“I had considered it, but I’m a private man, Isaac, and I like to be in control. I didn’t want to risk anyone knowing my secrets. Any mage worth his salt will know the location of the majority of the areas I maintain, but this place is a secret I hope to keep for a very long time.”
“Aren’t you about to break your own promise to yourself by bringing me here?” Isaac asked.
“I’m willing to make an exception in this case.”
“Why?”
Jim stopped walking and turned to look at Isaac. In the soft blue glow, he looked like some kind of pale ghost, but then he pushed his glasses back into place on his nose and the illusion was broken. “You trust me, don’t you Isaac?”
“I do. We have been friends for a long time.”
Jim nodded. “Trust and friendship alone wouldn’t be enough for me to break the silence surrounding my most guarded secrets, such as this place. Having said that, I hope you can begin to understand the magnitude of what is at stake here.”
“Besides my life?”
“Your life and the lives of every mage are infinitesimal compared to the ultimate purpose of the souls they carry. All souls are eternal. Human souls drift across the vast oceans of time and space, shining like dim, distant stars. Were it not for the strange fusion of our once human souls with that of a soul forged in the Tempest, we would drift too—but now we have purpose. The halves of our souls responsible for our ability to perform magic leapfrog through time, travelling from body to body in the care of our Guardians, fulfilling duties and shifting cosmic balance one way or the other. Our Guardians are forbidden to tell us anything about any previous lives our Tempest born souls may have lived, but in every lifetime the purpose of a mage’s soul is presented to those who carry them.”
“And you think you’ve found mine?”
“I do.”
Jim turned and faced the sphere of darkness ahead of them. With a wave of his hand, every last one of the many rings on his fingers began to shine with pale blue light—the signature color of House Pluto—and the darkness shied away from the light. Where a moment ago there had been a dark tunnel to oblivion, the tunnel now opened into a kind of cavern. Seconds later, a number of static torches erupted with blue flame, illuminating the cavern. When Isaac spun around on the spot to take in the vaulted ceiling, the stone murals, and the podium at the center of the room, he noticed the way they had entered wasn’t there anymore.
Instead of an open subway tunnel, there was a small corridor—roughly large enough for two men to walk through, but no more. Isaac saw, on the other side of the tunnel, the train tracks and cables. He had somehow transitioned—without moving—from there to here; wherever here was. What was more, looking through the strangely narrow and elongated tunnel was giving him something like vertigo, causing his head to spin.
He turned away from the opening and focused his attention on the rest of the cavern.
“The nausea will pass,” Jim said, “It’s only temporary.”
Isaac stepped down the slope, toward the center of the vault-like cave. “What is this place?”
“Haven’t you already figured it out?”
“I will in a minute, but if time is short I was hoping you could help me along.”
“Look around. What do you see?”
Isaac saw them. He had seen them the minute he first took in a good eyeful of the place. The dead language of the Void Weavers was present everywhere; etched into the walls and murals, carved into the half-columns surrounding the podium at the center of the room, and on the podium itself. The runes had also been drawn into an ornate silver bowl which rested atop the podium. The bowl was empty, and simple, but there was something beautiful about it; majesty in simplicity.
“This is a temple,” Isaac said. “One of their temples.”
“Magnificent, isn’t it?” Jim asked, joining Isaac by the podium.
The earth shuddered lightly, rocking the temple just enough to shake loose earth from the ceiling and causing clouds of dust to fall around them. “Was that a—”
“Train? Yes. We’re directly beneath a junction.”
“So this is still our world?”
“Of course. When the Weavers built this place they designed it so that it could only be accessed with magic, but it is very much a part of the world we know.”
“I’ll do my best to learn as much about these mages as I can,” Isaac said, “Though I doubt this is the reason why you brought me here.”
Jim smiled and shook his head. “I said earlier I think I may have found our purpose. I don’t mean that our souls are connected in any way. They might be, but I can’t confirm this. What I am certain of, however, is that you have been touched by magic from the Void, which puts you in a unique position.”
“Is it that of dead man walking? I’m sure I’m not unique in that.”
“Not quite. The taint affecting your aura will only be fatal if you allow it to spread unchecked, but the only way to contain it is by using Void magic. This is where the weavers got their power. The Void tainted their souls, so they went out into that dark place and learned not only how to control their taint, but also how to protect against its power, and how to wield it against humanity’s enemies.”
“Just what is it you’re saying?” Isaac asked, though he knew the answer.
Jim pushed his glasses back into place. “You have a chance, Isaac, to walk the Void path. Only you can do this. You, whose soul has already touched the Void, have the power to enter that dark place and return as one of them.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible through magic. You know that.”
“Perhaps not, but what you’re suggesting is madness. How am I supposed to step into an unknown realm with no knowledge of its inner workings and master a form of magic I hadn’t even heard of before tonight? That’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”
“Isaac, I understand your apprehension—really I do—but you need to understand something else also. There are no more Void Weavers left. If there are, there can’t be many, and many is what we would need to beat the darkness that is surely racing toward this earth.”
