Power

by Doug Burbey

  Shane sagged and looked at the glass turning it. "There has to be a way and I'll find it. I have to." He looked up face set in fierce lines. "Teach me. Show me how to use Angel magic."

  "Why? What's in it for me? All I want to do is smoke my pipe and be able to forget for a little while what I will never see again. I didn't ask for company." He'd turned sullen and took another gulp of the drink, mostly draining it. He glanced at the glass and it filled back up.

  "That. I already know I can pull the power from between the realms. I will figure this out. I have Fae magic and demon. Show me how to replicate and I can create the realm, then pull in what I need from small amounts of the items, duplicating them with the sheer magic that lays between."

  Deva leaned back, looking at Shane, his eyes narrowed. "You are more arrogant than most." A slow smile spread across his face. "It reminds me of home. Why not, a decade or so of torturing you might be interesting."

  "A decade? A year. I'll know everything I need in a year."

  Another half smile spread across the angel's face. "Very arrogant. You might actually survive this."

  Shane looked around the place. "I'm going to need supplies. Let me go out and get what we'll need for a few months. Toilet paper would be nice."

  Deva frowned at him. "What is that for?"

  "Please tell me you wipe after you shit? Please." Even their roughest recruits would at least wipe a bit.

  "Ah, that is right. Humans and their waste elimination. Manna. Perfect food, nothing needs to be excreted. But go. I will be here." Shane rose plans already going through his mind. "Bring back my pipe. This thinking is uncomfortable without distractions."

  Shane provided Deva his pipe and headed towards civilization. He had a crap ton of stuff to buy.

  19

  Door Opens

  It took solid two weeks for Shane to get everything moved in he figured he'd need. The effort of getting the composting toilet in place had taken three days. He refused to use chamber pots or just go over the edge, as Deva so helpfully suggested. Shane didn't want to room with the angel. At the basic level, he creeped Shane out. Something about being so perfect, so evolved, just made him uncomfortable after a while.

  Shane converted the bigger cavern into a large living space for himself. While it didn't have all the comforts of a hotel, it still rated higher than some deployments he'd been on.

  With everything he thought he'd need, plus lots of tidbits to tempt an angel with, Shane went to the crack that served as a doorway. He'd grabbed a curtain of beads, relatively common in this area, to both create a line and give him some warning if the angel came out. Though so far he hadn't seen him move from this room.

  Can he even get out with his wings?

  The thought struck him and he cast a longer gaze at the dirty white wings jutting out from either side of the being.

  "You done with your nesting?" The angel asked as he looked up, catching Shane staring at him just on the other side of the beads.

  "Nesting? It is called proper preparation." Shane replied, his eyes narrowing a bit as he moved through the beads.

  "Nesting. You looked like a fledging fussing with a first nest."

  The terminology struck Shane as odd and his mouth started to open to ask, then he snapped it shut.

  Do I care? No, not really. Leave it and get to the important stuff.

  "I'm ready to learn and I bought a few things for you, as a first payment and a thank you." He figured with the angel's ability to replicate he didn't need much, though he still wasn't sure why the angel liked the drugs.

  "Such as?" Deva didn't sound particularly interested, but Shane figured anything to sweeten his mood would be worth it, and this area of the world anything could be had for a price.

  "A few new types of drugs, guaranteed to make reality go away. As well as some alcohol that might have a bit more character than your Everclear."

  Really who wants to drink grain alcohol? Bleh.

  A spark of interest, one that he hadn't see the few times he'd talked to Deva while he moved in, crossed the angel's face.

  "Show me."

  Hmm, what to start with, let’s do the easy stuff first. Booze, the drugs I'll save for later.

  Reaching into one of the pockets in his cargo pants, he pulled out a small taster bottle of scotch. He'd come across someone having to dump all the tasters they'd ordered from a high-end whiskey club. He grabbed all of them for a steal. If the Angel could replicate them, a taster bottle could keep them supplied for months. Grabbing larger bottles had also been part of the deal.

