Visus Verus Volume 1

by D O Thomas

  “You see, just to conjure a simple flame you must fully understand that which allows said flame to ignite, as well as the chemical composites within your own body. And then there's the matter of putting all this knowledge to use and of course...” Kristophe unfolded the wallet; it contained parts that could be assembled into a large syringe. “How do I do this again?” After a brief moment filled with ums and ahs, Kristophe approached Silence with a long-tipped syringe. “You have to be able to control the flame.” He tapped Silence's arm to produce a vein, and again nothing happened. “It’s like you’re dead.”

  Silence didn't like his comment. It worried him. What if he was dead and his life was just a temporary miracle? But before he could think deeper on it, he felt a sharp pain in his arm and he resurfaced from his reverie.

  “So, it went in,” laughed Kristophe. Kristophe tried to extract blood from Silence's vein and his shadow fluctuated.

  What filled the syringe wasn't blood; instead it was a thick black substance. “That's not right! Your blood should be red, you are still essentially ‘human’. Essentialism was practically the foundation of wizardry. Long ago the grand wizard Plato discovered that for any specific entity there is a set of attributes that are necessary for its identity and function. Although Kristophe understood this as a fact amongst wizards, the witch in him always brushed essentialisms aside. For when it came to witchcraft, things were not always what they seemed to be.

  The great witch Circe once said, “that which is, is not, to a witch.”

  This saying had been passed down for generations and was originally loosely translated and substantially shortened. However, Kristophe, like many warlocks before him, took this as fact. Kristophe wandered over to a large bookshelf full of stained notebooks and overfilled folders.

  “Maybe... no… nope. I refuse to believe it.” He removed an ancient notebook bound in gold leaf and leather. As he flicked through the pages his face turned red with embarrassment. “I'm sorry, Silence, would you excuse me for a moment, I have to make an… announcement.” Kristophe walked over to his desk and flipped a switch on his Tannoy system. By the time he had put the microphone to his lips, Kristophe's face was a burning mess of humiliation.

  The speakers crackled as he took a breath and allowed a single tear to drop from his cheek to his freshly varnished oak floor.

  “Ahem! This is Dean Jarvie addressing all students and faculty. (sigh) I was wrong! Grand chancellor Whispa was correct. (sigh) And... I’m a bumbling idiot witch boy, that is all. Thank you.” Kristophe then packed up his medical gear and returned to his seat.

  “Are we done?” asked Silence, ignoring the strange look on Kristophe’s bright red face.

  “Yes. Yes, tell Noir I’ll send your blood over to Huxley with tomorrow morning’s shipment of herbs. You can leave now, unless there were any questions.” Silence had one question but the answer he was looking for didn’t exist. He thought about asking it. He hoped he'd be told but really, he just didn't want to know.

  “Are you alright? You've been sitting there in a trance for some time now.”

  “I, I should go,” stated the nervous Silence as he stood.

  “Are you sure? You seem troubled.”

  “Yeah. I’m fine, thank you.” Silence had barely taken his first step down the manor’s monochromatic staircase, before being pushed back by Jaydon. The young wizard halted his flailing assault through the majestic halls of the arcane university and stood staring at Silence with a worried face.

  “Are you alright?” asked the ever-confused Silence.

  “I am at the moment but... I won't be!” The boy's eyes watered as he looked down at the royal blue carpet that he was nervously rubbing under the tip of his pointed shoes. “I'm not sure it will help, but don't worry about what aunty Mie-Mie says. When you read the journal you will understand, although... You may be lost in thought for some time.” Jaydon took off like a frenzied cat, leaving Silence blinded from his unclear words.

  The boy impatiently gave Kristophe's office door a good beating and after a few muffled huffs and puffs from the opposite side, the door unlocked. Jaydon flew through the door and locked it back up before the hinges could finish creaking.

  “What is it?” sighed Kristophe in a tone riddled with annoyance.

  “The path, S… Sire...” yelped the worried boy, “it's coming true. You said it wouldn't.” Jaydon paced up and down the oak-clad office with tear-filled eyes while Kristophe tried his hardest to assemble a chain of thought.

