( ⚛ ) Closed starter for @original-doppleganger ( ⚛ )
Desperate times called for equally desperate measures, medina knew that much. But to think she would ever resort to something like this… She had gone out of her way to perform a ritual, an incredibly dangerous one at that. The warnings had been clear, written in heavy ink across the ancient pages. She was well aware of the potential consequences, aware that the eclipse of the blood moon could cause the ritual to spiral out of control if even the smallest detail was mishandled. And yet… she had done it anyway.
The idea, at least on paper, had been simple enough. Her intentions were simple as well: locate the soul and lingering energy of her sister, her dead sister. Unfortunately, there was one rather complicated issue. Her sister had been a vampire at the time of her true death, and with the Other Side long gone, Medina had no clear way of reaching whatever remained of her soul.
Which meant she had to improvise, the solution she had settled on was… unconventional. Instead of trying to reach her sister directly, she would attempt to summon the one person who had once served for centuries as the anchor to the Other Side itself. Amara, one of the first immortals.
In Medina’s mind, Amara might have answers. Or at the very least, she might be able to point her in the right direction. Of course, that plan came with its own set of problems. Why would a being like Amara have any interest in helping her? And more importantly, summoning her was no simple task. Still… it was more plausible than finding a lost soul drifting somewhere beyond the veil.
The ritual itself was designed so that Amara would appear not in flesh, but as a spiritual manifestation, an echo of energy capable of answering questions. Medina had even gone as far as to acquire a single strand of hair from another doppelgänger. Whether it belonged to Katherine or Elena, she couldn’t say. Frankly, she didn’t care. All that mattered was the fact that it belonged to a doppelganger of Amara.
Despite the risks, she began, the ritual being a mixture of all kinds of magic with fragments of Zoroastrian ritualism, elements of Kemiya, and even aspects of Sihr. All of it fueled by the immense energy of the blood moon eclipse hanging in the night sky.
But with that came one fatal flaw, her own emotions, them running far too high in the moment. Her mind was anything but calm or focused, and the magic intensely reflected that chaos. The candles burned unnaturally high, the flames moving violently as the air in the room grew heavy with power, almost suffocating. The ground trembled beneath her feet before an invisible force burst through the chamber.
The impact threw Medina violently against the wall, and then… intense dreaded silence, along with the faint scent of burnt herbs lingered in the air as the candles slowly died out, their smoke moving toward the ceiling. It took Medina a moment to regain her senses. But when she finally pushed herself upright, her head still spinning, she staggered toward the nearest window and forced it open to let the smoke escape.
A failure, that was the only logical explanation. Either her mind had not been focused enough… or the being known as Amara had simply refused the summons. The thought alone filled her with frustration, angered enough to swoop the books and the grimoires off the alter, sending them crashing to the floor.
But then, a sound followed, a faint groan, a female sounding groan at that. Which prompted for Medina to freeze in her tracks. A slight frown forming as she stepped over the scattered pages and past the altar. Through the fading smoke, she could just make out the outline of a body lying on the floor, a woman.
“What in the world…?” she murmured under her breath, stepping closer.
Had it worked after all? But that didn’t make sense. The ritual was meant to summon a spirit, not… this. From what she could tell, the woman before her was very much tangible and very much alive.
“Are you the one they call Amara?” she asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper. “Can you even hear me?” Of course, Medina had no idea that through either terrible luck or some strange twist of fate, she had not summoned Amara at all. Instead, she had resurrected another doppelgänger. One history tended to overlook at times, Tatia.
