by Shaun Barger
Nikolai sat on a white chair, in a white room. No door, no windows. No apparent source of light.
How long had he been here? He wasn’t asleep—wasn’t unconscious. He had the vaguest recollection of sitting here, waiting. But for how long?
He tried to turn his head but found that he could only move just so. His hands hung limp on the armrests—his back slumped against the chair. There weren’t any obvious signs of binding, no telltale tingling of enchantments on the cool, white paint against the skin of his palm. And yet he was paralyzed.
Nikolai hurt. He hurt everywhere. He didn’t feel sick anymore, and his ribs were no longer broken—but glancing down, he saw that his hands remained filthy—fingers crusted with blood and ashes. His sneakers and uniform were caked with mud, with sand. His head throbbed, his leg ached—gummy and scabbed where the flesh had been torn by assault rifle fire.
Jubal sat on a simple wooden chair across from him, puffing great clouds of cigarette smoke between sips from a glass of bourbon.
Beside him was a small table with a pitcher of water and a surgical tray—the contents hidden from view by a neat white cloth. Leaned up against the table was his candy-striped cane Focal.
Nikolai’s own Focals were propped up in a small box in the corner of the room.
“Where—” Nikolai tried to say, but his throat was so dry that all he could do was cough.
With a flick of Jubal’s finger, the water snaked from the pitcher and over to Nikolai’s mouth—where it stopped, hanging.
“Open,” he said, and Nikolai did so, letting Jubal slowly levitate the water past his cracked lips.
Nikolai gulped it awkwardly, dribbling most of it down the front of his shirt.
“Where’s Jem?” he managed, voice still raspy. “My uncle?”
Jubal didn’t answer immediately—he just stared at Nikolai, smoking. Eyes glassy with drink.
“We healed Ms. Burton,” Jubal said. “Fed and clothed her. She seems to believe that you’re some sort of telekinetic colonist agent, here to save the rest of your long-abandoned human brethren. I’m glad that you at least had the wherewithal not to tell her about our kind.” He snorted. “If she only knew what the colonists are actually like now. They’ve become vicious, preparing for this war. Make the Synth seem cuddly in comparison.”
“Is she here still? Can I see her?”
“No,” Jubal said. “I erased her memories. Wiped every trace of you from her brain.”
Nikolai looked at him, horrified. “But her mods! Wouldn’t they—”
“She erased the digital memories herself. As the price for us bringing her to the neutral zone, a country in the Middle East called Rojava, which remains under terrestrial human control. The diplomatic point of contact between the colonists and the Synth. We gave her a falsified history and citizenship, as well as a comfortable sum of local currency.”
“As for Redford?” he said, seeming distracted. “Marblewood. Had to confine him for a bit. Let him cool his heels. You won’t be seeing him for . . .” He trailed off, sighing. “Your mother’s revolver. That’s where you learned to bend Veil, correct?”
Nikolai hesitated, and then nodded.
Jubal pulled the cigarette from his mouth and closed his fist around it. There was a small burst of light that shone through the cracks in his fingers. He opened his palm, dusting away the ashes.
“Do you know how worried I was about you? How worried we all were? By the time Redford and your friends realized that you were missing, and not just sulking in some hidey-hole, your trail to the Veil’s edge had gone so cold that it looked like you’d drowned in the damn lake.”
The Captain downed the rest of his drink in one go and cast aside the glass. It turned to vapor as it struck the floor, rolling out in a misty wave from the point of impact before dissipating.
“Wasn’t until we’d dredged half the thing before I thought to check the Veil itself. We all thought you’d fucking killed yourself! I agonized over not having come straight to Marblewood the moment I’d heard what happened. Blamed myself! And from the looks on your friends faces, I wasn’t the only one.”
Guilt plumed in Nikolai like a flood of ink.
“I know—I’ve been stupid, so stupid, I—”
Hot tears began to pour down Nikolai’s face, and he was hiccupping, sobbing—snot bubbling in his nose.
