Magi Legend

by Andrew Dobell

  “That’s the one. The Legion is watching us, and you. They don’t want us helping you, and they are fully expecting you to fail and leave, or die any day now. The fact that you have lasted this long has surprised them.”

  “He won’t kill me,” Amanda admitted.

  “Won’t kill you?” Kelly asked quizzically.

  “He’s confronted me twice now, the second time I had no real back up, no protections other than my own Aegis. He could have attacked me easily, but he just had a few harsh words for me.”

  “That’s… unusual.” Kelly frowned.

  “I know. I’m still trying to work it out. But he has no problem trying to kill my friends in the meantime, which is why this needs to end.”

  “Of course, and while we can’t be seen giving you help directly, we will try to help you in other ways.” And with that, she reached under the desk and pulled out a manila envelope and passed it to Amanda. “That’s everything we know about Lucian. It’s not much. We don’t even know where their main base of operations is, but there might be something in there that can help you.”

  “Thank you,” Amanda said, taking the packet from Kelly.

  “I hope you’re successful. I really do,” offered Kelly.

  “Thanks. I’ll… I’ll see what I can do.”

  ***

  Ten minutes later, Amanda appeared in her front room with a snap.

  She sighed in frustration and rubbed the bridge of her nose to fight back the small headache that was lurking behind her eyes. The guys from the Magi Legion felt like every slimy politician she’d ever seen on TV, and that kind of xenophobia really didn’t agree with her.

  She dropped the envelope onto the coffee table and slumped onto her sofa, glad to be taking the weight off her feet. She hadn’t been sitting down for more than a few seconds before she felt the familiar sensation of a presence wanting to link with her. She recognised the presence right away as Xain and opened the link to him.

  ~Hi, Xain,~ she sent through the Link.

  ~Hi, Mandy. We got a voice message on our public phone line for you a short time ago. I’ve been trying to link with you for the past fifteen minutes, are you alright?~ his voice sounding loud and clear in her head as if he were sitting right next to her.

  ~I was in a meeting, just got back. What’s the message?~

  ~It’s from Alicia, she says she needs your help.~

  ~Did she say what the problem was?~

  ~Only that some of her pupils have got themselves into some trouble with Magic and she’d like your help.~

  ~Okay, Xain, thank you.~

  ~Pleasure. How’s New York?~

  ~It’s great. There are a few problems we’re working on, but we’ll get there.~

  ~Let us know if you need a hand. Happy to knock some heads together for you.~

  ~I’ll bear that in mind. Thanks, Xain,~ she answered and cut the link.

  She dropped her head back against the sofa and took a breath. Just what she needed right now, something else that demanded her attention.

  Alicia had been her friend back when she had been growing up in the orphanage in Donegal in Ireland. Religious, conservative, and basically the teachers’ star pupil, she had been everything that Amanda hadn’t been, until Alicia decided that she would be Amanda’s friend, no matter what. Her influence had calmed Amanda down, and their friendship would always be the one thing that Amanda treasured most from her time in the orphanage.

  She’d visited Alicia a little over a year ago, shortly after becoming a Magus, and had given Alicia her contact details at that time and had updated them for the Legacy Mansion in Paris months ago.

  She hadn’t gotten round to updating them to New York yet, but that would be put right on this visit.

  The problem would have to be serious for Alicia to call and ask for Amanda to come to the orphanage, that meant she needed to get to Ireland.

  “You okay, Mandy?”

  Amanda looked up, snapped out of her thoughts by Liz’s voice. Her apprentice stood in the hallway close to the front door. She looked good, wearing a skirt that showed a little more leg than usual.

  “I’m fine. Are you going out?”

  “I’m meeting Jason. We’re going to take in a few sights.”

  “Happy days. Have fun. I might not be here when you get back, I need to pay a visit to a friend in Ireland.”

  “Alicia?”

  She’d spoken to Liz about Alicia and her past a fair amount over the last year, so she wasn’t surprised she remembered who Alicia was.

