Magi Legend

by Andrew Dobell

  There wasn’t a computer here or access to the net, which she guessed was what was really annoying him. He loved the online world and had mentioned a few times that he was keen to get back to it. He’d said something about a new online world called the Hypernet, but she had no idea what that was.

  Essentia flared to life in her mind. It was Nefertiti, and she said a simple, single phrase.

  “She’s here.”

  The Link closed with no further explanation, but she didn’t need it. She knew exactly what Nefertiti meant.

  Jumping off of her bed, she Ported her trainers onto her feet and sprinted out of her room into the communal area. Balor and Maria were the only two there and looked up at her sudden entrance.

  “Yasmin’s here, Nefertiti just warned me.”

  “Crap,” Maria cursed, jumping up.

  “You two, get Amanda, I’ll get the guys,” she said and ran to Matt’s room as the other two moved off. She burst in through the door and found Matt lying on his bed, much like she had been moments before, just staring at the ceiling, one of his feet twitching nervously.

  “Get up, Yasmin’s here. We’re leaving,” she barked at him.

  “Shit, really? Oh crap, oh crap…” he started to mutter to himself as he jumped up and gathered his things. Liz ran out and around to Howie’s room, bursting through the door which had been locked. The metal bolt fractured the door frame as she kicked it open and ran in, only to find Howie naked in bed with one of Nefertiti’s apprentices. Liz was reasonably sure her name was Bast, and she was on all fours before him, her ass bouncing against him.

  “What the hell?” Howie yelled.

  “Whoa, hi there! Come to join the fun?” Bast asked, apparently not at all embarrassed by the interruption.

  “Oh, shit,” Liz said. “Sorry, guys. We’ve gotta leave, Yasmin’s here.”

  “Ah crap,” Howie said and pulled away from Bast, who jumped off the bed herself and picked up her dress.

  “I knew I should have answered Nefertiti’s Link,” Bast muttered.

  “Get dressed and get out here, you have twenty seconds,” Liz ordered and strode out of the room, shaking her head. She had to admit to her herself, though, Howie was undoubtedly an impressive specimen.

  Bast ran out just behind her, naked apart from the dress she held to her breasts and sprinted across the room to the double doors and disappeared through them.

  Matt stood in the middle of the room watching her go with an incredulous look on his face. “What the…?”

  “Don’t ask,” Liz said, unable to hide the slight grin that pulled at the corner of her mouth.

  She turned as Howie clattered out of his room in his underwear, pulling his trousers on while cursing. “Shit, crap, God dammit, come on,” he swore as he pulled them on.

  “You dirty dog,” Matt commented.

  “Fuck off, man,” Howie answered.

  “No, no, no, I ain’t letting this one go.”

  “She wanted it, man, she couldn’t leave me alone.”

  “Learn some self-control, jeez,” Matt said as Balor and Maria came back through, the Scion carrying Amanda over his shoulder, and looked at the three of them.

  “Did we miss something?” Maria asked, eyeing Howie as he pulled his clothes back on.

  “Nothing of note,” Liz answered. “So, we ready?”

  They all nodded.

  “Right, let’s go,” Liz said. “Maria, if you would, please?” Essentia flared as Maria Ported them through the Null Realm.

  During their tour the day before, Nefertiti had told them to come to the main hall during an emergency such as this as it had most of the main exits leading off from it, and it would likely be where Nefertiti and her coven would be waiting for Yasmin to appear. Liz thought it was a little risky, but if all the exits were there, it made some sense.

  They appeared in the main hall. Across from them, the main exit pulsed with Energy. Something was hammering it at with an incredible amount of Essentia and Magical might.

  Nefertiti stood facing the door with four other Magi and eight Riven. She sensed their appearance and turned. Liz noticed Bast look over at Howie at the same time and wink.

  Nefertiti walked up to them. “I’m sorry it has to end this way,” she said.

