From a world inclined to punish halfbreeds.
Algernon, the one on the floor, shook his head. Liquid sloshed between his ears, smoky and turbulent.
Naya leaned toward him, the other him, radiating gentle comfort.
He pressed his palms against his eyes to make it stop. Algernon didn’t want to lie on the floor and watch.
“I want this to stop,” he whispered, afraid of himself overhearing.
“We all feel that way sometimes,” Naya said to the Algernon on the couch. She touched his back with a featherlight caress he’d grown to crave.
When had that ever happened? Algernon watched himself on the floor while he watched himself on the couch.
No, he couldn't take both at once. He had to choose the one that was real, with no idea how to tell.
The couch? Maybe?
The leather of Naya’s couch creaked under his weight. The passive scent of her magic, subtle lemon with a hint of mint, teased him.
He’d lost the ability to make it stop. Every day, all the time, the flavors of magic bombarded him.
Once, trying to find the magic had taken so much effort.
Fate had a wicked sense of humor.
At least in Naya’s office, he could block out everything else. Sometimes, he visited the room without her to make it all stop for a while.
“I know you miss your family,” Naya said. She brushed her hand over his back in a soothing circle. “You were so young when you died.”
She was only two years older than him. The difference sometimes stretched like a gaping chasm and other times meant nothing.
The old injury in his shoulder ached. So did the new one in his chest. How long until they faded?
“Grandma Katona—”
“Is someone you can never see again, Algie.” Naya touched his arm. Her hand weighed on him. “You need to let go of them and try to build a new family.”
He hated the way his eyes itched.
“You’re dead.”
“I know,” he grumbled. “How many times are you going to tell me that?”
“As many times as it takes.” She leaned close and kissed his cheek. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Algie. Everyone needs time to process dying and coming back. Binding your soul to the mission of the Fallen is no small thing either.”
“Why did they pick me?” he groaned.
They could’ve left him dead.
They should’ve left him dead.
Naya opened her mouth.
“Don’t bother answering,” Algernon said with a bitter huff and a half-hearted gesture to cut her off. If he didn’t know it would hurt her, he might’ve stood and paced.
No matter how much he wanted to kick someone, he wouldn’t hurt Naya. Not on purpose, and not by accident if he could help it.
“I know what Eldrack wanted from me,” he said. “I’ve told him everything he asked. He knows where to find that wretched ring if he wants it.” He’d spilled everything about Braylen’s little project too.
Everything except Algernon’s involvement.
He hadn’t told anyone about his shame. Not even Naya.
When he looked at his hands, he still saw the blood.
Naya chuckled. “There are much easier ways to get information. Secrets are made to be uncovered. They didn’t pick you because of your parents or your enemies. They picked you for you. Because Algie has so much still to give for this world.”
She stood and gave him space. “Because you’re worth it.”
Somehow, she always knew when to hold him close and when to step away.
Radiant as always, she smiled at him.
Lying to her cut him. Not enough to make him tell the truth. Some secrets needed to stay hidden.
His sins belonged to a conversation between Algernon and the Creator, not Algernon and Naya.
At least she no longer saw him as a child. Despite his repeated behavior to the contrary. No matter how hard he fell onto his face, she helped him stand again without judgment.
“You do know,” she said, “that there are people here who’d be happy to act as mentors for you if you let them, right? I saw you talking to Penny yesterday. She and her husband, Marcus, have children a little older than you.”
Penny? Marcus?
Algernon squinted through his hands. He didn’t know anyone named Penny.
Did he?
Of course, he did. Penny was a mage. With her help, he’d overcome all the stupidity keeping his power wild and fluctuating. They’d worked together for hours and hours over months and months.
She’d given him something to spackle the empty hole in his heart left by Grandma Katona’s absence.
He pictured an older woman with more gray in her hair than anything else. Her pragmatism preceded her and demanded competence in her wake. He barely noticed the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth because she commanded a different kind of attention. The kind disdainful of mere surface details.
Yes, he knew Penny and her strong, pine-scented magic.
More than once, she’d invited him to dinner with her family. Her youngest child hadn’t moved away yet.
If he wanted, he could make friends.
Not that he knew anything about that.
“Or you can wallow in blood,” Naya said.
He raised his head in surprise at the sudden sharp grate in her voice.
Mother stood before him, her brown hair dancing on a breeze Algernon couldn't feel. He drowned in brimstone, the stench of her flame magic. Brilliant, welcoming blue oozed from her eyes. Dark, brooding smoke shrouded her body in an elegant, high-necked gown.
The walls melted. Liquid gobs of blue-streaked muck dribbled into the shadows swallowing the floor.
Naya’s couch fizzled and popped.
He didn’t know anyone named Naya.
“What’s happening to me?” Algernon whispered. He groped for memories and caught only empty smoke.
The void ached in his chest, threatening to consume him.
“You brought this on yourself, monster.” She towered over him, looming with menace he’d never seen from her before.
Why did she say these things? His mother loved him. Didn’t she?
He raised his hands, both smeared with thick, coppery blood.
