Magi Legend

by Andrew Dobell

  Mr Black didn’t flinch. With her piece said, Amanda just stared at him and watched as he lowered his eyes and seemed to think for a moment.

  “It all started twenty years ago. I’m actually only forty years old, despite what this body looks like. Twenty years ago, I was a fairly normal young man. Part of a wealthy family who were well-connected. I had a great future ahead of me, I suppose. But my family had been in service to an ancient and powerful Scion for over a thousand years. We knew nothing else other than to do his bidding, to run his enterprises, and to suffer his wrath. Serving Horlack was all we knew.”

  “Horlack?” Amanda asked, surprised.

  “Yes, you know him?”

  “I’ve had dealings with him. But that’s not important. Please, continue.”

  Mr Black nodded. “For hundreds of years, my family had been searching for a way out, for a way to release ourselves from the bondage of being Horlack’s slaves. Our salvation came in the form of a Scroll. The Lazarus Scroll, to be precise. After months of planning, my family used the Scroll to summon a true god and beg for his mercy and his help. This god, who referred to himself as ‘Weaver’, agreed to help us, asking us to choose one amongst the family to complete the mission and to reconvene on this tropical island that my family owned. My family chose me, and I felt elated that I would be the one to free our family from slavery. The night before the trip to the atoll, I celebrated, and paid a visit to a massage parlour, where I spent a couple of hours with an angel who called herself Sofia.”

  Mr Black looked up and gazed into Amanda’s eyes. “She looked just like you. She had the same hair, identical features. I could swear you are her, but there’s something different that I can’t put my finger on.”

  Mr Black looked up at the sky and sighed. “That night, it felt like more than just sex. It felt transcendent, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It’s difficult to explain, other than to say nothing could ever feel like that again. Later, on the trip to the atoll on the seaplane, I couldn’t help but think something more than just sex had happened that night. Something wonderful. But I wouldn’t be sure until twenty years later,” he said and looked up at Amanda, smiling.

  “Continue,” she said.

  “The next day, on the island, in a cave that had been hollowed into this rock,” he said, gesturing to the door of the strange device, “we enacted the ritual once more, summoning the one known as Weaver. He agreed to uphold his end of the deal, and around us, in that cave, the Weaver created the device. You may have already guessed its purpose. Most Magi can, after walking in there for the first time. It’s a time travel device.

  “The Weaver told us that the device would send one person, me, back in time to the day before Horlack first met our family, and through the use of a certain passage within the Lazarus Scroll, Horlack would be forced to miss the meeting with my family. The Weaver warned the family elders that there would be consequences, but they chose to go through with it anyway, believing the risk would be worth it.” Mr Black took a breath; there were tears in his eyes again.

  Amanda waited, feeling unsure how to take the story, it sounded crazy, even for her. But she’d been watching him with her Magical sight, and he’d been speaking the truth, at least as far as he knew.

  With his emotions back under control, he took another breath before continuing. “The device was turned on and I stepped through the Portal it created, appearing in a forest somewhere, England or Scotland, maybe? I could never be sure. Before me, I could make out a fight through a copse of trees. Horlack and his armoured soldiers were fighting other soldiers and had basically won. They were moving through the clearing and killing anyone left alive.

  “I took out the Scroll and read the passage the Weaver had directed me to read. Green mist swirled around Horlack and the men. The soldiers all choked to death, while wounds appeared all over Horlack, badly wounding him.

  “With my work done, I returned through the Portal and appeared back in that room. But, apart from Weaver and me, it was empty. I suddenly felt very weak and I was filled with aches and pains. I remember looking down at my hands,” Mr Black said, holding his hands out in front of him, like he was looking at them for the very first time. “The backs of my hands looked old and frail. I asked the Weaver for an explanation, but I didn’t like the answer.”

