by IGMS
"We have to kill that basilisk before William can use it," I said.
"Indeed, but how can we kill it if we can't even look at it to strike it?"
I opened my spell component purse. The contents were wet from my plunge into the pungent sewer water, but I had wisely placed my main ingredients in little stoppered vials that I had had custom made. And the starfish leg was still in my purse. It was wet, but not unusable. At least I hoped.
"I have an idea. But I first need to find the monster."
Finding spells are my specialty, and I had more than enough senses of the basilisk -- sight and smell -- to find it. I recalled my memories of the creature, allowed the senses of it to grow in my mind -- the sharp beak of its nightmarish rooster head, the rot and cinnamon stench of its breath -- until I could actually feel it. I aimed those sensations at my feet, and then opened my eyes.
My feet began walking along the ledge in the direction we were already heading. The finding spell in my feet would lead us to the basilisk.
And then my ball cap tingled briefly, letting me know that I was being hunted. Not yet, I prayed. Just a while longer. And then all the spirits in the Cloaca Maxima can come to the feast.
Without my finding spell, Vitulus and I would've died of old age in the labyrinthine Cloaca Maxima. We passed beneath numerous latrines -- some in use -- bath basins, and storm drains. My feet kept walking past it all, and Vitulus asked several times if I knew a spell that could relieve the stench we were walking through. I could have, but I knew I'd soon need all my magical energies and components for more important things.
Like curing our cholera after this was over.
The basilisk was moving fast, likely being called to William's location. The sewer spirits still followed me, but were more tentative this time. They remembered the shield spell I had used earlier, which probably made them both fear me and salivate over my power.
A terrible grinding and then a crash echoed through the Cloaca Maxima. Vitulus and I stopped. I sent my spark globe up ahead, but it did not illuminate anything that might have caused that sound.
"The creature?" Vitulus whispered. He had drawn his gladius and stared with clenched teeth up ahead.
"Yeah," I said. "Got to be. Remember what I said about --"
"I know. Don't look at it, let you fight it. Quite honestly I wonder what I'm even doing here."
"Legitimacy. Do you think they'll believe me when we tell them what happened?"
"And you think I will make this story any more believable?" Vitulus snorted. "Nonetheless, your optimism always encourages me, my friend."
I let my feet take me forward, urging them to go faster now that we were close. We rounded a corner and found a large metal grate poking out of the sewage. The tunnel narrowed next to it. The grate had obviously been ripped out of the wall.
And then an unnatural shriek from up ahead made the all the hair on my body stand straight up. Beneath that shriek I heard a man's voice crying out in surprise.
Aw, cac, here we go. Vitulus and I ran past the wrecked grating and into the narrow tunnel.
I stopped cold when I saw the basilisk. It was hanging from the ceiling, its serpentine neck poking through a latrine hole above. It was about the length of a full-grown man from head to tail. The large claws on each of its six legs dug into the sewer's brick walls, supporting its scaly body.
I pushed my feet forward so that I was only a few paces from the monster's writhing, thrashing tail. I reached into my spell pouch, took out the wet starfish leg, and gripped it tightly. I tried not to dwell on my plan's stupidity, and then took off my ball cap.
The spirits of the Cloaca Maxima saw this as the dinner bell and attacked me. In my twenty-first century, every human being is naturally warded against this kind of assault, so if you're from my timeline and are reading my journals, you won't truly understand what it feels like to have your soul devoured piece by piece. It was not painful in the physical sense, but it was like every good memory and feeling I had ever had was being gouged out of me. I was only left with anger, hatred, and, worst of all, suicidal despair.
The howls of the spirits deafened me, their grayish wisps stabbed at me like spears. And through all this, I struggled to remember and voice the words of the spell that would save me:
"Van Earth and Fire, Air and Sea --"
Except I couldn't get all the words out with the damned shades eating my magic. Every time I'd feel my magic rise, a gray wisp would scream by and take a bite out it.