No one loved a murderer.
“Mother, please.” Algernon fell to his knees with his head hung before her. “I didn’t want to kill them! I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how.”
Thin, watery blood lapped at his thighs and soaked his socks.
She leaned close. The smoke billowed from her mouth to choke and blind him.
He clawed at his eyes, stinging them with thin blood. If he pulled them out of his head, the pain would stop.
Which pain?
All of it.
“There will be a reckoning, Algie. You will pay for the lives you took.”
Someone pounded on the door, thumping it with enough force to feel in his chest. Algernon twisted to see it through scratched, filmy eyes.
This place with no walls had a door.
Shadows flickered and pulsed around a square slab of brown metal. The darkness held it in place, acting as a frame.
The door shuddered under another blow. Cracks appeared across the surface.
With another thump, the center bowed inward. Grime blossomed in each crack.
Algernon raised his blood-stained hands and flung power at it. It had to stay shut.
How? He had no training for this. Magic never worked right for him. Not for anything except killing.
Tiny, blood-soaked streamers of his power spewed from him and fell uselessly to the floor.
Creeping fingers of smoke-wreathed blue light ignored his useless magic and slithered around the edges of the door.
“My son never would have murdered any of those people,” Mother said, every word a frozen dagger in his back. “He loved me. He respected me and my wishes.”
The tendrils reached for him, waving in the air. Needy worm
s flailed for a meal.
Algernon fell backward. He splashed in the bloody water. The spray drifted upward in slow motion, rising to meet the blue tendrils.
“You’re not my son!” Mother shrieked. “What are you?”
Rumbling resonated in his chest. The blue touched the blood. Rippling darkness matching the aching, empty space in his chest spread to engulf all the shadows.
The vast, gaping void saw him.
Not with eyes. With something else.
Hunger.
He deserved that fate.
“I’m a monster,” Algernon whispered as blood, glimmering blue, sloshed into his mouth and dragged him under the surface.
Why did this blood swarm like slime and smell like smoke?
“What?” Eldrack shook his shoulder. “Algie?”
Algernon blinked as the smoke dissipated and the blue tore itself to shreds. He sat in Eldrack’s office, a small room full of potted plants, books, papers, and not enough surfaces to hold them. Tiny hints of different magic scents clashed, making him want to sneeze.
He didn’t know anyone named Eldrack.
Did he?
Yes, of course he did. This over-glorified clerk managed the entire underground complex where Algernon lived. They called it a tower because the central feature, an endless spiral staircase, punched into the ground in a straight line.
Not truly endless. It only felt that way when he had to climb ten flights to return to his room after a hearty dinner in the cafeteria.
Algernon rubbed his face, trying to wrench himself into the present as a fourteen-year-old boy stuck in a demented kind of hell. He’d drifted into a waking nightmare of mashed memories. Naya had promised it would happen less and less as time passed.
Instead, it seemed to plague him more with each passing day.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled. “I’m not sleeping well, that’s all.”
Eldrack returned to his seat behind his desk and nodded his understanding. He smiled.
Every time he saw that polite, friendly smile, Algernon had to fight the urge to spill his shame all over the small room. If Eldrack could forgive him, would that be enough?
“Naya thinks you’re ready for your first mission,” Eldrack said as he clasped his hands over a closed folder. “Are you?”
“I don’t know.” Algernon rubbed his face, trying to banish the still-lingering hint of smoke in the air.
“An honest answer.” Eldrack smiled with endless sympathy and patience. “Let’s try one. Most agents find their first mission helpful for adjusting.”
Algernon nodded. “I hope so. This is exhausting.”
“You’re going with Penny. I think you’ve met her?” When Algernon nodded, Eldrack continued. “She has all the information already. Pack light for a few days in a warm climate. You’ll be on foot. I suspect she’ll want you to pose as her son.”
“Yes, sir.” Algernon stood at the obvious dismissal and left the office. He frowned at the floor as he strode up the bare stone hallway to the central staircase.
Grandma Katona had always extolled the virtues of fresh air and sunshine. He’d indulged in precious little of that since waking in this magically lit hell.
Everything stank of wet dog. All the time. The scent of the lights chased him everywhere. Except Naya’s office, where she’d disabled them.
He made light there himself. The apple scent of his own magic never bothered him.
As he trudged up the stairs to reach his floor, he tried to picture Grandma Katona. She’d taught him to make light. The one magical thing he’d grasped before his death, he could do because of her.
His parents invaded his nightmares often enough he needed no effort to remember their faces. At least twice a week, his father murdered him and his mother damned him.
His grandmother’s face eluded him. She stood out of his reach, a vague blur of lessons he never mastered.
Lessons he’d failed and forgotten.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have died.
In his room, he picked up his standard-issue, ubiquitous and unremarkable brown leather pack and stuffed it with equally uninteresting beige and brown wool clothing. The pants, shirts, socks, and even underwear had come with the stone room full of furniture he used like a guest.
Nine weeks in this place already, and he hadn’t collected anything personal yet. Not even a colored blanket.
