Editing Burn (section)

== Other Notes ==

“Time is the fire in which we burn.  God, I love the way that sounds!”

Katherine Sweeney can’t make any claim to having undergone a hard life – whatever trouble her whitebread irish catholic princess upbringing gave her, she more or less created for herself.  Having grown up in northern New Jersey, she originally enrolled in New York’s Parson’s School of Design with the intent to become a fashion designer, live a glam life for a few years, and then find someone cute and rich and start having kids.

However, that changed when she met Burn.  Burn, a somewhat emaciated hipster she met at Downtime, took her onto a whirlwind of drugs and sex that he usually like to do with sweet red headed catholic girls.  However, Cathy found in his apartment a variety of books and such that made her curious – Crowley, the writings of the Frankfurt School, Thomas Kuhn, the Emerald Tablet, and…

The Katib Al Acir.

The apartment blew up in a firestorm of power, as Kate Sweeney had her very first conversation with her Holy Guardian Angel.

Several states later, Burn, Hollow One Master, had his first Apprentice.  Kate discovered that her entire lifestyle and culture were to a degree, lies.  Unlike most Hollows, Burn was not a droopy moaner.  “The war’s on, babe.  We’re the last line of defense for a free world.”  Burn taught that this war was to an extant eternal, as Mages who represented freedom of thought and will as well as concern for the planet and humanity had always fought against what he called “the sell outs” – Mages who represented cultural conformity, stagnation and ultimately lust for power.  Burn himself had dabbled with several traditions, but he himself was his own made man.  “Tell those Sahajiya that they’re conformist sell outs.  That’ll piss em off.  Fuck, man, I like drugs because I like being high, not because it helps me achieve Nirvana or anything.”  To which Kate replied “shut the fuck up, King Mob.”

So, for 3 years, Kate Sweeney traveled with her Mentor, Burn.  His highest lesson – “Do what you feel is right.”  The cynical Hollow taught his girl that there’s good and bad in everything, on both sides of the “stupid war”, and that she should always be ready to help people and expand herself.  Mostly, Burn was like a 21st Century Beatnick.  Kate was never happier in her whole entire life.

When the Unspoken Blasphemy came for him, he merely lit up a cigarette.  “I’ve prepared her for you, you idiots.  Your doomed is already sealed, like the fucking Emperor from Star Wars, man.” Even as they tore his soul apart in rage, he laughed and laughed and laughed.

Katie Sweeney gave up her name that day.  With the loss of the man she loved most, she was truly Hollow inside.  She destroyed the ones who staggered away from that mesa, and promised to take up her Master’s fight.

Now, Katie Sweeney was no more – she was Burn.