“—it was horrible,” Nikolai croaked. “Captain, it was so horrible. Oh, I messed up bad, I messed up so bad, I—”
Captain Jubal shifted, frowning. But he didn’t look away.
Slowly, Nikolai regained composure. Then he became afraid.
“I can’t move. Why can’t I move?”
“I wish you hadn’t run away from the healer’s ward, Nikolai,” Jubal said wistfully. “Wish you’d just gone to your uncle, like you’d been ordered. You think you’re the first young Edge Guard to slip up? To get into trouble?” He shook his head, frown deepening. “Styx, boy. After everything you’ve been through, do you really think I wouldn’t have been understanding?”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Nikolai said, guilt and anger a hot muddle swirling in his chest as he strained against the enchantments holding him in place. “But do you really need to bind me like this? What, am I going to attack you? Try to escape?”
“Look at you! Scowling at me like . . . like I’m the villain here! Just like your mother, whenever she was in trouble. Couple of stubborn little shits, the both of you. Self-righteous, even when I catch you committing treason, red-handed!”
Nikolai hissed a breath, narrowing his eyes. “Treason? How have I committed treason?”
“How’d you commit—?” The old Battle Mage guffawed, disbelieving—his breath fragrant with alcohol. “You serious, boy?”
“For what?” Nikolai demanded. “What am I being charged with?”
Jubal’s lips pressed into a thin line as he began to list Nikolai’s crimes.
“Failure to report for summons,” he said, raising a finger as he counted out each offense. “Abandoning your post. Withholding—”
“What post? I was on vacation! I—”
“Withholding the knowledge and use of spells strictly forbidden for those without proper clearance,” Jubal continued, cutting Nikolai off with a sharp look of warning. “Assaulting civilians and an off-duty Watchman—”
“None of whom are pressing charges!”
“Goddamnit, boy!” Jubal roared. “You will shut your fool mouth and listen, or Disc help me, I’ll—”
“Why?” Nikolai snarled, emboldened by his own dire state. “How can I trust anything you say? Everything about the humans—everything about the Lancers, and the Edge Guard, and—and—!”
“Fine!” Jubal exploded. “You want to know the truth? Max dosage of Tabula Rasa potion is twenty-four hours. You were out there for too long. No erasing what you’ve seen.”
Nikolai glared up at the moonfaced magus. “Then tell me.”
Jubal gave him a tired smile. “Is that what’ll make you happy? Higher security clearance? So be it. Here’s some top secret fun facts about our wretched kind.”
He stood and began to pace back and forth before Nikolai’s chair, idly twirling his candy-striped cane.
“Fun fact number one: There were only a few Discs originally. Not the thousands that we currently enjoy. Magi were once chosen from the human population by the Discs for their brilliance and strength of character. They served as guardians and guides to ancient humans.”
“Chosen?” Nikolai looked at him, puzzled. Barring the mysterious process of Focal creation, Nik had been taught that there’d never been any successful communication with the Discs. “How? The Discs, did they talk to us? And from . . . humans? So humans can be turned into magi?”
“I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to answer those very questions. So far as I can tell, the original Discs would come to chosen humans in visions and dreams. As for how they turned a normal human into a mage . . .” Jubal shrugged. “They
were different from contemporary Discs. Something closer to gods.”
“Where are they?” Nikolai tried and failed to lean forward, remembering in a moment of claustrophobic panic that he was invisibly bound.
“Lost,” Jubal said. “Maybe destroyed. The white Discs we use today were created by the wizards of Styx in ancient times, who found a way to create lesser Discs that could imbue the children of magi with magic, regardless of skill or strength of character. Even though magic was never meant to be used by just anyone. Think of Vaillancourt, and other such shadow magi. Think of the half-mage animals who tried to kill you in the Noir.
“Now,” he continued, with a drunken twirl of his cane, “it would be one thing if we could have just interbred with humanity until everyone had magic. Unfortunately, it’s always been far more difficult for a sorceress to conceive than a human female, and only a sorceress can give birth to a mage. As such, even if humans and magi were to interbreed for millennia, magi would remain—as they always have—in the scant minority.”