Everything, everywhere, was beige, brown, or the blue-gray of stone. The one smattering of real color in the tower came from the orange numbers on the walls to mark the floors and the rooms.
Other Fallen agents wore interesting clothing, standing out as slashes of brightness or darkness. They’d embraced their fate. Settled into it.
He envied them.
Algernon had money. He could buy things if he wanted. They gave him a stipend despite his inability to accomplish anything useful yet.
To get it, he’d only had to die, return, and pledge his soul to the Creator's service.
Sometimes, he wanted to take it back.
Eldrack said he could do that. If he couldn't handle it, they could kill him again.
Algernon thought about it once again as he buckled his pack shut. Death didn’t sound bad when life hated him this much.
He slung the pack on his shoulders and trudged up more stairs. They kept going and going and going.
Fallen agents had to climb so many stairs so often, he doubted they could put on any extra weight. He never felt like he could eat enough.
Even now, when he’d eaten directly before meeting with Eldrack, his belly rumbled. He wished he’d thought to collect a few snacks.
At the top of the spiral stair, he had to run through a defensive gauntlet that seemed overcomplicated to Algernon. A large room, a twisting passage, a narrow stair, all filled with traps every Fallen agent knew how to use.
Once he slogged through that, he emerged in the cellar of a tavern that offered hot cocoa he wanted to enjoy but couldn’t.
Too many people with magical abilities used the place. Even some of the bottles of alcohol on the racks in the basement taunted him with the clashing aromas of orange and swampy muck.
He hurried through the cellar and into a large tavern filled with tables and chairs. Sunshine poured through large windows across one side of the building. In the center, a square bar contained the most frightening individual Algernon had ever encountered, wiping the bar with a pristine white hand towel.
Patrons in the room assailed Algernon with dozens of passive magical scents, some weak, some strong.
The bartender, though, drowned Algernon in a thick, drowning malaise of beeswax.
While the spindly, otherwise unassuming man did nothing of note. With a polite, neutral expression.
Algernon scurried out of the tavern for the haven of Cloverdale.
The inner core of the small town boasted a number of shops facing an odd-shaped central square. Summer flowers bloomed in a variety of pots and along walls and fences. Trees offered dappled shade in sporadic clusters.
In some ways, it reminded him of home.
Then a flock of unfamiliar chickens clucked across his path and destroyed that fleeting glimpse of sympathy.
He hated this place for taunting him.
Down in the tower, nothing familiar stared at him with baleful memory. Staying inside protected him.
Penny leaned against the corner of the tavern’s wooden, green-painted wall outside, leafing through a folder. She wore her hair in a gray-streaked, utilitarian bun at the nape of her neck. He’d seen it loose and knew it reached to her waist.
Like most Fallen agents, she chose to wear a splash of color in the form of a forest green shawl draped over her shoulders and backpack.
She waited for him far enough away that he could snatch a few breaths of clear air before reaching her.
A courtesy he appreciated.
Her strong pine scent bothered him indoors. Outdoors, he could handle it for a while.
“Have you e
ver stolen anything?” Penny asked as they walked up the road.
Did a life count? Blood?
“Not from the living,” he said.
Penny chuckled. “Today’s your lucky day.”
Algernon sighed. At least Eldrack hadn’t sent him to kill anyone. “What do we get to steal?”
“An amulet.” She consulted her folder. “It’s on a caravan headed from a small town near the southern coast of South Cascain to Harbor City in North Cascain. We’re going to join it along the way.”
Shivers wriggled down Algernon’s spine.
“We won’t be going anywhere near your home, Algie. You won’t break your promises by seeing people you knew in life. We’ll give you a basic disguise in case we run across a casual acquaintance.” Penny patted his shoulder. “Eldrack picked you because you’ll fit in with your accent, and because he expects this to be relatively easy.”
“That would be a nice change of pace,” Algernon muttered.
He glanced at Penny. She raised an eyebrow.
Instead of elaborating, he shook his head. “What’s special about this amulet?”
“Allegedly, it can reverse death if it’s recent enough. I’m not sure why that would be useful except for torture.”
Algernon blanched.
“I suppose it might be valuable to reverse a poisoning or if someone took their own life,” Penny continued as if she hadn’t noticed his reaction.
She had. He knew she’d noticed. Penny rarely missed anything.
He nodded, trying and failing to banish his thoughts on the subject of shaking a fist at death.
Damn Braylen for not cutting off the ritual that had killed Algernon. He wanted to slit the man’s throat.
No, he didn’t. Creator bless, he had no desire to end another man’s life.
He didn’t need another nightmare to add to the stack.
But he desperately wanted the satiuz to face some kind of reckoning.
And he had no way to make it happen.
“It’s not fair,” he growled.
Rage filled his words like bile agitating for release. He hadn’t asked for this! What had Braylen done to him? Why couldn’t he die already?
Blue flashed across his vision as he slashed a blade through the air. A blade he didn’t own. Why did he have a sword?
Forgotten Magic (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 3) Page 71