  “Yeah. I shouldn’t be too long. Have fun.”

  “I will. See ya,” Liz replied and left through the front door.

  Amanda smiled. Liz seemed to be finding her feet here in New York more than ever now. She hoped she had fun. Amanda stood up and looked down at the envelope on the table. She concentrated for a moment and Ported it upstairs into her bedroom for safekeeping.

  Now she needed to get to Ireland. She’d done this trip a couple of times now, both to reach Ireland and Paris.

  Concentrating for a moment, she Ported from her lounge and appeared on a lush green hilltop overlooking a vast body of water that stretched as far as she could see.

  Her ability as a Magi allowed her to Port wherever she could imagine, but her ability level limited her to just shy of a thousand miles, so a trip to Ireland, which in total would be a three thousand mile trip in one jump, had to be done in several hops.

  She Ported north into Quebec, on the south coast of Le fleuve Saint-Laurent near to Grand Vallée. Up on the hill, the view took her breath away, and it was always quiet. She only appeared for a few seconds, though, before she Ported north again, appearing on another coastline. This time she was at sea level on a quiet northern beach on Long Tickle Island in Newfoundland.

  The temperature had dropped enough that she was feeling the cold. Not that it bothered her, her Magic kept her warm. The view out to sea had a pleasant calming effect on her as the water broke gently onto the beach a short distance ahead. But she couldn’t stay, so she concentrated again and Ported another five hundred or more miles northeast and appeared on a rocky, snow-covered mountain top. The wind whipped about her as she looked over the wintery, forbidding landscape of Nunarssit on the south coast of Greenland. Behind her, the North Atlantic Sea that she’d just Ported over, stretched away into the distance, while in front of her, snowy peaks of rock jutted into the sky.

  Again, she didn’t stay long, just a few seconds to make sure there hadn’t been anyone watching before concentrating on her Magic again and Porting once more. She pushed herself towards her upper limit, Porting east nearly as far as she could at her current ability, and appeared on the southern slopes of Snæfellsjökull, Iceland, close to Vatnshellir Cave.

  The ground wasn’t as rocky as where she had appeared in Greenland, but it felt just as cold. The bleak landscape extended down below her to the sea. There were no trees here, just rocks and tundra, and beyond that, the freezing ocean.

  She had come most of the way now, just a couple more jumps and she’d be in Ireland.

  Pulling her coat tighter, shivering even though she didn’t really feel it, she pulled on the threads of Essentia again and disappeared.

  She appeared seven hundred miles south-east of Iceland on a small island south-west of Scarp on the Isle of Harris just off the west coast of northern Scotland.

  Although still cold, the air felt noticeably warmer here, and the late afternoon sun felt lovely on her face. The Island uninhabited, as far as she could tell, other than the local wildlife and so was perfect as a Porting location.

  This would be her last big jump, so she concentrated on her destination, and with a whip-crack of noise and the fleeting feeling of dislocation and dizziness, she appeared outside her cottage in the Blue Stack Mountains northwest of Donegal.

  Everything looked as it should. The small whitewashed cottage had been left untouched for a little while, but Amanda popped back here from time to time either for tim
e alone or just to make sure everything was okay.

  It would be just a short hop from here to the orphanage to see her friend.

  - Online Chat between Edge & Chronos dated April 19th

  Edge: Who are they, the people you sent me to follow?

  Chronos: You found them? You stayed out of sight?

  Edge: Yes, don’t worry, they never knew I was there. But I saw things… I saw them doing things that should not be possible.

  Chronos: You’ve seen it before, though, haven’t you?

  Edge: What are they? Are there more of them?

  Chronos: They call themselves Magi, pronounced Mah-Guy, and yes, there’s more of them.

  Antarctic Trek

  Antarctic

  Angel sat in the front passenger seat of the Hagglunds all-terrain vehicle as it made its way over the white-on-white landscape. The vehicle consisted of two cabs on tracks, powered by the engine in the front cab.

