Magi Legend

by Andrew Dobell

“But of course, unless, you wanted something more?” the blonde asked.

  Liz felt her heart melt and the warmth of arousal build. Shit, if she keeps talking like that, I’ll orgasm just standing here listening to her.

  A strange feeling, like a gentle gust of wind, except there was none, flowed into her from behind, and she felt compelled to turn around. Someone was there, she knew it, and as she looked back at the blonde woman, Liz noticed she’d stopped walking too and was looking behind them.

  Liz turned and saw Nate, the killer of her mum and boyfriend, stalking up the street from the opposite direction, trapping them.

  “Angel, thank you for holding them here for me, I do appreciate it. Yasmin sends her regards.” He still held that wicked bent knife in his hand.

  Liz looked back at Angel, whose whole expression had changed from jovial and light just a moment ago to deadly serious. Nate had spoken to her in a friendly manner, and yet, Liz could sense intense hostility between these two.

  She was no longer interested in Liz and her friends and Liz noticed that she’d suddenly lost the feeling of attraction and arousal towards Angel. It was like night and day, as if someone had just flicked a switch. She glanced down at Angel’s body, which moments ago, she’d wanted to kiss all over, and now only saw another woman, someone she really wasn’t interested in.

  “Go, run, now,” Angel said.

  “What?” Stephen asked. He also looked like he’d been snapped out of some kind of trance.

  “Run. I’ll find you later. I need to deal with this idiot,” Angel said as she stepped past them towards Nate.

  Liz didn’t need telling twice, and neither did her companions. She ran, breaking into a sprint as they raced out of the service road into the crowds on the London’s streets.

  Her heart was pounding and adrenaline was pumping. It felt like Nate would leap out of an alleyway or side street and attack them at any moment. She had no idea how long they’d been running for, but eventually, they stopped and caught their breath.

  “You know what?” Stephen said, looking up at them. “I’ve changed my mind, let’s go to the police.”

  - Notes from a police report

  These children have been exposed to horrific events over the last few hours, and I recommend a full psychological evaluation to help them recover from what they’ve seen.

  Experts from the Natural History Museum will be here in the morning to take a look at the artifact the boy brought in.

  We’re returning it to their room for the time being as its removal seems to have agitated all three of them.

  Dig

  Sahara Desert, Egypt

  Amanda steadied herself as her boots sank into the soft sand atop the dune they had appeared on. The wind whipped about her as she looked around, making her skirt and scarlet hair flap about wildly. The first thing she noticed was the oppressive heat. It felt like she’d stepped into an oven.

  “Wow, it's hot here,” she said.

  “Not if you don’t want,” Gentle Water answered her. Amanda smiled at him. He was referring to the fact that she could alter the temperature around her to suit her tastes if she wanted. He was right, she could.

  “It’s okay, I don’t mind the heat,” she replied pulling off the sweater she had on, leaving her in just a thin camisole and short skirt.

  They were standing at the crest of a dune, overlooking the remains of a campsite that lay half-buried in the shifting sands. Nearby, a rocky plateau rose out of the desert a few hundred metres away, and Amanda had a strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right over there.

  She frowned and used her Aetheric Sight. Around the rocky outcrop, there was a colossal sphere where no Essentia floated in the air.

  “Jaysus, what the feck is this shite?” she muttered to herself.

  “Dead Magic Zone,” Gentle Water said. “Magic not work there.”

  “Oh, well, that’s banjaxed,” she said to herself. Gentle Water was already making his way down the side of the dune into the camp, walking parallel to the Dead Magic Zone. “At least, we’re not heading in there.”

  “We go in there, soon,” he called back to her.

  “Feck,” she muttered as she half-walked, half-slid down the slope, sand pouring into the tops of her tall boots. “So, why are we here again?”

  “This where Horlack was found before he attack you in New York. Royston think important for you to know,” he said.

  “Oh, they found him here? Look at this place, it’s a right mess. No one’s been here for ages.”