Nikolai listened to Jubal, rapt. The standard story of magi history was that of an ancient Age of Wonders in the Veil of Styx spiraling into an Age of Nightmares, when powerful arch magi inadvertently unleashed a race of monstrous tricksters called the Foxbourne. After centuries of war with the creatures that almost exterminated all life on Earth, the magi secluded themselves in Veils, and human civilization began to flourish beyond.
“Fun fact number two: We teach magi that, historically, we remained carefully hidden from the humans until they began to slaughter each other en masse in the first World War, and we had our first Veil War over whether or not we should intervene. Really, though, we’ve involved ourselves in the matters of man throughout most of history. Often as slavers, or oppressors—however the various mage kings and queens might have tried to downplay and excuse the ugliness of their actions.”
Somehow, Nikolai found this unsurprising.
“Fun fact number three—the Edge Guard was created by an order of early industrial-age humans and magi who recognized that mage-kind simply could not be trusted with involvement in the human world. Time and time again, powerful and corrupt sorcerers would take the technological advancements of man and use them in ways that always, without fail, ended in horror and atrocities. So we sealed the Veils. To protect the humans from the magi. This is what we do, Nikolai. This is the noble purpose of the Edge Guard. We’re jailers.”
Nikolai scowled, impatient. “So that’s your excuse? Asshole wizards weaponizing technology? ’Cause right now, the Synth seem like a bigger problem.”
Jubal reached into his pocket, pulling out a small tin of his black-papered cigarettes. But then, just as he began to pull one free, he pushed it back, slipping the tin back into his coat.
“Edge Guard regulation of access to the human world was sufficient for a time, until Vaillancourt and his band of wealthy, corporate sociopaths in the early two-thousands. He was brilliant and charismatic, and managed to get his hands on ancient weaponry and spells long believed to have been lost. He was a monster, made dangerous by his brilliance and familiarity with the human methods of espionage and contemporary warfare.”
“I know who Vaillancourt is,” Nikolai snapped, but Jubal ignored him.
“Vaillancourt kidnapped some of the world’s most brilliant magi enchanters and human scientists. Started dabbling in some nasty magi-tech. Really powerful stuff. Mixing and merging modern computer tech and engineering with quantum enchantments. Bio magic. Necromancy. And he wanted to get rid of the Mage King—a much younger wizard back then. Wanted to destabilize the human governments to start a new world order. An integrated paradise for magi and humans, he claimed. Even though the fucker was a known supremacist.
“The king killed Vaillancourt in the end—but not until the shadow magus had manipulated the most powerful human governments into extremism, and pushed them into war. The human world fell apart, Nikolai. The footage we release of the Lancer expeditions is real—all taken from the blast zones of the warheads Vaillancourt had enchanted into hexbombs, which we sealed up in containment Veils.
“It became obvious that so long as our kind had any amount of access to the human world—to human technology—no matter how carefully regulated, monsters like this mage would always find a way to meddle with things they shouldn’t. And with that kind of power . . . well, it’s just too dangerous. Too much of a risk, for humans and magi.
“Just before his death, as the human nations began to pummel one another with weapons of mass destruction, Vaillancourt detonated the Discs in Veils across the globe, murdering millions of magi. But when the dust had settled, the king realized that he had an opportunity to use Vaillancourt’s final atrocity to convince the population that the shadow magus had destroyed the human world. Which wasn’t far from the truth. Then he began restricting the development of technological and even magical advances. Manufacturing, communications, transportation . . .”
Nikolai opened his mouth to snidely let Jubal know that he’d figured this out on his own, but Jubal silenced him with a look, eyes smoldering.
“As Edge Guard, it’s our sworn duty to enforce the divide between these worlds. To keep constant vigil on the threats within, and without. Machine, man, or mage. To survey all weaknesses. To plan and prepare for all possible conflicts, while working to prevent any such conflicts from occurring. Anything more than that is up to the king.”