  “Don’t worry about it, you have done more for us than we could ever have hoped for,” Liz reassured her, and smiling at their host.

  She smiled back at them. “If we survive this, maybe we can meet again under less stressful circumstances.”

  Liz nodded. “That would be nice.”

  “You know what to do, right? Go down there, fix a location in your mind, and walk through. I don’t want to know where you’re going.”

  “We’ve got it,” she said. They had discussed their chosen location in private after Nefertiti had shown them the exit the first time, and had picked somewhere at random, but they hadn’t thought much past that stage. Liz had a few ideas, though, but she’d mention them after they were out of here.

  Just like Nefertiti didn’t want to know where they were going for their own protection, Liz didn’t want them to plan things too far in advance in case one of them got captured.

  “Good luck,” Nefertiti said as the main door behind her exploded with Essentia and Kinetic energy. Nefertiti turned and worked her Magic. Essentia flared from her as Magic rippled out from the entrance as several people walked through the door, led by the familiar figure of Yasmin.

  An Aegis snapped up around Nefertiti, her coven, and the entrance, containing Yasmin for the time being.

  “Nefertiti,” Yasmin called out as she walked in, her dark-clad figure silhouetted against the bright glow from the door.

  “Go, run,” Nefertiti called out to Liz.

  “Yes, please, run,” Yasmin shouted in reply. “It makes this so much more fun.”

  “Let’s go,” Liz said and sprinted for the corridor entrance as Essentia flared behind them. Liz charged up the hall, running as fast as she could. She could see the Portal up ahead, only for Magic to flash before them and a figure to appear out of thin air.

  She was a slim woman in singed denim, carrying a mop of dreadlocks on her head that spilt over her shoulders. Liz recognised her as Tacita, one of Yasmin’s Black Knights.

  Essentia flared around her, and a gout of superheated flame flew at them. Liz expanded her Aegis to cover the hallway as the fireball smashed against it.

  Maria stepped up beside Liz, and they both worked their Magic, pulling on the local Essentia and throwing a wave of strikes at the Nomad that hammered her Aegis and got close to breaking it in one go.

  Tacita’s Magic flared, and with a whip-crack of air, she was gone.

  “Wimp,” Liz grunted. “Maria, watch our rear, the rest of you, run!” she barked at them and sprinted up the corridor, fixing the location she wanted in her mind and stepped into the Portal, letting its Magic eject her from the Null Realm.

  She appeared in another London backstreet, landing on cobblestones in the rain. She looked around, but there was no one nearby. She could see a typical busy London street at the end of the road, but the view of it was partially blocked by a parked car and some rubbish dumpsters. Essentia flared behind her as Balor, still carrying Amanda, appeared followed by Matt, Howie, and then Maria. They landed on the ground, puffing and panting as they tried to catch their breath.

  “We made it,” Matt stated.

  “We did,” Liz answered.

  “I don’t think we should stay here,” Maria suggested. “If that Nomad…”

  “Tacita,” Liz supplied.

  “If she got a glimpse inside any of our heads, she’ll know where we were going. We need to move, quickly.”

  “Agreed. I have an idea,” Liz said.

  “Care to share it with the group?” Maria asked.

  Liz focused and sent the details through a private Link to Maria. She was probably being paranoid, but it just made sense to keep this information between those who had an Aegis erec
ted and who were unlikely to have someone reading their minds right now. “There you go, do your thing.”

  “On it,” Maria replied and worked her Flux Magic once more.

  Light flashed behind her eyes and the air cracked. Suddenly, they weren’t standing in a London alleyway anymore, but were instead standing amidst some tall grass. She was right where she had wanted to be, appearing at Amanda’s cottage in Donegal, Ireland. Liz had lived here for a while following her introduction to the Magi world before they moved to New York. Few people knew about it, making it the perfect place to hide out.

  “Where are we?” Matt asked.

  “One of Amanda’s homes, we’re in Ireland,” Liz explained.