  Gentle Water nodded but didn’t answer her as they walked into the camp. The tents were in disarray. They were either half-covered in sand or falling apart, their canvases ripped from the sand and left to flap in the wind. Some of the ones over to the right were almost entirely overcome by the encroaching dunes.

  There were camping stoves, cooking utensils, clothes, tools, and personal effects scattered everywhere. Even a jeep fitted with wide tyres for use in the desert had been left here to be eaten by the Sahara.

  “Where are the people?” Amanda asked as she followed Gentle Water around the camp.

  “Dead. Horlack kill them. They were hired by Nomad hunting for artifact. Magic artifact. They not know who they work for.”

  “They were working for the Nomads?”

  “One Nomad. Yasmin.”

  “Yasmin?” Amanda said, remembering the woman she’d met at the ball last night. “Shite.”

  Gentle Water turned to look at her, his expression asking the question for him.

  Amanda sighed. “I met a Magus at the ball. She called herself Yasmin. Too much of a coincidence, right?”

  “Right,” Gentle Water replied with a frown and continued walking.

  “I had no idea. She found me when I was exploring the museum. I didn’t know who she was. I met so many Magi that night, I didn’t think anything of it.” Amanda explained.

  “It okay. No harm done. You alive.”

  “I guess,” Amanda said, feeling annoyed with herself that she hadn’t spotted a Nomad when she’d had the chance. But then, that was probably why they were so dangerous. They could hide in plain sight.

  When they’d reached the edge of the camp, Gentle Water paused to look up at the Dead Magic Zone before continuing towards it.

  “Are these places dangerous?” she asked, eyeing the zone as it rose up before them while they approached the edge of the plateau.

  “It not kill, there still Essentia there, but less, and Magic not work,” he answered.

  Amanda pressed her lips together in a grimace. That hadn’t really eased her fears. As they grew closer, the feeling of wrongness, of something missing or out of place swelled in her chest until they walked through the outer edge of the zone and onto the plateau.

  For a moment, it felt like Amanda couldn’t breathe. Her enhanced senses, her connection to reality and the Essentia were severed, and she suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. Had this been how it had felt before she’d become a Magus? She couldn’t remember feeling this weak as a kid growing up in Ireland nor during her time on the streets of New York, and yet, this must have been how it was.

  It was strange just how comfortable she’d become with Magic that the moment it was taken away she felt utterly defenceless. Walking on the rocks with her block-heeled boots was much easier than wading through the sand. It might be an uneven surface, but at least she wasn’t sinking anymore.

  Amanda stopped, sat down on a rock, and pulled off her boots, emptying the sand out that had built up inside them. Putting them back on, she jogged to catch up with her mentor, finally reaching him when he crested the side of the rocky incline and reached the relatively flat top.

  Out of pure curiosity, she attempted to work some Magic as she walked, but nothing worked. It was as if she was no longer a Magus. The feeling was very disconcerting.

  They continued walking and found more equipment, much of it smashed to bits and scattered over a wide area. The largest concentration
of tools were sitting outside a large hole in the plateau that had been cut into the rock. It angled down into darkness on a gentle slope.

  “We’re going in there?” Amanda asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Grand,” Amanda replied with a hint of sarcasm. “Lead the way.”

  Gentle Water pulled a torch out of his pocket and started down the passage. Amanda followed, her boots echoing as they moved into the darkness. As they descended, the temperature dropped until Amanda decided to pull her sweater back on. The passage levelled off and a short distance further on, they entered a room. Cables ran down from the surface to work lights and other bits of equipment, none of which was working anymore. Some stuff down here had also been smashed up.

  Gentle Water scanned each room, but he seemed to know where he was going. It was as if he were giving Amanda a quick tour of the place.

  As they continued on, Amanda noticed a rather disgusting smell that grew stronger the further they went. By the fourth chamber, it was overpowering and it took all of Amanda’s willpower not to start retching. She was holding the front of her sweater over her nose and mouth just to keep going.