  It bounced and rattled its way over the snow and ice without much difficulty. Inside the front cab, the cushioned seats made it one of the most comfortable trips she’d ever made.

  The heater was turned up on high, and she wore her extreme cold-weather gear that covered her from head to toe, but Angel still felt cold, very cold.

  She sat with the driver up front, while Mr Black’s other two employees sat behind them. They talked excitedly about their trip and what they would find at the dig site, but Angel had no time for them.

  She found their conversation inane and boring, so she kept her distance and had barely said two words to them through the entire trip.

  They’d travelled from the Syndicate’s island a little over a day ago, hopping from one airport to another, changing planes a couple of times until they reached the final leg of the trip that took them from South America to Antarctica in the Hercules LC130 military cargo plane.

  The flying grey beast had two propellers on each wing and skis attached to its wheels. The flight had been one of the worst she’d ever experienced. The plane had little insulation, making it very cold, and there were no luxuries, such as chairs. You were treated no better than cargo and sat wherever you could find a space between the actual cargo in the plane.

  Rest had been a pipe dream, something that sounded like a nice idea, until you sat on your bag, freezing cold, the noise deafening even with earplugs in, while you rattled through the sky to your destination.

  Hiding within the Syndicate had never been easy. She’d worked hard to conceal her true level of Magical ability, and that meant not keeping herself warm during the trip to the South Pole as that would have been outside the ability level she portrayed.

  She wore layer after layer of thermal clothing, but it only accomplished so much in this climate.

  Located about a day’s ride over the snowfields from the nearest American base in the Antarctic, travelling by land vehicle had always been the best way of ferrying people back and forth. On clear, calm days, they used the helicopter for personal travel, but most of the cargo and equipment arrived to the base on one of the ground transports. Today had not been a clear or calm day. The winds were blowing, which meant they had to travel in the Hagg.

  Slowly, the sun had started to set, inching closer to the horizon as the transport approached another ridge of snow, rising up in front of them.

  “We’re about there, I think. We should be able to see the site at the top of this ridge,” the driver said.

  This only served to get the other two passengers excited, and made Angel roll her eyes at their constant chatter about how amazing this whole experience had been.

  Angel didn’t listen, she just peered out the front window as the Hagg made its way over the next rise, eventually cresting the ridge and its nose dipping again, revealing the valley below.

  The driver stopped for a moment, letting his passengers enjoy the view.

  Below them, the dig site sat at the base of a mountain range, nestled in a valley with steep rises on three sides.

  Carved into the back of that valley, and mostly hidden beneath the snow and ice, there looked to be some sort of temple or tomb entrance.

  Ornate pillars sat on either side of an arched doorway that rose well over a hundred and fifty feet high which had succumbed to the ice, filling the doorway. The main activity of the dig was happening at the base of the entrance. Tents and sheeting hid the excavation as steam rose from the base of the doorway.

  Angel knew from the reports she had read that one of the few Magi that the Syndicate employed had been stationed here on an ongoing basis, with a couple more who visited when they were needed.

  She also knew that, although Mr Black employed these supernatural individuals, he didn’t really trust them. They were a tool he used to achieve certain ends and were only brought in when mundane methods weren’t enough. Still, she could sense the Magic here, powerful Magic that permeated the whole area.

  Shifting her vision into the Magical spectrum, the ambient Essentia blossomed into view, giving the vista before her another dimension entirely.

  Something powerful rested in the ice. She could see the remains of an Aegis that had been more powerful and subtle than anything she’d ever seen before, left in tatters by the Syndicate’s now-departed Magi. The Aegis had effectively hidden this place from detection for millennia while an Illusion had hidden the entrance.

  Beyond the shield, Magical signatures could be seen everywhere, as well as the distinctive marks of explosions dotted about the camp.

  Traps, thought Angel. Powerful and dangerous Magical traps designed to dissuade people from venturing too close. They weren’t hidden, though. These were designed for any mortals who wandered into the area who weren’t affected by the Aegis. They were obstacles, nothing more.