  “It can't, Jaydon, that man is dead.”

  “I told you, Sire! On the night of the new red moon when the sky’s void turns crimson, the dead will rise and the creators will fall.”

  “That's just an old prophecy. Don’t be so naïve.”

  “I don't want to die,” cried Jaydon as the tears breached his lashes.

  Silence returned from his thought-induced stupor and found he was teetering on the edge of the university's staircase.

  He felt as though a thousand eyes were upon him, although no one was there. The steps creaked like decrepit old bones as he made his way down to the main hall. At the bottom of the staircase, standing like a worried mother waiting for her socially awkward child at the school gates, was Mie-Mie. Her eyes met Silence with tearful disdain.

  “Did you see him?” worried Mie-Mie.

  “Jaydon?”

  “After Kris's announcement he just, kind of lost it.” Silence could feel the fear emanating from Mie-Mie, and it made him feel uneasy. Like he was beginning to feel frightened, not for himself, but for the boy.

  Is he okay? I mean, he said he was, said Silence to the endless void in his mind. He was genuinely worried. He thought about the boy's ability to remember the future. He said he won't be alright. Silence waited for his mind to respond but there was nothing, only a deep chill from that dark corner.

  “Did you hear me?” snapped Mie-Mie sharply, “Did he say anything to you?”

  “Only that he won't be fine.”

  “Nothing else?” Mie-Mie couldn't accept words like that coming from Jaydon. If the boy said something would happen, it did. Occasionally it didn't, but then, like the hands of fate remoulded time itself, it did anyway.

  “He said I would understand what you mean when I read Noir’s journal.”

  “That’s right, your Noir’s new assistant, aren't you?” The angst faded from Mie-Mie's eyes and was replaced with the look Silence had seen on Noir’s face when he had agreed to this strange job. The witch rummaged through a small purple and black buckled handbag held at her waist. Silence watched in awe as her arm seemed to be devoured by it. She reached deeper and deeper, while with every inch, Silence’s mind grew more hazed.

  “Stop looking so shocked! It's just a bottomless bag,” snarled Mie-Mie.

  Mie-Mie didn't like people who didn't know simple things and as a bottomless bag was practically the first thing a young witch would learn to craft, the knowledge of one couldn't be simpler to her.

  “Is that magic?” asked Silence.

  “Technically it's alchemy but we call it witchcraft. Have you never met a witch?”

  A bottomless bag was indeed the product of alchemy. Witches practised all the schools of magic. The difference between a witch’s magic and a wizard’s, apart from the pointy wand, is that a witch doesn’t need to know how the clouds form to create a thunderstorm, they would just have to point their wand skywards, focus their energy and with a flick of the wrist, nature itself would bend to their will. Witches did the same with alchemy; all it took was a large pot, the ‘right’ ingredients and an object. The alchemist’s guilds called it sloppy, the witches called it enchanting.

  “And you’re supposed to be one of the rarest, most promising supernatural phenomena since Satan bedded a bull!” cackled Mie-Mie as she pulled a bunch of dried herbs from her bag. Mie-Mie, like most witches, had mood swings like a menopausal teen suffering from mild bi-polar disorder. This was usually inflicted by the stress of magic on
the brain, but Mie-Mie’s fluctuating mind-set came from the responsibility of raising a school full of witches, while her boss/mother-in-law-to-be, focused on concatenating all the world’s circles.

  This led to Mie-Mie running the largest school of witchcraft in London and managing the others, while her seemingly absent superior travelled the world in the lap of luxury, treated like a queen by every elder witch she met.

  With most schools eager to share the power of the witch related to their craft’s founder, Mie-Mie became a sort of figurehead for the union of witches everywhere. This annoyed her. Mie-Mie spent most of her teen years as a recluse, only visiting her younger brother Balthazar bi-monthly to restock on supplies and catch up on recent events. It was mainly due to her brother’s manipulative coercions of a better life that she left her small hovel in the Caribbean, embarking on a life-long journey as what he falsely described as ‘witch royalty’.