  “Oh, Amanda told me about this place. I never got to visit before, though,” Maria said. “It’s quite charming… apart from the rain.”

  They might have Ported hundreds of miles, but the weather in this part of the world seemed keen to get them wet.

  “Come on,” Liz urged, leading them through the gate in the picket fence. “Let’s get inside and dry off.”

  The cottage was a small, squat single-storey building with a thatched roof and white walls set out in an L shape. A white fence surrounded the property with a slightly overgrown garden inside. A single rough path led away from the gate up the valley where it disappeared out of view with no other houses in sight.

  Liz walked up to the door and, with a quick working of Magic, unlocked it. She stepped inside, out of the rain, and into the dim interior and knew straight away that they weren’t alone. She looked to her right and saw that the fire in the hearth was lit but gave off no smoke, while a figure sat in one of the chairs before it. The person was clearly a Magus, but they’d been suppressing their Magic to keep from being noticed too early.

  For a moment, Liz panicked and could only stare at the shadowy figure. She boosted her Aegis on instinct and prepared to fight.

  The figure leaned forward, the light from the fire finally hitting his face and picking out his features. Liz let out a sigh of relief as she recognised him.

  “I wondered how long it take you to get here,” Gentle Water said.

  - Ultima Thule, Enceladus, Saturn

  Tabitha followed Mercy out of the end of the corridor to find the Arkady still parked in the same place they’d left it, on one of the landing pads around the base of the castle.

  The ship looked majestic with the orange-yellow glow of Saturn behind it, and for a moment, Tabitha lost herself to the beauty of the view, only for a large black shape to drop to the tarmac right in front of her.

  Tabitha yelped in surprise and jumped back.

  “Holy crap,” she said looking down at the furry body of the mutilated Werewolf that had landed two foot from her. “Oh, gross,” Tabitha added as she looked at the bloody mess of its face.

  “Aah, um, sorry,” called out a voice from above. Tabitha looked up to see Maya standing on the rear open deck looking down at them. “I didn’t realise anyone was down there.”

  “No problem,” Mercy said.

  “Easy for you to say,” Tabitha commented. “I think I need a new pair of knickers.”

  Sabine smirked.

  “Come on, let’s get aboard,” Mercy said, waving them to follow her. Tabitha stepped around the corpse and followed them up the ramp before the button was pressed to raise it. “We need to get out of here.”

  An Offer of Help

  Between

  Amanda felt herself separate from Sophia again, having left the founders of the Legacy Coven to continue their work.

  She’d often wondered who Helene had been and why she’d made the Prophecy. What had been her agenda? There could have been all kinds of reasons behind it.

  As it turned out, the Prophecy was made by her own mother, and done retroactively. Sophia had given birth to her and left her at the orphanage before going back in time and then foretelling the things she had just done because she was an Aeon and time didn’t work the same way for her.

  Oddly, now that she had lived it and been there for these events, and spoken the words, it felt like she had made the Prophecies about herself.

  “So, you were Helene?” Amanda asked.

  Sophia, in her human form with her red hair, faded into view before her. “That is correct, and so were you.”

  “So, these things have already happened, though, right? I just saw memories or something?”

  “Or something,” Sophia said cryptically. “Aeon’s don’t view time in a linear way.”

  “Of course,” Amanda said, and the scene shifted once more.

  Amanda was Sophia again walking through a mountainous region.

  She could hear and sense that there were people with her. She looked back over her shoulder to see a group of men and women in loose robes following her. They looked like monks, but they were also clearly Magi, as well. The nearest one looked at her and smiled.

  “Are you well?” the lead monk asked in his native tongue, which Amanda understood flawlessly.

  Amanda smiled and nodded before she looked around at their surroundings.

  They were high up, ascending a thin, treacherous path through the Himalayas. Amanda recognised her surroundings and wasn’t surprised when they rounded another rocky outcropping and before them, a little further up the slope, was a complex of buildings clinging to the cliffside. She smiled at the familiar sight of the temple, and paused for a moment, taking in the view.