  "Try this." He cracked open the taster bottle and poured a few drops into the clean large bottle, handing it to Deva.

  Tilting his head he reached out and took it, sniffing it, perfect brows wrinkling. "Interesting." His eyes closed and he stood there for a minute, resembling a statute. Shane watched carefully but he couldn't even see the Angel breathe. Then the amber drops in the bottle expanded, filling almost to the top.

  Even having seen it once before, Shane couldn't help but stare in amazement. The liquid formed out of nowhere and even from here, he could tell it matched the amber hue perfectly. Sitting back down, Deva poured his glass full and set the bottle on the side table, not bothering to offer Shane anymore.

  Should I be offended or just glad I've snagged his interest? This creature makes the Fae seem straightforward and understandable.

  Glad seemed the better option, so Shane grabbed the stool again and sat down, after sealing the bottle and stuffing it back into his cargo shorts. The Angel rolled the glass in his hands, inhaling. He opened his eyes to slits and looked at Shane.

  "It smells better than the other stuff."

  "Tastes better too. Everclear isn't something most people just drink straight." Shane said wryly, an old memory of him and DK flashing through his mind. He pushed it down hard. DK was dead. The man he had been was dead.

  "We shall see." Deva took a sip then another, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

  Shane sucked in a breath. Fae hit your sexual desires, making you want, making you need. This angel? He made him want to fall down and worship beauty he couldn't even fathom.

  There came a low snarl in his mind.

  No. I will not worship anyone. Creator or not, nothing is worth my worship, not after what I've seen.

  Shane stiffened his back and didn't let himself fall to the floor, even if his hindbrain urged him to.

  "I like. And you said you have more things like this? Different?" Something that approached actual emotion glittered in Deva's eyes.

  "Yes. Payment for you teaching me."

  "Then I shall earn these payments. This might make the next epoch tolerable." Deva settled back into the Adirondack chair and looked at him. "You have Fae training, and know how to use the corruption inherent in demon blood." The way he said the word demon made Shane frown, as if there was more to the word that Shane couldn't hear. "But you don't understand the structure of magic, of our blessing. Everything is structure and without it, it is nothing."

  It sounded like a mantra, something repeated so often it didn't occur to you it might not be truth. But Shane knew his part and nodded his head up and down like a child listening to a wise teacher.

  "All magic is based on this structure, so first you must learn how to see it. It will be difficult for you. Your mind, your magic is corrupted by the demon blood, swayed by the Fae, and too used to lax controls. You need to understand the structure of how it works. The best way to do that is salt."

  Whatever Shane had expected it wasn't that. "Huh?" He knew he sounded like a moron and snapped his mouth closed, even as Deva flashed a smile revealing even white, oddly sharp teeth. The smile disappeared before Shane could focus on it too long.

  "You are like the fledglings, that is their reaction the first time. Over there in that box is a canister and what you call a microscope?" He pronounced it correctly, but as if he wasn't sure that he had named it correctly.

  Shane rose and m
oved over to a box he would have sworn had not been there twenty minutes ago. He opened it and sure enough, a can of Morton's Salt and a decent microscope sat in the box.

  "Set it up on the table over there." Shane looked to see Deva pointing at a corner where a long low table stood.

  "That wasn't there a minute ago."

  "I did not need it until just now. Why would I have something in the way I didn't need?"

  Shane forced his mouth closed as he set up the microscope on the table along with the canister of salt. That gave him time to get control over his reactions. If Angels could do this, he would figure it out.

  "Fledglings, even young ones can control their vision so they don't need this, but your biology will not allow you to do this, hence the microscope. Do what you need to do for you to see the structure of the salt. You will need multiple grains." Deva said this with a dismissive tone as he sipped on the Scotch.

  It took Shane a bit, forcing him to read the directions to get everything correct but eventually, he had the square shape of the salt crystals clear under the microscope.