"Van Earth and Fire, Air and Sea, Ik deze spreuk --"
The basilisk shrieked again, and beneath that I heard more men yelling from up above.
"Natta, what's wrong?" Vitulus asked beside me. He couldn't see the spirits feasting on me, but he could certainly see my reaction to them.
I ignored him and concentrated on my magic. But the despair was overwhelming: I would never get home; I would die forgotten in ancient Rome; my family and friends in twenty-first century Detroit would never even care to search for me; I would be the cause of humanity's untold suffering in the future.
I was fading fast. If I didn't get this spell out now, I never would. I gathered as much breath in my lungs as I could and then I screamed out the words:
"Van Earth and Fire, Air and Sea, Ik deze spreuk vast te stellen, dan stelt u deze gratis!"
A copy of my aura popped into existence within the starfish leg. Without thinking, I flung it at the basilisk's body only five paces away. The wet starfish leg stuck to the creature's scaly hide and held fast.
For a terrible moment, I didn't think the spell had worked. I was so depleted and delirious that I just didn't care anymore. I wanted to slip beneath the sewer waters and end it all.
But the starfish arm did what it was supposed to do: it fed on the basilisk's natural magic and exploded with an even brighter copy of my aura. The monster's aura suddenly became a ten-course banquet compared to my aura's floor crumbs. The angry gray wisps charged into the basilisk, biting and devouring the magic that powered the creature. It screamed in agony and fell back down into the sewer water. I averted my eyes lest a stray glance from it killed me. I heard it splash around in the water, trying to shake the spirits off. They held fast and seemed to gather even stronger. The basilisk disappeared into a cloud of stabbing gray mist, its cries and shrieks actually turning pitiful.
As the ghosts ripped into the basilisk, I tried to reach for my ball cap, but collapsed to the ledge. Vitulus held me and kept me from falling into the water.
"Easy, Natta Magus," he said. "Let me get that."
He put my cap on my head. My suicidal thoughts evaporated, but I still felt the despair and emptiness the spirits had left. With my last shred of will, I threw the rest of my salt in the air above me, uttered the words, and felt the spiritual ward snap into place. It would block my aura from the spirits once they were done with the basilisk. After that, I just lay my head on the damp brick.
"Who's down there?" came a voice from the latrine hole above us.
"Gaius Aurelius Vitulus and Natta Magus," Vitulus called back. "I'm a Praetorian centurion under --"
"Vitulus? It's Cotta. What are you doing down there?"
Vitulus grinned, and then turned to me. "Cotta's an ally of mine. He's one of the Augustus's house guards."
I just nodded. I didn't even have the will to speak words.
Vitulus called back up, "Cotta, where are we?"
"In the Princeps' latrine," he said with a disbelieving snort. "Is that creature still down there?"
I glanced at where the basilisk had fallen, but there was no sign of it. My finding spell also told me that the creature no longer existed. "It's dead," I murmured.
"My friend killed it," Vitulus told Cotta. "Is the Princeps --?"
"I am here," came a soft-spoken patrician voice. "Your bravery and loyalty to me are to be commended, centurion."
I was still so depressed and weak that I didn't even bother to look up to see if Augustus himself was peeking th
rough his own latrine.
"Thank you, sire," Vitulus said hurriedly. "We were just performing our duty to the state, sire."
"And the state thanks you," Augustus said.
I heard murmuring above, and then Cotta's voice came back. "We're going to find a map so you can walk out. It'll probably be quicker than waiting for us to widen the marble hole on this latrine for you to climb out."
When Cotta left, I said, "Have to find Tiberius."
"I know, my friend," Vitulus said, "but I couldn't explain all that from the bottom of a latrine. Once we get out --"
"Could be too late," I said. I struggled to muster the sense of duty I had to my oaths as a magus, to save lives that could be taken by magic. But at that moment it was a struggle just to muster any thoughts that didn't involve slitting my own throat.