  “It is magnificent,” the lead monk said, stepping up beside her.

  “It is yours,” Amanda/Sophia said. She wasn’t sure if she said it or Sophia did, but she knew those were the right words to say and knew instinctively that she had created this temple herself a short time ago, imbuing it with protective Magic that only an Aeon could conjure.

  “But, Red Phoenix, are you sure?”

  She smiled back at him. “I am sure. I wish for you to live here peacefully, and to fulfil your needs and desires. You may leave at any time, of course. You’re under no obligation to me.”

  “After everything you have done for us, it would be our honour to live here.”

  Those nearest, who could hear their conversation, nodded in agreement.

  “It shall be known as the Red Temple, named in your honour,” the man beside her said, bowing slightly.

  Amanda smiled. “Thank you.”

  The scene changed with a flash of light and Amanda was elsewhere.

  She found herself floating in mid-air, hanging high above an island. An atoll to be specific, and below her, on the sandy beach, she could see herself. She could also see Liz and Gentle Water, as well as other members of her coven, along with Mr Black and his team.

  She knew this moment. She knew it well. It was burnt into her memory, maybe literally. She looked over to see the missile boost up from the submarine in the middle of the atoll, only for it to explode the instant it left its launch tube. The Aegis that her younger-self and her friends erected protected them as the blast hit with a blinding flash of light. She spotted a burst of green energy just outside of the Aegis and knew that it was Mr Black merging with the Orb amid the maelstrom. She watched and waited, and slowly the firestorm from the nuclear explosion died away, leaving behind an altered landscape, apart from the section of the island that had been protected by the Aegis.

  Peering into the Aegis, she could see herself with Liz and the others. As she watched, she felt herself, or perhaps more accurately, Sophia, reach out and pull on her power. She pulled on something from the home of the Aeons and it manifested as a streak of lightning that shot down from the heavens, straight through the Aegis and hit her younger-self on her back, throwing her to the sandy beach.

  As she watched, she felt the skin where the tattoo was prickle as her younger-self screamed in pain before passing out.

  The job done, Sophia withdrew her magic, and the bolt of energy abruptly disappeared, leaving her younger-self motionless in the sand. Liz, Maria, and Gentle Water approached cautiously, moving to h
er aid as she woke up.

  She remembered that moment well.

  She had no idea what the tattoo was at the time, but now understood that it was a marker, placed there by Sophia to show the world that she was the one spoken of in the Prophecy.

  The blast of energy did more than just mark her, though. Seeing and feeling the event from Sophia’s side, she knew that Sophia had invested some of her power into Amanda. She had boosted her Magic and made her stronger.

  Now that she knew she was part Aeon, she had a sense of what Sophia was doing, she was waking Amanda’s Aeon side. She was forcing her daughter to step into the shoes that she was always destined to wear.

  Amanda crossed her arms and rubbed her hands over her tattoo as she watched the scene below her fade away. As she returned to the Aeon Realm, she looked down at the part of the tattoo that she could see and felt suddenly closer to her mother.

  This tattoo was a part of her heritage, and she felt more connected to her mother now than she ever had before. She could feel the love from her mother flow into her once more. For the first time in her life, she had some kind of understanding of where she’d come from.

  She had a mother, and that alone was more than enough for her.

  “Thank you for showing me this,” Amanda said as she looked up at the figure of Sophia that had formed before her.

  Sophia smiled. “I am glad we could finally meet.”

  “I am curious, though, why now? Why bring me here and show me these things? I died. Am I to live here, with you and Georgina now?”

  “No, my child. Your life is not yet ended. Your work is not yet done. This is but the beginning of your journey. The first step in a long walk through the troubles to come. The Archons have been freed. They are a danger to your world, and there are bigger threats yet to come. Your world needs you.”

  “I’m going back?”

  “Yes. Yasmin is yet to be stopped. Your friends need you, and I think you need them.”