  Black lowered his hands and shook his head. “He’d said there would be consequences, and he hadn’t lied. My family hadn’t met with Horlack that fateful day, but had lived on, and died out during the Black Death. My parents, their parents, and so on back through the ages had never existed. My actions, according to the Weaver, had split the timeline, creating a new timeline where my family had died out.

  “The Weaver had also aged me fifty years. At the time, I’d raged and shouted, angry at the price we’d paid, but the Weaver simply disappeared. Like this.” He clicked his fingers, the sound a sharp thing that snapped Amanda out of whatever spell he’d cast over her with his story.

  “That was nearly twenty-two years ago,” Mr Black continued. “My family had gone, but it turned out that the Weaver had brought some things over to this timeline, including the yachts that still sat anchored off the island. I kept one, sold the rest and started to build my empire. In this timeline, I had never existed. There was no record of me anywhere. I was a ghost and I used that to my advantage.

  “Nine months later, I heard of the disaster at Tārūt, the earthquake there and the reports of the red-haired angel who had saved the lives of hundreds of people, and I knew it had been Sofia, your mother. More recently, I heard a more personal account from a man who’d met Sofia earlier that day on Tārūt and helped her give birth to a baby girl. I believe that baby was you, Amanda. The timeline fits with both my night with Sofia, and with your birth.”

  Amanda had heard of the disaster at Tārūt in passing somewhere. She would be sure to look up the story once she was home, though. More importantly, she had a name for her mother now. Sofia. Her mother had been called Sofia, and it sounded like she’d been a Magus like her. She felt elated and yet she was still full of questions.

  “So, you don’t know why she gave me up? Why I grew up in an orphanage?” she asked.

  Mr Black shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. I have no idea. I’d like to know that myself.”

  “You said you heard of a report by someone who met Sofia recently. Who made that report?”

  “My aids found it on the Dark Web, made by someone going by the name of Edge. I wasn’t able to track him down, and I had more pressing matters, anyway,” he said, indicating the nukes that now sat on the beach a short distance away.

  Amanda looked over to the warheads. “So, you never tried to contact the Weaver again, or go back through the device and undo what you did?”

  “I vowed to never use that machine again, and kept the key to it hidden,” he said, holding up a curious silver key on a chain around his neck. “As for the Weaver, sure, I tried to summon him again, but it never worked. After I lost the Scroll, that became impossible, anyway.”

  “I’ll take that key,” she said, holding her hand out. Mr Black took the key from around his neck and passed it to Amanda. She looked at it before placing it in her pocket. “You lost the Scroll?”

  “The Scroll seems to have a life of its own, appearing where it needs to be all by itself. One day it was in my safe, the next day it had gone, and no one had been in the room, let alone in the safe. Like I said, a life of its own.”

  Amanda put her hand to her back pocket, making sure the Lazarus Scroll hadn’t vanished. It hadn’t, for now at least.

  “So, why do you want to destroy the Archons?” she asked.

  “Like the rest of my family, I hated being under the control of the Scion, Horlack. We knew a good amount about the supernatural world already. After time travelling, I started to recruit Magi and Scions to my cause, wanting to save others from the life I had lived. Naturally, I discovered more about the Archons and started to see their influence everywhe
re. They direct and shape this world of ours even now, corrupting it and those who live in it, every day. I will not stand by and let that happen while I have the power to do something.”

  “A noble goal, even if your methods leave something to be desired,” she said as she stood up. She looked down at Echo, unconscious a few feet away. “And her? Is she really my sister?”

  “Echo is my adopted daughter. I discovered her at the age of four, living as a dangerous curiosity in a government care home that had basically locked her away. Already a child prodigy and a Magus, I took her in and raised her as my own.”

  “She’s very powerful.”

  “She’s been everything to me, and I love her dearly, although, I think she’s a little jealous of you.”

  “Understandable, to be sure,” Amanda said, half-joking.

  “Will I see you again, after today? I’d… I’d like to get to know you a little better. You are my daughter, after all.”