  Having never been in an Egyptian tomb before, she found the whole thing fascinating. If it hadn’t been for the smell, she could’ve easily spent hours down here looking over the hieroglyphs that covered the walls. In the fifth chamber, Gentle Water walked over to a hole in the wall and turned to her.

  Amanda stopped and looked up at him, sensing he wanted to show her something.

  “Amanda. This where powerful artifact found. Legacy is following Yasmin and Inquisition, they hunting artifact through Cairo and London. Maybe Angel hunting it, too. We don’t know.”

  “She seemed really interested in the kids we saw running from the shop,” Amanda speculated, her voice muffled by her jumper.

  “Maybe kids have artifact.”

  “Maybe…” Amanda mused, thinking it through. It was certainly possible. “Does the Legacy always track the Nomads and Inquisition?”

  “Yes. Legacy, Council, and many other houses try to monitor Nomads, it is difficult. It constant fight.”

  “So, this dig was sponsored by Yasmin, who was probably looking for the artifact that was in here? So, how come she didn’t get it? What happened?”

  Gentle Water nodded. “Follow me,” he urged and turned to head deeper into the crypt. Beyond the fifth chamber was a small anteroom with a large doorway into the next room. The massive stone slab that had been blocking it had fallen out into the antechamber. Gentle Water shone his torch down to make sure Amanda didn’t trip as she stepped up onto it. As she did so, she saw traces of blood on the slab and a few small shiny things that looked like slightly bloody plastic, about half an inch long. She crouched down to get a better look, but then recoiled in horror when she realised they were fingernails that had been ripped off.

  “Ugh, gross.” She shuddered.

  “This room worse,” Gentle Water said, looking at her with slight concern, “but Royston think you need to see.”

  Amanda took a breath and tried her best to compose herself. “Okay, let’s go in,” she said. The jumper was doing little to hold off the horrendous stench now. It had seeped through, but she kept it pressed tight against her face anyway.

  Stepping down into the room, Gentle Water swept the torch slowly around. Amanda felt increasingly sick as each new horror that this place contained was revealed to her. It was like a slaughterhouse. Dried blood was everywhere, splattered on the walls and floor, while the remains of several dead bodies lay rotting, covered in writhing maggots, and turning black and purple with time.

  Limbs had been ripped off, bodies pulverised, chunks bitten out of them, heads crushed, and internal organs, no longer really recognisable, were everywhere.

  A vast sarcophagus dominated the centre of the room. It was way too big for a single human, but maybe it could hold Balor or Horlack. What remained of its lid was scattered about the room, and inside, the body of a woman lay rotting, split open from her crotch to her ribcage.

  “Feck me,” Amanda whispered. “What the hell happened to her?”

  “Horlack.” Gentle Water said solemnly.

  This last sight was too much. Turning away, Amanda vomited her lunch onto the dirt floor. She coughed and spat the half-digested food from her mouth, but now, with the jumper removed from her face, the full strength of the smell assaulted her senses.

  “Oh, jaysus,” she muttered as she retched again.

  She stepped out of the room and sat on the edge of the slab just outside the doorway. She did her best to clean herself up and regain some control over her stomach. Her sweater was ruined, but she didn’t care.

  “Are we done?” Amanda called out, sitting with her elbows on her knees, leaning forward to spit the last remains of her sick onto the tomb’s floor. She barely noticed the smell now.

  “Nearly,” Gentle Water replied.

  With a deep breath, Amanda rose and stepped into the chamber again. Gentle Water stood to one side, his torch angled up at the wall, leaving the rest of the room mercifully shrouded in darkness.

  “What’s the craic?” Amanda asked, her voice croaky.

  “Look,” Gentle Water replied.

  Getting close, Amanda peered up to see something had been carved into the wall on top of the hieroglyphs in a very rough way. It was a string of words in modern English which read: Do not lift the slab, Horlack lies within.

  “What the hell?”

  “This is mystery, it English, modern English, and yet carving hundreds of years old.”

  “It’s a warning,” Amanda said.