  “Could you possibly take some deep and steady breaths for me?” asked Mie-Mie in an all too familiar, devious tone.

  Silence contemplated a question that might not result in Mie-Mie snapping at him, but before he could come up with the first word, his body began to do as she asked in fear of the witch’s irritated huffing.

  “Good! That didn't take as long as I expected it to.” Mie-Mie held the herbs a full arm’s length away from her.” Could you come a little bit closer, please?” Silence tiptoed towards the herbs. “That’s fine, thank you.” The witch took out from her seemingly bottomless pocket a thin wooden wand, wrapped from base to point in a violet silken thread, and lightly touched the herbs with the tip of it.

  “Right, deep breaths, remember!” The wand sparked and in a puff of lime green smoke, which was rapidly inhaled by the complacent Silence, the herbs were gone. “All in one!” cheered Mie-Mie.

  Silence felt the smoke make its way up his nasal passage; it seeped through his foramen and washed over his brain. Silence fell into a sleep, similar to a deep thought he might have. Mie-Mie placed her hand on his shoulder and whispered into his ear. Silence found himself in a dark void with Mie-Mie standing opposite him.

  “What is this place?” asked the bewildered Silence. Mie-Mie looked around the void and to her surprise, found nothing. They weren’t even standing on solid ground. They were standing, but beneath their feet was air.

  “Did I do it wrong” she mumbled to herself. “This isn’t right, I don’t understand.” The witch took a moment, while Silence sympathised with her confusion.

  “This is your consciousness, metaphysically speaking,” pointed out the witch, now sure she had done her spell correctly.

  “There’s nothing here.”

  “Oh, but there is!” cackled the witch as she disappeared. Silence didn’t like the void; it reminded him of that dark place, the one with the frightening knowledge stored in his borrowed brain. Mie-Mie’s voice projected directly through Silence’s mind. “This is the shade, the essence of your soul.”

  Silence felt uneasy with the thought of his soul being an empty black void. He tried to fight the witchcraft that had brought him to this place; he focused on the world outside his consciousness. He pictured the monochromatic hall. He recalled the stale pungent odour coming from the door labelled wort-cunning. The void flickered. He could see Mie-Mie in the hall standing as still as his comatose body.

  “How… how are you fighting this?” Mie-Mie reappeared within the void “Do you mind? I’m trying to search your soul.” Mie-Mie thoroughly enjoyed soul searching. As an ex-hermit, Mie-Mie lacked the social skills to get to know people, so instead she developed a way to know a person’s character without having to sift through their personality. She would find out their deepest darkest secrets first, then their dreams and aspirations.

  Mie-Mie often skipped their needs and wants, but her favourite place within a person’s consciousness was their fears. People feared the silliest things, she thought. Spiders, dogs, even bumble bees, but she couldn’t find Silence’s fears. She had gone to the right place, but all she could find was a locked door. The strongest of minds would have a closed door; one she could pry open.

  However, Silence had locked away his fears, perhaps subconsciously. Mie-Mie had never tried to enter someone’s subconscious. That was a dangerous place that controlled itself. Noir had told her of the time he spent an entire year in his own subconscious.

  He woke up a minute later unable to recognise the world, but he said it was worth it when he held a bee in his hand without falling into a hysterical fit of panic.

  “You’re very strong! Even if you don’t know that yourself.” Silence ignored the witch and focused on the smell. He held onto it like an infant chimp would cling to its mother. An off-green rope fell into his hands; it spanned as far as his eyes could see.

  “What the hell is that?” cried the witch.

  Silence pulled at the rope and the void flickered again. The harder he pulled, the longer the vision of the university’s main hall remained in his vision. Mie-Mie was impressed.

  No one, not even the grand chancellor of the arcane university had been able to escape his own consciousness. She watched from within his mind, in the place that held his strengths.

  He was there, a much larger version of himself, more masculine and less confused, full of resolve.

  This was his determination. She envied it. She had never seen anything like it. She watched as the behemoth gave a final heave, pulling down the pitch-black curtain and sending her back into her own mind. Silence felt relieved as he used his actual airways to breath in the now invigorating stench of the room labelled wort-cunning.