Isaac’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Are you telling me you can’t feel it? The pain, the hate, the death. We see it every day on the news. The world is tearing itself apart.”
“Humans have always killed each other. I would know.”
“Indeed, but there are far more humans now than there have ever been at any point in the history of our species. Our world is protected from the Void by a thin layer of fabric. Each one of those deaths, each cry of pain, and each sliver of abuse creates a tear in that fabric, and without the Void Weavers to repair it, things are getting through. If what you told the Magistrate in court is even half true, then Nyx must surely be one of those creatures. But I can assure you—she won’t be the last, or even the strongest.”
“What you’re asking…” Isaac started to say, but his thought trailed off.
“I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was another choice. The taint will kill you even if you don’t do this. Better to die trying than to live knowing that a painful slide to insanity and then death awaits you, otherwise.”
“Cheerfully put, Jim.”
The cavern rumbled again and more dust fell from the ceiling as Isaac considered what Jim was saying. His was a perfectly good, sound argument, but the risks… the risks were huge. He had no idea what awaited him on the other side, no idea how much protection his own magic would afford him considering all Jim had said about the Void and its denizens, and he also had no idea how long a trip into the Void would take. Alice was out there right now, powerless but still hunting down a creature even mages would struggle to deal with.
“The camera,” Isaac said, “You said a Void Weaver had built it, correct?”
“I did, and as far as I can tell, yes, it was.”
“If I do this and return. Could I build another one like it?”
Isaac nodded. “Alright,” he said, “I guess I have no choice.”
Jim smiled brightly, reached into his jacket pocket, and produced an envelope. Inside there was a single sheet of paper upon which he seemed to have scribbled something. He read it once on his own and then handed it to Isaac, who immediately recognized it as yet another spell; only this one used sigils the Void Weavers had used in their magical workings.
“Let me guess,” Isaac said, “I’m the only one who can cast this spell?”
“You are,” Jim said.
“And what does it do, exactly?”
“I… actually don’t know.”
“What?” Isaac asked, staring at Jim intently.
“But—I suspect it… opens the way.”
“You suspect? Is there any chance this spell could vaporize me instead?”
“None,” Jim said. “Well, slim. Almost none. Sorry, the alphabet is easy to understand, but putting the right spells in the right place when you don’t have the instincts to go with it, it can get messy.”
Isaac took another look at the incantation on the page. It seemed simple enough to him. The spell required him to visualize the opening of a door in his mind and asked that he speak several words of power while walking counter-clockwise around the podium. This wasn’t uncommon, nor was it particularly unpleasant. But the spell had another requirement, too; it needed Isaac to drink the blood of a shadow from the bowl on the podium.
“Blood of a shadow?” Isaac asked.
Jim produced a small knife from his pocket. “You’ll have to use mine.”
“Your shadow?”
Jim nodded. He handed the knife to Isaac, and then took a step away from the podium. With his hands by his side and his palms outstretched, he closed his eyes and began to murmur under his own breath. Isaac watched as the rings on his fingers began to glow, and as Jim repeated the words of power over and over, the dancing shadow at his feet began to rise and assume an almost physical form.
In a quiet corner of his mind, Isaac thought of Nyx. Alice had referred to her as the shadow woman numerous times because that was how Nyx had chosen to present herself. It was almost poetic that the spell to open a portal into the Void included the symbolic bleeding of a living shadow—the physical representation of a creature of the Void.
Jim’s shadow continued to rise, moving like a puppet on a string—floating toward the bowl at Jim’s command.
“Now,” he said when his shadow’s neck was stretched over the bowl, and Isaac didn’t hesitate. One quick movement of his arm was all it took to carve a piece of the shadow’s neck. Black pieces of the strange creature began to fall into the bowl, and as they touched each other they melted together to create a still, smooth liquid.
Jim clapped his hands together and the shadow returned to its place at his feet, but the spell had left him pale.
“Are you alright?” Isaac asked.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Now you. Call on your Guardian, enact the spell, and let’s finish this.”
Isaac nodded. He handed the paper back to Jim, seeing as he wouldn’t need it, and stretched his hands over the bowl. One syllable at a time he began to recite the words written on the paper, and as his bangle began to glow brighter and more vibrantly, the smell of honey, herbs, and rot filled the room. The Good Doctor stood over Isaac’s shoulder, watching from behind its beaked mask—perhaps disapprovingly, Isaac didn’t know—as his charge prepared himself to plunge into something without having first scouted the way.
As the words left Isaac’s lips, the black liquid in the bowl began to shiver. A moment later the cavern started to rumble, and dust fell from the ceiling. Isaac thought it would pass, as the other tremors had, but it didn’t pass. Instead, the rumbling intensified. Dust and dirt fell in large clouds now. Isaac’s eyes faltered and he broke concentration with the bowl to look for Jim and found him eyeing the narrow exit.
“Go,” Isaac said when a break came in his incantation, “I’ll do this myself.”