  Amanda looked down at him and at Echo. She’d heard of dysfunctional families before, but this felt like one step beyond. A time-travelling prematurely-aged father and a psycho sister didn’t sound like happy fun times to her. But they were her only link to her past and to her mother. She would need time to think, she couldn’t make a choice like that now.

  “I need time,” she said.

  “Of course, you do. I understand. Take as much time as you need. I have a card in my top pocket, take it, and call me sometime.”

  Amanda reached down and pulled the business card from his jacket pocket. It only had the word Black and a phone number printed on it. She stuffed it in her back pocket and turned away, leaving Mr Black where he sat. She had a lot to think about.

  ***

  Angel stood atop the submarine just behind the conning tower, hidden from the beach. She was leaning against the tower, playing with a lock of hair that had come loose during the fight, and she was unbearably bored. She’d been watching events unfold for nearly an hour now and after the excitement of the fight, she just wanted to get on with it and finish this.

  Mr Black, his flunkies, and the Arcadians were all sitting ducks. All they would have to do would be to launch a missile and blow it up the moment it launched, boom, dead Arcadians everywhere.

  But Yasmin had insisted that they wait and watch and then Yasmin had disappeared somewhere for a better view. She wasn’t sure where Yasmin was right now, but given her interest in this affair, she doubted she was far.

  The fight had been good. She’d enjoyed it, and turning the tables on Mr Black had been a moment of great satisfaction for her. She’d grown bored of her mission with the Syndicate anyway, and wanted to return to her own businesses. She didn’t feel totally comfortable siding with the Arcadians, but Mr Black’s plan did have some merit, and there had always been the tiniest possibility that it might have succeeded. She had no desire to have any of the Archons destroyed by a mortal, so needs must, she supposed. But now that the threat had been averted, surely the time had come for them to deal with the Arcadians.

  What was it about Amanda that had Yasmin acting so strangely? What kind of hold did that redhead have over her? She wished she knew. She hated Yasmin. She’d tortured her and forced her to give her allegiance to her, and that wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. So, she followed orders, outwardly, at least, but deep down, she nursed her hatred of Yasmin and hoped to express it one day in a glorious act of revenge.

  Angel pursed her lips. She looked around the side of the conning tower at the beach and saw the Arcadians cleaning up and dealing with Mr Black’s forces. She glanced to her left at the open missile tubes, and then at the closed ones with their nuclear payload still sitting there, waiting to be deployed by someone with the balls to do so.

  “Fuck it,” she said to herself. She’d had enough of Yasmin’s shit. She had a chance to strike a huge blow for the Archons, and watching it slip through her fingers was something she simply couldn’t do.

  She climbed back inside the sub, sliding down the railings of the ladder into the belly of the beast. She thought better than to Port inside. Too risky. It would give away her position to the Arcadians.

  Before all this had kicked off on the island with the Arcadians showing up, Angel had found time to locate the missile operators, pull all the information she needed from their heads, and procure the keys she would need to launch the nukes.

  Once in the missile control room, she went to work preparing one of the missiles for launch and setting its target so that it would detonate seconds after its launch. Moments later, with everything set and her Aegis up to full strength, she placed first one key, then the other in the control panels, and with a bit of Magic, turned both at the same time.

  “Fuck Yasmin’s rules,” she said to herself.

  ***

  Amanda wandered over the beach, turning the strange-looking silver key over in her hand as she approached her friends.

  “How’d it go?” Maria asked as Amanda reached them.

  “As well as could be expected. He ended up being quite forthcoming in the end, and I believe he was honest with me, even though his story turned out to be a little crazy.”

  “We’re standing on a deserted island with Magical nukes, we’ve fought Sea Monsters and Were-creatures, and I think that’s a time machine over in that rock—I think I’d be surprised if his story wasn’t a little crazy.”

  Amanda smiled at Maria, her comments putting everything neatly into perspective. “You’re right,” she said.