  "Done."

  "Very well. Watch." Deva didn't move from his seat, the level of the liquid in his glass at the halfway mark. "First you must make them perfect. They are close but can be irregular."

  Through the microscope Shane watched as edges shaved off the crystals, each of them becoming a perfect square. Different sizes, but somehow he expected they were each perfect cubes.

  He put a few more on the slide and closed his eyes, saturating the area with his awareness. Seeking magic. It took him a minute to ignore Deva's presence and the walls laden with it, until he only saw the magic free salt on the slide. "Again please," he asked and watched.

  A grunt of something, agreement, acknowledgment, annoyance, came from the Angel, but Shane ignored all that. All that mattered was the salt on the slide. He felt the magic drift in, sharp, thin, cold, and it sliced off precise amounts, not hesitating. While Fae magic flowed and ebbed and you had to ride it, this was like a laser scalpel. The magic moved slowly, for his benefit he suspected, repeating the exactness of the cuts.

  "First, how do I find the magic you are using? Second, how do you know what to cut off?" The blade of magic paused and he heard another grunt.

  "You can not sense the perfect ratios to make it what it should be? How to make a sphere a perfect globe?"

  "Not that I know of."

  "Huh, you would be thrown out of the nest. Very well, sink into the crystal, deep, and feel it as if it is the size of a book. See the math that makes it up."

  Math? Really? Well, they always did say it was the language of the universe.

  He focused his magic onto the crystal, pulling at its structure. Feeling how it grew. He wanted to smooth it there on the side. It wasn't quite right. He smoothed it.

  "See. You feel what it needs to be perfect. As to the magic. Well, look where it comes from." Deva’s voice had a smooth hypnotic feel to it and it pulled him along. He traveled the knife blade of magic. Fae pulled from the world around them, feeling the magic, the cleanness. Where Lewl had her own personal store of magic, flavored by the elements, centered in the core of her body, Deva didn't. The angel's magic came straight from his mind. Will, intent, power, and there, a tether to something else, something beyond.

  "You are an interesting human. You might rival Merlin. You see how my mind controls the magic of the universe, the chaos that must be made into order. You pull in the chaos and change it with your mind. Here, I will guide you this time."

  That blade of magic sliced into Shane, and he felt himself scream as his brain changed and a path between his mind and the chaos that lay outside this realm, the power, power so similar to the proto-portal, opened to him. Colors, tastes, sounds, sensations, exploded across his mind, overwhelming his senses.

  "Mortals really are fragile. All fledglings have that connection by the time they sprout wings. How can you not have a connection?" Deva's voice registered and Shane realized he lay on the floor, the cool cavern floor soaking through his shirt. Knowing the light would stab like knives into his skull, he didn't bother to open them.

  "We don't normally have people rip open our minds." His voice sounded raw and he wondered how much screaming he had done.

  "Huh. Well, your mind now has a connection to the between realms. So, work on what I showed you, the perfection of the object and the control of the magic." He heard Deva pour another glass and take a sip.

  I think I'll just lay here for a little bit.

  It took three more sessions before he could access the magic like Deva did. But every time he felt like his brain might boil from the inside out.

  Seeing the optimum for anything actually made sense. Starting in artillery, he'd done lots of math on the fly, and everything about how Deva worked magic seemed to circle back to math. At one point he had to go get a theoretical math book, and a lot more snapped into place as he started to see everything in Deva's world was patterns.

  With his ability to make the salt blocks ‘perfect’ he used the same magic to organize them. In a way, it almost felt like they were magnets as they wanted to go together to make the patterns he had in his mind.

  "Is this how you build your cities?" Shane asked after two weeks of getting so he could move and build structures with the salt. Every session left him crawling towards painkillers. Though they were something he had originally brought for Deva, he needed them. Human brains didn't like wrangling with chaos. Deva assured him the pain would fade as his brain moved into something more ordered.

