Cascade ranges repeated the process creating swaths of dead ground, which in turn created those who railed against the loss. Thus a battle line was drawn: Those who saw the mines as security for themselves and their families, and those who saw them as abomination, a silent killer of the land, and eventually the people.
The enmity started out with written protests and some small marches. The locals listened and disagreed while the mines ignored it entirely. Later protest marches and gatherings showed pictures of the poisoned creeks and some dead animals which got a few more members and incited the mines to make their own newspaper spread about how the mine was working with the EPA which was ‘studying the problem and was expected to determine proper procedures for remedial mitigation and control going forward’, which meant to the ‘green’ side that nothing was being done while the ‘mine’ side it meant the mine was in legal compliance with all Federal regulations. For both sides it mean they were right beyond doubt and the other side was lying to meet their own greedy agenda.
The protests picked up steam once the news about it reached ears in Eugene. More joined the green side and more joined the mine side because if it happened there it was going to happen to them too. Andor Spooner joined to protest his cousins who’d reaped the benefits of his grandpa selling out his share of the original mine just before the announcement of a big vein being discovered. Grandpa Spooner was extremely bitter about it, and that bitterness bled into young Andor who saw a chance to get back at his ‘greedy’ cousins, which was stupidly bitter because none of his cousins who operated the mines were even aware that the first transaction had been entirely voluntary and driven by greed to avoid taxes when the mine failed.
Andor had run into Nichole at a protest, and was surprised when she asked him out for coffee. One thing led to another and when he found out she ran a Wiccan Coven he became a student of the religon. He read the books and was especially drawn to the idea of the law of threes – whatever you do with Wiccan rituals comes back to you with three times the consequences, good or bad, that you place in the rituals. A lot of the books talked that worship was dependent upon each person to determine their own method. Nichole had been raised in a coven, and she saw the old traditional ways as the only true way, and imparted all this to Andor who, being infatuated with Nichole, agreed it was the only way. The Coven became more active, supporting the anti-mining marches, casting ‘spells’ to shut the mine down. Nothing worked until a week ago when magick reappeared and simple spells actually worked.
Now as he died from the effects of the spell, he died happy since everyone in that rotten town was going to die, and most importantly, his cousins rotten mine.
