![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snurri"There is nearly universal agreement that there was no single cause for the chaos and destruction that took place on the Day of Two Nights. Tensions in the city--between factions, between magical forces, even (according to some) between the buildings themselves--had become so high that some confrontation was inevitable; it needed only a catalyzing event. This event, known to students of the Day of Two Nights (and there are more lectures, pamphlets, and domestic disputes related to the DoTN in the city than any other topic other than the Exile itself) as the Cedar Hill Incident, took place on the private grounds of the Cedar Hill School for the Deaf. The school was established in 1934 by June and August Wall in honor of their brother March. March Wall had been born deaf, and was killed at four years old while crossing a street. Once grown, his siblings established Cedar Hill as a boarding school and safe place for deaf children to be prepared for life in the hearing world. What was not generally known, however, was the school's full name: the Cedar Hill School of Gesticulation Magic and Dance for the Deaf. . . . It seemed that the parents of March, June, and August had been members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and had passed certain teachings on to their children, particularly those concerned with protection and conjuration. For forty years students at Cedar Hill learned American Sign Language, interpretive dance, and methods for attracting and maintaining their own guardian spirits. . . . The school itself, housed in three historic mansions, was protected by a network of warding spells. While some of these were disrupted by the Exile, the continued presence of June and August on the grounds--as well as that of faculty members like Hector Fajardo and Matilda Hoag (listed respectively as teachers of 'Composition' and 'European History,' but in reality among the most powerful conjurers of their generation) allowed the school to continue to operate much as it always had. However, the school's historic brick buildings were prime temptations for the Snake Doctors. . . . The Snake Doctors, so named by an early witness who noted their resemblance to oversized dragonflies, had plagued the city since the Exile. At irregular intervals they swarmed historic buildings and pulled them apart, stone by stone or brick by brick, and then flew away with the pieces. Sometimes they stacked the materials in precarious towers in a vacant lot or the middle of a street, and sometimes--to the frustration of every citizen--they carried them out of the city entirely, flying through the enclosing shell as though it were nothing but an illusion. . . . The Snake Doctors had attempted to breach Cedar Hill's mystical defenses on more than one occasion already, and while the buildings stood intact the attacks had taken their toll. Hector Fajardo fell defending the school in 1970, both June and August failed in late 1973, and Matilda Hoag passed away in 1977, apparently of exhaustion. Left on their own, the community of Cedar Hill--many of them adult students with children of their own, and some as magically able as their teachers had been--determined to rid the city of the Snake Doctors once and for all. . . . The complexity of their operation was such that it took several months of planning and rehearsal, during which only the constant beating of timpani-like drums gave any hint of what was happening upon the hill. . . . Whether by chance or design, it happened that Channel Spider broadcast the rite's performance on May 17, 1978, though no one watching could have known what the effects would be. Shot from above, the broadcast (still shown every May 17 on Channel Spider) shows over a hundred students clad in simple ceremonial robes, lined up in a wide circle. Five older graduates stand at the center, and five drummers stand at points outside the circle. It is dawn. The drums begin, and--apparently guided by the vibrations--the dancers execute a series of complex steps, collapsing the circle and weaving between one another to reform as a pentagram. The five at the center 'speak' the language of Gesticulation Magic, matching the rhythm if not the full-body motion of the dancers. . . . Over the course of the performance--which lasts for three and a half hours--the drums speed up their rhythm almost imperceptibly, and the dancers progress through several group shapes and begin to splinter into smaller glyphs and runes. The words of power begin to linger upon the screen like streaks of light, and under and above the beating of the drums a hum begins to rise. The dancers show signs of exhaustion, but not one of them misses a step. The conjurors at their center lean into each other, and their motions take on the quality of movements made in windstorms or under water, as if some force were resisting them. And then, at the point where the drumbeats can no longer be distinguished from one another, and the eye can no longer take in the strokes of light left by bodies in motion, the broadcast ends with a flash of light, quickly replaced by static. . . . The effects of the Cedar Hill Incident were immediately felt, and at least one was long-lasting; the Snake Doctors have not plagued the city since. In the short term, however, the consequences of such powerful magic, so contained, were disastrous beyond what the residents of Cedar Hill could have predicted. Firstly, the residents of Cedar Hill were never seen again, alive or dead. Secondly, in the place of the Snake Doctors certain entities were admitted into the city which it would take all of its defenders to repel, and at no small cost. Thirdly, the sun went out entirely, along with all other light in the city, a magical darkness which was not lifted until several hours later. By then a great deal of damage had already been done, although there was much more to come before the day was through." (p.414-6)