  “What’s that you have there?” Liz asked.

  “It’s the key to that device,” she said, indicating the doorway in the nearby rock. “I thought it best if he didn’t have it anymore,” she said.

  “Good idea,” Liz answered.

  The explosion of sound from the ignition of the nuclear missile’s boosters took Amanda by complete surprise. She flinched, ducking as if something had been thrown at her. Turning to the atoll’s lagoon, she saw the smoke rising from the top of the submarine. For a second or two, all she could do was stare at the vast plume of smoke that rose from the boat, when suddenly the missile rose up from its tube, its boosters shooting flame and smoke from its rear end as it took flight, slowly at first. The shock passed and Amanda became intensely aware of the danger they were all in should that thing explode here and now. Within a fraction of a second, she weighed up their options and thought better of fumbling about trying to disarm or get rid of the missile when it could explode at any moment.

  “SHIELD!” Amanda shouted and concentrated on her Magic. An Aegis, maybe thirty meters across sprang up around them that covered her friends and Mr Black’s party. She and her friends pulled on as much Essentia as they could and forced it into the shield, strengthening their protection as much as they could.

  A couple of seconds later as the tactical nuclear missile streaked upwards, it exploded with a blinding flash of light. Amanda had already crouched down and covered her head and face with her arms, but the light seemed to pass right through her, lighting her up. The noise from the blast made her ears bleed while the world around her shook as if from an earthquake.

  Their Aegis strained from the force and power of the Magical nuclear reaction. She continued to force more energy into the Shield and sensed her friends doing the same, keeping the Aegis from failing altogether.

  The chaos seemed to last forever, as if the most powerful and destructive storm the world had ever seen had been centred on the island, ruining the landscape around them.

  Amanda stayed crouched on the sand, with no idea how much time had passed, but slowly, as she healed her ears and the sound of the thunderous explosion faded, she sat up and brushed the sand off her that had been thrown around inside the protective shield.

  The scene that greeted them looked deceptively calm at first, with a circle of almost untouched beach, maybe thirty meters across, all about them that included the forces of Mr Black, the time device, and most of the warheads. She realised that one had been caught outsi
de.

  Beyond the few included palm trees and beach, the world outside of the shield appeared to be obscured by a misty grey and tan haze, like a sandstorm had been kicked up all around them. As they watched, the cloud of debris, dust, and dirt started the fade and settle, revealing the decimated landscape.

  Their shielded circle of calm sat within a huge crater formed by the nuke that, for the moment, appeared to be nearly devoid of water. As they watched, the sea started to pour back in over the sides of the crater wall and fill this new lagoon. Looking around, Amanda noticed that one of her quick-thinking friends had somehow managed to teleport the unconscious crew of the sub, which had apparently disappeared or been destroyed, onto the beach inside of their Shield.

  Amanda got up and looked over to Mr Black. But he wasn’t there. She looked around, but it seemed like he’d disappeared. Nearby, her friends started to pick themselves up, with expressions of shock and almost hysterical sounds of laughter from Liz as she realised they’d just survived a nuclear bomb.

  Feeling confused and unsure as to what to do next, Amanda only just registered the sound of another explosion, like a sonic boom that came from above. Amanda looked up in time to see a bright and powerful golden light, like a lightning strike that seemed to be growing in size and noise, when suddenly it passed through the Aegis, apparently unhindered by it, and struck Amanda on the top of her back with a strength that threw her to the beach. The pain was intense, beyond anything she had ever felt before as this energy bolt arced from the heavens and seared her back in a torrent of light and energy and fire that had her screaming in agony.

  ***

  Liz fell on her rear as the golden lightning blast threw Amanda to the sand and continued to surge down onto her mentor from the heavens above. The sustained stream of energy seemed to be burning Amanda’s back and it caused Liz to hold her hands up to her face to keep the intense light from her eyes as her friend screamed.