  She could see tents set up between the traps and safe areas to walk marked out by flags, but the real Magical power came from deep below the surface, beyond the ice door. Something powerful lay deep underground here. She had no idea what it could be, but the taste of that power captured her interest.

  The driver shifted the transport back into gear and continued down the slope, eventually coming to a stop next to a number of other parked vehicles.

  Angel jumped out and grabbed her bag from the back of the Hagg before walking into the compound alone. She followed the path marked out by flags, through tents and piles of equipment boxes, towards a larger cabin that stood ten feet above the ground on scaffolding. As she walked, she approached a gap in the tents that had been marked off. Flickering lights came from the gap as well as strange noises. She rounded the corner to see a bright glowing point of light flickering and sparking, throwing off arcs of magical energy like miniature lightning bolts and puffs of fire and smoke.

  As odd as that might be, it wasn’t what troubled her.

  As the effect flickered, individual body parts appeared and disappeared, jutting out of the energy. Every few seconds, a man’s screaming face would appear, and for that fleeting moment, the sound of his bone-chilling scream could be heard before his head disappeared and the sound stopped just as abruptly as it started.

  Angel stood there fascinated by it.

  “One of the traps,” said a voice to her right. She turned to see a man standing nearby, dressed in extreme cold-weather gear as bulky as her own. “The idiot got too close. One minute, he was standing just a little closer than you are now, the next moment… that,” he said, pointing at the screaming apparition in the flickering light.

  “And you’re leaving him like that?” Angel asked, a little surprised that they wouldn't try to save him. Not that it bothered her, but she always thought the Syndicate’s staff were a little more humane than that.

  “We have our best Magi working on it. They’re a little apprehensive about tampering with it while we conduct the dig. Serves the idiot right, though. It’s also an effective deterrent for anyone else thinking of being a wiseass. Anyway, I’m Blake. I was just heading out to meet you. I take it you’re Angel?”

  An
gel recognised his name. Blake Preston had been placed in charge of the dig and would be the person she’d be working with during her stay here. Her job would be to use her Magical perception to help them watch out for any Magical problems that might rear their heads.

  Angel took Blake’s hand and shook it.

  “That’s right, a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Shall we get out of the cold?” he asked.

  “Absolutely, lead the way,” she answered, eager to get a bit warmer.

  She followed Blake through the other tents towards the main complex of prefabricated living spaces. To call these oblong grey blocks with a couple of windows and a door, buildings, would have been a little too generous.

  Beyond them, the carved rock face rose above her, ominous and forbidding, hiding its secrets away from prying eyes.

  But not for long.

  - Online Chat between Edge & Chronos dated April 19th

  Edge: Yes, I’ve seen them before. It’s been a while ago, now, maybe twenty years, but yes. I have seen something like this before.

  Chronos: Twenty years ago?

  Edge: I was travelling the Middle East, and it happened while I visited the Island of Tārūt.

  Chronos: Tārūt? You mean, the one that had that earthquake?

  Edge: That’s the one. I was there when it happened. I was in the middle of the earthquake. I thought she was an angel at the time, but maybe she was just one of these Magi. I’ve lived in denial for a while over what I saw that day, but recently, I realised I had to know. I couldn’t leave it any longer, I needed to know what I saw. Which led to the blog and everything else.

  Ritual

  Donegal, Ireland.

  Appearing on the site of the Saint Mary’s Orphanage and Convent School, Amanda passed the orphanage and nunnery and made for the collection of buildings that make up the school.

  She’d only had intermittent contact with Alicia since her last visit a year ago, mainly to update Alicia on how she could be reached. She wondered what was so urgent that it had forced Alicia to reach out. Surely it wasn’t the same kids Alicia had been concerned about the last time she was here. As she approached the main wooden front door of the school's reception, she wondered if that same woman would be here, and how she’d react to her outfit this time. She’d not been impressed when Amanda had turned up in ripped jeans and a tank top last time. Comparatively speaking, she was dressed rather smartly this time, since she hadn’t changed after her visit to DC.