“I’m not leaving until you’re through!”
Isaac turned his attention to the bowl again and recited the incantation for the third time. His bangle wasn’t just glowing brightly now; it had turned cold—deathly cold. He could see motes of light beginning to dance around the podium. All along the cavern walls and even on the murals, the strange sigils had begun to glow, shifting from blue to purple to orange. But the rumbling wouldn’t cease, and when Isaac picked the bowl of shadow blood up he heard a loud thump that made the ground shake so hard it nearly toppled him off his feet.
“Drink it!” Jim said, and Isaac tipped the liquid into his mouth and swallowed it in a single gulp.
It was as if a cold, dead hand had reached into his neck and was sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach. Isaac convulsed and shook. Unable to control it, he fell to the floor gripping his throat. For a while he struggled, tossing and turning, but a veil of darkness was beginning to fall over his eyes.
As he went under, the last thing on his mind was Alice, only this time he wasn’t hoping their relationship would rekindle; he simply hoped he would see her again after this.
CHAPTER 11
Children of Pain
Alice backed up a step, then another, and another, until her back pressed against the building’s outer wall. She stared wide-eyed as the dark hall began to fill with shapes of all sizes and proportions, though none of these creatures seemed to have form. They were living shadows, solid and insubstantial at the same time. They were legion, they were hungry, and even though she had a gun in her hand, Alice was powerless.
She chanced a look over her shoulder and saw, through the hall window at her back, her choices; she could either run through the gauntlet of entities blocking the hall, or fling herself out of the window and hope for the best. But the drop was four stories, and from this angle she couldn’t see if there was anything soft enough down there to break her fall.
Alice turned to face the Pain Children again and beheld the writhing darkness before her. A shimmering mantle of dust was billowing out of each of the open doors, and then the moment of cold realization hit like a block of ice sinking deep into the pit of her stomach. The building was infested with Pain Children, and Nyx had consumed the soul of every living person here.
The mass stopped moving. A deep grumble of sound filled the hall, and like athletes responding to the bang of a gun, the Pain Children sprang into action.
Alice didn’t hesitate. Trapper was gone, but even if she had Trapper she wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try and take them all on. It had taken multiple attacks to bring down the gas mask man and there were too many Pain Children to count in here. Brute force wasn’t what she needed—she needed subtlety.
As the specters charged, Alice reached into the outer pocket of her leather jacket, pulled out the tube she had retrieved from the drawer in her office, and created a rough line on the ground directly in front of herself and Cameron. When the first Pain Children struck the invisible barrier created by the salt it broke like a screeching wave on a rock, dispersing into a cloud of shadow, sound, and wind around them and then reforming a few feet away but still behind the line on the floor.
The other Pain Children faltered, hesitantly hanging back for only a couple of seconds, and Alice seized the initiative to create a strong circle of salt around the two of them.
“What the fuck is that?” Cameron asked.
“Salt.”
“Where did you learn how to do that?”
“No good hunter relies on a single tool,” Alice said, drawing herself up. “Now what?”
“What do you mean?”
“The salt won’t hold them forever. If you’ve got any tricks, now is the time.”
The Pain Children began to move. Like a heaving breath, they shied away from the salt—becoming one with the darknes
s around them—and then came screaming at it. Alice put her hands up instinctively and turned her head away from the tide of living shadow. Specters began to pound and claw and gnash at the wall, and as they did, Alice began to see them for what they really were.
These weren’t intelligent beings like the gas mask man or the poltergeist—they were beasts.
“Whatever you’re going to do, do it now,” Alice said.
Cameron turned and looked at the window. He closed his eyes, flexed his fingers, and then smashed the window out with his elbow sending hundreds of shards of glass glittering to the ground below. Another solid hit and the frame itself came loose before falling away entirely. What kind of strength is that, Alice thought, but she didn’t have time to wonder; he had grabbed her by the arm and turned her to look at him.
His eyes, she thought, and she saw how his irises had transformed to slits, and his misty grey pupils had become golden—the color of molten lava. Beneath his shirt, an amulet of some kind was glowing with a color and intensity to match his eyes. Magic was at work. But Alice, on instinct, resisted his attempt to pull her toward the open hole in the wall.
“Do you trust me?” Cameron asked, sensing her hesitation, her fear.
She had no time to say no and no choice but to say yes. Alice nodded.
Cameron drew her close to his chest, surrounded her with his arms, and shoulder charged his way through the opening. Alice’s stomach felt like it was still trying to claw its way back to the floor they had just jumped out of as they free-fell four stories to the ground; all she could hear was the rush of the wind and the beating of her heart against her temples.
Time itself seemed to stretch and condense at the same time, so that the fall was both near-instant and also seemed to last hours. For a moment it felt as though she were flying, but when Cameron hit the ground, he hit the ground hard and Alice spilled out of his arms. She rolled and hit the side of a dumpster, but the blow was minor.
She got up and glanced up at the opening in the side of the building. Shards of glass were still falling, but the Pain Children weren’t following.
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