"I share your concerns more than you know," Vitulus said, "but it is a delicate thing to bring accusations against a member of the Princeps' family. You know and I know what your friend William is, but we must be able to prove it in a court of law."
I nodded, too weak to protest further. I consoled myself with the fact that I had tried to warn Vitulus that Augustus was still not safe. I only prayed I that had done enough.
I slipped into the steaming, scented bath water with a groan of pleasure. It had been days since my last bath; add to that a few hours in the Cloaca Maxima, and you can imagine what a relief it was to feel clean again. This was the most luxurious bath I'd taken since I arrived in ancient Rome, a gift from Augustus for saving his life. At that moment, a bath for a life was a fair exchange in my book.
I kept my ball cap on even in the bath water. I had taken it off briefly, but then quickly put it back on: Thoughts of slipping my head under the water or opening my veins had assaulted me. Only time and allowing myself life's simple pleasures -- like scented baths -- would heal what the sewer ghosts had taken from me.
I had just shut my eyes to meditate when I heard footsteps enter the bathing room. Augustus had rented the entire chamber -- which could accommodate two dozen -- for the whole afternoon, so I was a little annoyed by the interruption. But when I saw Vitulus stride in, I sat up. He still looked filthy from his adventure through the Cloaca Maxima, having foregone a bath until he had spoken with Salvius Aper about the day's events.
"Is Tiberius --?" I started.
Vitulus nodded. "He's alive. We found him in his villa, bound and gagged and quite shaken. Your friend William's spells did something to his mind, made him . . ." Vitulus paused uncomfortably. "He will need time to recover. He's leaving for Rhodes tonight and will convalesce there, out of the public eye."
I nodded. Copying spells not only required the living blood of the person being copied, but their side affects to the person's soul were similar to what I was experiencing. Someone like me with innate magical talent would recover in a few days. It might take Tiberius years.
"And what of William?" I asked.
Vitulus had taken off his sandals, tunica, and gladius belt, and had slipped into the bath water with a sigh even as the question had escaped my lips.
"No sign," he said, slipping down so the water was up to his chin. "He was with the Princeps just before the creature attacked, but he got away during the battle."
Damn. I had expected that, but damn. Copying spells were really hard and required specific components to do correctly, never mind the fact that you need to keep your "copy" subdued so that you could take his or her blood every three hours. I'd ask Vitulus to ask Salvius Aper to watch the various kiosks and shops where I knew the components to be sold. Perhaps we'd find William that way. Probably not, though.
But above all, I needed to find out why William wanted to erase our timeline. He didn't tell me when he betrayed me a year ago, and our meeting this morning sure didn't clear things up. I could not imagine a twenty-first century that had no knowledge of magic. We had our fair share of problems and had made lots of mistakes along the way, but a humanity without magic seemed like a dark and brutish existence to me. And I feared that the longer William and I stayed in 6 BC Rome, the more likely that would be humanity's future.
That was a quest, however, that could wait another hour until after my bath.
"Tell Salvius Aper that my rates will double next time for sewer jobs," I said. "I hate ending my day smeared in cac."
Vitulus chuckled, his eyes closed. "Then you're in the wrong vocation, my friend."
The Species of Least Concern
by Erica L. Satifka
Artwork by Andres Mossa
* * *
We find the first ones in the lobby, talons extended as if trying to get underneath the door. A good two dozen of them, mostly sparrows. Tiny, dun-colored things.
Of course it's my job to clean it up. I lay the dead sparrows to their rest in the dumpster around back of the building. Their beaks and eyes glitter like cut glass in huge fleshy shoals.
By the end of the week, it's like birds never existed. Pockets of absence soar about in the silent sky.