  “You are impressive, Shadow-Fiend,” Mie-Mie smiled with a kind of vicarious pride.

  Chapter Five

  Smoke mixed with steam as Noir exhaled into the winter’s air. The once busy street was dotted with small litters of drunkards on their way to the next watering hole. The odd sober soul carefully rushed through the bar-filled High Street, so as not to interrupt anyone's drunken escapade. Noir turned down an alley between a coffee shop and an oversized T.K. Max, when he noticed a little black rat had been following him for some time. He stopped, finished his badly rolled cigarette, dropped it on the floor, trampled on it and turned towards the rat. It was sitting in the middle of the alley just staring into Noir’s unimpressed eyes.

  “Come on then, Ratsy!” yelled the annoyed Noir. The rat darted towards him, doubling in size as it drew closer. Noir stood firm and toe punted the rat the second it got close enough. It exploded in a puff of black smoke after gaining some height, but out of the smoke dived an eagle-sized crow with red-tipped feathers.

  “Don’t you dare!” Noir ran as the crow closed in. He almost made it to the exit of the alley before the crow popped into another cloud of black smoke and a man fell out of it, landing on his back and dropping him to the ground with a knee-scraping crash.

  The man stood, revealing himself to be a shorter, slimmer, better dressed, and well-shaved version of Noir.

  He wore a black pea coat over a grey shirt and red tie. His dark blue jeans tapered down into his well-polished Chelsea boots. The only real differences between the two men were their eye colour and the bridge of their noses. Noir had a slimmer, less prominent bridge, whereas that of his look-alike was often noted as a defining feature. Noir's eyes were a very dark, almost black shade of brown and his counterpart’s were, much to Noir’s annoyance, a blue-ringed hazel with fragments of viridian dotted throughout them, resembling that of a distant galaxy.

  “Need a hand, Fatty?” laughed the well-dressed man.

  “When are you going to grow up, Ratsy? You’re over five hundred years old!”

  “I’ve told you before. When you stop calling me Ratsy, I’ll stop playing with you.”

  “Sorry, Balthazar, but that's not going to happen,” laughed Noir, as he brushed himself off.

  “Anyway, where you headed, little bro?”

  Balthazar or ‘Ratsy’ to a select few, sat at the head of the most prest
igious covenant of warlocks in London. His abilities as a warlock came without effort, as did his sister Mie-Mie's abilities as a witch; this was due to their lineage. Some thousand years ago a woman named Hecate was given a gift of magic from God to defend the women of her village.

  The men had all gone to fight a war that threatened to end the human race’s early existence, leaving the women, children, disabled and the elderly to mind the village.

  Hecate lived from the early years of BC to the six hundredth year of AD. It was only as she lay on her deathbed that she decided to procreate, and naturally, being the mother of witchcraft, she had no need for a man, nor did she need to wait the usual nine months. Moments before passing away, Hecate simply called in one of her many apprentices and handed her a baby girl, who would much later become the mother of Mie-Mie and Balthazar. Of Noir's four siblings, Balthazar was his closest and most loved, even if he was the least trusted due to his uncouth, spiteful and vindictive nature. He knew exactly how to push Noir to his emotional limit and Noir in turn could do the same. At times the two could be the best of friends. However, in an instant, like a pair of dogs given a single steak, they could become the greatest of enemies. Throughout their time together they would often bicker and fight, only to end up sharing the comfort of laughter moments later. Balthazar had a fear of being alone and confided in Noir when he couldn't find some poor soul to put up with him. This led to many uninvited visits from the master warlock that ended mostly in joy and bloodshed.

  “Where else would I be going, Ratsy?” sneered Noir.

  “Good, you can buy me a pint.” Together the brothers made their way through the alleyway. Balthazar pushed through a group of disappointed 109 rejects who had decided to spend the remainder of their Friday night in the alley behind the club, hoping to poach a girl or two who had been kicked out of the bar for having more drinks than their body could comfortably accommodate. Noir frowned at the sight of the group as he glided between the gaps in the disorderly crowd.