  "Yes. Though not with salt." The angel's face lightened for a minute, his mouth open, then snapped shut as a dark look took over. "It matters not. You at least understand how to make structures to their perfection." He waved a hand towards the spirals, squares, and globes Shane had made over and over. "Are you ready to learn the replication?"

  Yes, finally. This is what I need.

  "Absolutely."

  "Watch," Deva instructed, looking at the glass in his hand. He'd really liked the Scotch, though the Bacardi 151 had been a big hit too. The liquid in the glass began to rise up.

  Shane had learned they did everything on the molecular level. For Deva everything was based at that level and math. There had to be symmetry. He focused his attention to the liquid in the glass and watched. Here, rather than sharpness, it curved and surrounded each molecule. In something that reminded him of watching cellular growth, it duplicated. Leaving two where there had been one.

  "Where did the mass come from?"

  "Everywhere, nowhere. You can only replicate so much. The dust in the air, the sand on the ground, something of the same weight and volume. If I tried to replicate say lead or gold, you might notice the mass leaving you."

  Shane narrowed his eyes at the angel. This could cause issues.

  "You can't use the chaos magic to provide the mass?"

  "No, that is energy and doesn't like to lose it fluidity. It is best to pull the mass from where you currently are." Deva shrugged leaning back. "Now you try."

  Shane looked at the glass in front of him, filled with coffee. Lately, caffeine was more important than anything but the painkillers and he suspected he was about to need another round of those. He pulled on the magic, wincing as the searing pain surrounded the connection.

  I swear, this has to get easier or at least less painful, right?

  He grabbed a molecule, detail work had become second nature by now, and surrounded it with magic, telling it to replicate.

  A rush of energy and he felt himself sway, suddenly light-headed.

  "Interesting. You did it but you pulled from your own energy. Try again but pull from the dust in the air."

  Deva's voice sounded far away and Shane nodded, focusing back on his coffee. He did it again, the feel of something being pulled from him.

  "You humans always twist things in odd ways."

  Shane realized he lay crumpled on the floor. Again.

  What is it about this magi
c that leaves me unconscious on the floor, every single time?

  But even thinking the exasperated thought hurt, and he quit thinking for a while. Eventually, he moved and pulled the pills out of his pocket. He downed them with his cold coffee, not that he thought duplicating two molecules would have made any difference to the safety of the coffee.

  When he managed to sit up and pay attention to his surroundings, a chill ran through him as he realized Deva sat watching him. The look on the Angel's face reminded Shane uncomfortably of a cat contemplating a mouse.

  "What?" He was getting too familiar with pain but then he could see everything he wanted, just outside his grasp.

  "I had not realized how different humans had become from the original. You can use the math of the realms but not easily, though now that you know it is there, you can see it. You don't hear the sweet call of order nor do you hear the call of chaos." Deva leaned back, hands steepled in front of him. "Bring me something new, then leave. I must think."

  Shane didn't have an issue with that. The idea of going and laying down on his bed and sleeping until his brain didn't feel like someone kept putting it in a blender, sounded like a wonderful idea. Moving with care, he managed to stand and found the sample box. He grabbed two LSD dots. High quality LSD, guaranteed to make you taste color, or so he had been told.

  Moving back into the room he handed Deva both of them.

  "This is called LSD. I don't remember what it is. Mushroom maybe?" Shane shrugged. "Put it under your tongue. It is supposed to expand your consciousness."

  "I am not sure that is possible. My consciousness is already very wide."

  "Be that as it may, try it. See if you like it."

  The angel slipped it under his tongue and Shane sighed, standing there swaying before turning to head out.

  "Home," the word slipped out. It was so soft Shane almost didn't hear it, but mixed with a rustle of feathers, it caught his attention. He turned and his knees gave out underneath him and he slammed into the ground. Pain radiated up from where his knees impacted and it didn't matter. Shane couldn't take his eyes off the figure before him.