"As the current wave of devastating cryptogenic species loss enters its second week," says the newscaster, "scientists are scrambling for a cause, and a cure. Research at the --"
I turn the TV off and the sanitizer on. Its soothing thrum envelops me like a warm, heavy blanket. Without thinking, I squat on the tile floor and let the vibrations shake loose the aberrant electrical activity from my brain. Though I have a government-issued neural defibrillator, I don't dare bring the phallus-shaped thing to work. The frequency of the sanitizer is roughly the same as that of the device, and at least then nobody thinks I'm a nympho as well as a freak. My backbone tingles against the sanitizer, and I'm reminded that anything with a spine -- including me -- could be the next to die.
DCSL: waves of species loss affecting one taxon at a time. Scientists think it's a natural phenomenon, but they still haven't found a cause, so what do scientists know, really? Sometimes there are more than six months between extinction events and we think we're in the clear, but they always come back.
I hear thick-soled shoes thundering like a herd of animals that probably don't exist anymore and look up to find Steve, the project lead. I stand in a panic, pretending I'd just been on the floor to find a paperclip.
"Kimmy, what are you doing?" He sighs and turns away to the coffee machine. "No, forget it, I don't want to know."
"Um, ah . . . your mail is here." I grab one of the stacks on the cart and shove it at him.
"Fine." He takes it without looking, then shuffles off to wherever project managers go when they're not barking orders or rushing to meetings.
At Nature's Helpers, we're developing replacement animals -- NuAnimals -- to fill in the gaps left by the extinction events. We used to be an organic pharmaceutical company, but desperate times lead to different strategies, as Steve likes to say.
I grab the handles of the mail-cart and walk the halls, my own shoes squeaking.
First I stop at the lab, which is always a good start to the day. I hit the buzzer and am greeted at the Plexiglas door by an isolation-suited Dr. Chen, her face only slightly visible through the tinted viewscreen.
"Thank you, Kimmy."
"Can I see them?" Yesterday she let me look at the wriggly little red critters in their wire cage. The "universal ground-level small mammals," designed to fill the gaps left by the departure of Rodentia a year ago.
She shakes her head, massive in the suit. "I'm sorry, Kimmy, I don't have time right now. Maybe later."
I continue down the hall, passing out mail as I go. The scientific wing leads to the corporate wing, all fluorescent lighting and cheap paneled walls and people who smile so much it can't possibly be sincere.
"Kimmy, you left the dishes in the sink again," says the office manager with a loud sigh. "Oh, why do I even ask you to do these things, I should just do it myself."
"I had to catch the bus. I couldn't --"
"Whatever." She takes her mail from the cart before I can give it to her.
>
I edge past quietly. I have to remind myself that it's not her fault. Cats and dogs were the victims of the second extinction event, and she had a pair of poodles that she loved very much. More than her kids, if how much you love something can be judged by the size of the photographs on your desk.
The rain pounds on the pavement outside as we sit in rows in the company cafeteria. The TV is turned to a shopping channel, a rare station that isn't reporting on DCSL.
Like a group of high schoolers, we arrange ourselves in cliques. The corporate branch sits at one table, laughing and joking. The researchers are more subdued. They hunch over their trays, plastic forks in one hand, scientific journals in the other.
And then there's me, the one nobody wants to sit next to, because of my parents' role in the gene wars.
Under different circumstances, I could have sat at the scientists' table. I had four semesters of biology under my belt before the college asked me to leave. It was pointless to waste the education. Children of gene-war survivors don't have careers. We're supposed to consider ourselves lucky to be employed at all.
Dr. Chen comes into the room. There's still a space open at the scientists' table, but she sits across from me anyway.
"Dr. Chen?"
Her nose crinkles as she fumbles open a plastic container housing a processed concoction of soy, wheat germ, and protein analogues. The third wave of DCSL -- poultry and cattle -- has turned us working-folks into unwilling vegans.
She doesn't say anything.
"Dr. Chen, why are you here?"
She looks up. "You just say whatever's on your mind, don't you, Kimmy." She pitches the lid into the trash compactor at the end of the table. "Meet me in the lab at the end of the day. There's something I want to show you."
"But I have to take the bus down to the city," I say. "I'll miss it."