The Night the World Stood Still

Ninety-six years old, Berdi Daniels hobbled out onto the stage. With every step, the staff that she leaned on shook in her withered hand. I watched with bated breath, half afraid that she would fall before she reached the podium that had been set up in her honor.  

It was June 5, 2070, the fiftieth anniversary of the great uprising. As someone who was very young at the start of the Global Revolution, I had often been jealous of those that had been present and active in the fight. I hadn't stopped to consider that like all birth, revelation and revolution were messy things. Endings and beginnings were always sad.  

Ms. Daniels gave a rousing speech about the power of prayer to unify the magical energy of faith into a form that is useable by practiced casters. The video that you're about to see is the culmination of memory sharing technology, and narrated by myself. I hope you enjoy it. Escorted to her seat by thunderous applause, she waved her hand as she sat down. Then, the video began. 

A group of people of mixed cultural heredity sat huddled together in the middle of a room the size of a school gym. They whispered and a buzz of energy was so prevalent that it was actually visible as a wave of light like a heat mirage. A beautiful young woman danced a traditional Native American jingle, all but oblivious to those that watched her. A blonde girl approached her, touching her arm.  

"Cindy says that it's starting." The camera panned out and we saw that this group in this gym was only one of thousands of such groups worldwide. 

Ms Daniel's voice narrated: I scrambled to my place on the floor, quickly opening my own internal font of power to form a deep pool with the energy of the casters around me. As our pool expanded, it became a drop in the ocean of power that was being flooded into the world by casters around the globe.  

For generations, a great machine called capitalism had been grinding the workers that supported it into a thick paste. People worked their fingers to the bone to provide an avenue for consumerism. Generations of individuals had bled and died to fuel the appetites of the very rich.  

We, the magically adept, the Lightbringers, healers, helpers of the world had been quietly resisting the relentless death march. But, we had never gathered in numbers necessary to halt the relentless hunger machine from devouring the souls of every person on earth. The problem had become so huge, so insurmountably enormous, that some of us had begun to lose faith. 

Then the weirdest thing happened. A virus swept through humanity. Groups of people gathered in prayer and those of us who are sensitive to magical energy felt a mighty surge. We realized at once that with the support of communities all around the globe, we could affect real change.  

So, on that evening, in the light of the full Strawberry Moon, we gathered. We had been fasting and praying, preparing for days. Some communities danced, some sat quietly, some chanted, some cried and railed against the darkness, but we all prayed. Prayer is how you open the channel in your soul, it is how you experience the magic of faith, how you tap into the divine cosmic energy that permeates the world around us.  

Joining hands, hearts, and energy with the rest of the world's Lightbringers, the experience was electric. I felt as if I was channeling lightning, and sitting in a pool of water. I felt the energy rise until the very air was crackling in response. We were here, we were tired of not being heard. We were done being quiet, on that night, we were shouting. We screamed our souls out of our mouths and they joined hands above us and danced wildly in the rising tide of power. 

We call this energy 'Intention'. We intend to create a flood so deep that no darkness can withstand it. The agents of darkness will flail and fight, but they will drown in the end.  

I opened my channel wide, allowing the energy within me to flow into the pool. I was sitting in the well of intention, allowing my own intention to flow freely, like a garden hose filling up a swimming pool. I was submerged in the power, but continuing to flow. 

Others around me were like sponges, saturated with the power but floating within it. And still more Lightbringers manipulated those energy sponges to empty their absorbed power into spells of healing that were being cast all over the world.  

Our mother, the earth, was laboring to bring about a massive change. We were casting healings on her to soothe the pain and aid in a successful birth. A whole new reality was being born that day. 

After June 5, the world's eyes were bared to the existence of magic.  

Many writers over the years, individuals who already knew and understood the magical world, have called the unaware masses 'muggles' or 'mundanes'. Well, those sleeping eyes were awakened on that fateful night.  

We didn't know at the time that channeling so much magic into the air, focusing it and flooding the face of reality with it, would have such far flung consequences. Miracles go unnoticed all the time, but this one was known and observed by billions of people who never witnessed magic happen before.  

The reality had been primed. Ritual fasts occurring across belief systems, prayers coming from a new, united source, had already begun to saturate the air with the power of intention. 

On that benchmark evening, as casters all over the world settled down in groups, they felt a united connection to the river of magical energy. Each individual plugged in and became a wellspring, pouring torrents of energy into the quickly flooding mana pools.  

As the pools became lakes and spilled over at the edges to join the other lakes, a tide began to rise. Once the tidal energy of the moon took hold of the deep magic, a wave began to build. That wave became a tsunami, destined to crash down on the evil that was present in the world, and wash it all away.  

On the side of the darkness, witches also gathered. They channeled their energy into a shield, protecting the agents of evil. They had no access to the Lightbringers' energy, and they were doomed to fail before they even started. The tide was too strong, the wave too large, the ocean too deep.  

Our energy crashed down on top of the shield, over and over again, pulverizing it. The dark casters' eyes were opened to the massive power of the light. Some of them joined us. Some of them died. Most of the ones who refused to turn toward the light simply lost all access to the magical nature of our universe.  

No rock can withstand the fury of the ocean's tides. The shields that the dark casters put up held for generations, but they were cracked and worn by decades of peaceful protest. Peace had stopped bringing us any real progress toward the light, it was time for brute force.  

I was there, that night. My energy channeled into the great torrent of Lightbringers' energy that finally, once and for all, put a stop to the machinations of the dark ones.