  “It was,” Gentle Water agreed.

  Amanda looked into the shadows again, barely making out the shapes of the corpses. “An unheeded warning,” she muttered to herself, feeling sorry for the victims of Horlack’s rampage. “So, Horlack came from here?”

  “Yes. We think he imprisoned here. Before this, before New York when he meet you, he last seen in Fourth Crusade in Constantinople, about eight hundred years ago. He disappear. We think he imprisoned here by someone…”

  “Who?”

  “We not know.”

  “So, why me? Why did he attack me in New York?”

  “We not know also. Sorry.”

  Amanda grimaced, she didn’t like not knowing these things. But Horlack was gone, so maybe it didn’t matter. Whatever that thing had in mind for her, it had failed, and now she was a Magus because of it. Perhaps it was mistaken identity or just a mistake in general. Whatever the reason, it had all worked out in the end.

  “So, are we done here?”

  “Done,” Gentle Water answered, turning and heading back the way they’d come. Before long, they were back out in the desert sun and within moments, out of the Dead Magic Zone. The rush of power and energy that flooded back into her as she stepped out of the zone was exhilarating and very welcome. She felt connected to the world around her once more.

  “I’m glad we’re out of there,” she said.

  “Yes, it good to be out. Let us return to Legacy House, yes?”

  Amanda nodded and allowed Gentle Water to Port them both out of the desert and back into the entrance hall of the Legacy House. The Aegis recognised Gentle Water’s Magic and allowed him through without a problem.

  “Aaah, you’re back. Good,” Royston said. He’d been waiting for them in the hallway with Raven. “We’ve picked up some disturbing reports from London about the massacre of three families, including one child. The Albion Coven says there are clear Magical traces there, and our hacker has found that all three sets of parents had kids. Want to take a guess who those kids are?”

  “The ones we saw being chased by Angel,” Amanda guessed.

  “Bingo. The Albion traced them to a London police station, but they’re letting us deal with it since we were already involved. I’m sending Raven there to get the kids and bring them here before the Nomads kill them and take whatever it is they have. You went to London
with him last time. Do you want to go with him again?”

  Amanda smiled. “I do.”

  “Is that okay with you, Raven?” Royston asked him.

  “Of course, shall we go?”

  “Absolutely, just give me two seconds to wash my mouth out,” Amanda answered. She dashed to the nearest bathroom and sloshed water around her mouth. With a quick working of Magic, she Ported some fresh clothes to the bathroom and changed out of her dirty outfit that smelt of death and vomit.

  Feeling better, Amanda returned to the lobby and to Raven who stood waiting for her. “Ready.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” Raven answered, Essentia flaring again.

  - Internal missive within the Disciples of the Cross.

  Grand Inquisitor Damask,

  I offer my most sincere apologies. I had the children and the artifact for a short while, but I let them slip my grasp, and they are on the run. All is not lost, however. I have managed to plant a tracking device on the boy, Stephan, and its signal is clean. I am regrouping and readying an attempt to reacquire them as I write this.

  The Warlocks are proving to be troublesome, however, and they forced the action I took earlier tonight. I feel I was justified in my efforts and in the loss of life. I have prayed for my fallen comrades, I ask that you might join me.

  Please, find attached a full report on the night’s events.

  May God be with you.

  Knight Inquisitor de Luca.

  Liberation

  London, England

  The flash of light in Amanda’s vision faded, and she found herself on a rooftop, standing beside Raven. They were on a small flat area next to a skylight, with another man she’d never met waiting close by. Around them, the rest of the rooftop was the typical pitched tiled type that could be seen all around London. The next building over was painted white and stood a few floors taller. Amanda could make out the grey water of the Thames just beyond it, looking cold and uninviting.

  Amanda didn’t recognise the strange man, but she did recognise the glow coming from him in her Aetheric Sight. He was a Magus and he smiled at them as they appeared. Amanda took half a step back and fed Essentia into her Aegis as she prepared for an attack. Raven hadn’t said anything about them meeting anyone.