“So you’re just giving up?” Nikolai whispered, horrified. “Just waiting for the humans to die? You. The Mage King. Waiting for the colonists to destroy the Synth after they’ve killed all the humans. So you don’t have to get your hands dirty.”
“Do you really think we’re not trying to find ways to put a stop to this? We can’t beat them, Nikolai! There aren’t enough of us! And the moment the Synth find a way to use magic, it’ll be the Age of Nightmares all over again. Only worse. It’s only a matter of time before the colonists bombard the surface and turn everything outside the Veils into dust. That’s how this ends, Nikolai. That’s how the Synth are destroyed. The colonists have the resources of the entire Solar System at their disposal, and have been militarizing ever since.”
“You’re wrong!” Nikolai said, straining against his bindings. “We can fix this! We can make this right!”
“What the hell do you know?”
“I know the king probably used the same excuse when he left the humans to deal with a nuclear holocaust that was our fault, long before the humans invented the Synth. I know that we have magic, and they don’t! But more than anything, I know that even if we aren’t sure of winning, if we don’t at least try, when someone out there eventually finds a way past the Veils—whether it’s Synth, to take our magic and wipe us out, or the colonists, to punish us for destroying their world and then hiding instead of fixing it—we’ll deserve every fucking terrible thing that happens to us.”
Jubal’s face turned beet red as he closed the distance between them, gripping Nikolai’s arms painfully.
“Do you understand what you’ve done, you IDIOT CHILD?” he roared, spit spraying into Nikolai’s face, “How much danger you’ve put us all in? How many innocents have suffered for your actions? What did you hope to accomplish? Eh? Did you want to be their savior? Their magical messiah. Eh? You arrogant little half-wit!”
He stood, stalking away to punch the wall, hard. He punched it a second time and left a bloody mark where his knuckles split. He leaned against the wall with his palms, back to Nikolai, breathing heavily. “And now . . . now I have to . . .”
Slowly, he turned back to Nikolai, and his rage was gone—his face a perfect mask of icy calm.
“There have to be consequences. You swore an oath to the king. What you’ve done is treason.”
“Just like my mother, right? She wanted to go to war for the humans too. Right?” He spat on the floor at Jubal’s feet, defiant. “Since when is not being a fucking coward treason?”
Jubal ignored him, pulling away the
cloth on the table to reveal . . . a golden hand. Nikolai stared at it for a moment, glanced at his own, then back at the hand. It was a perfect replica.
Jubal pulled the wooden chair closer, taking a seat. He was so near that Nikolai could smell Jubal’s breath—the bitter stink of cigarettes and bourbon. Forehead shiny with perspiration, he reached into his coat and pulled out a slender, velvet case.
“You’ve never seen my art Focal, have you?”
From the case, Jubal drew a hideous, barbed scalpel. Black. Glistening. An instrument for torture.
He held it up, admiring it in the glaring light. “I’ve always been fascinated by the natural sciences. Always been fascinated by mage, human, and animal anatomy. Growing up, I thought I was going to be a healer. But . . .”
He pressed the hooked scalpel through the back of Nikolai’s left hand, hot blood pluming and pouring down the side of the chair, staining the white red as the blade slipped effortlessly between bones and tendon. Nikolai screamed, trying desperately to pull away but unable to move.
“. . . I guess the world didn’t need any more healers.”
Screeching through clenched teeth, Nikolai watched as veins of light spread from the cut, stopping at a neat line around his wrist. More lines formed between the veins of light until his whole hand was glowing, and—
The flesh turned to ash. The ash fell away, revealing naked white bone sticking out from the raw, pink meat of his wrist. The bones began to fall apart—no longer held together by any tendons or cartilage. Clicking onto the floor like a fistful of porcelain beads.
Nikolai screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore, then he was just twitching, foaming at the mouth—unable to move, only able to kick a little with his foot, eyes rolling up into his head at the pain—the agony. He could feel his hand there, feel it burning. Smell the sickly sweet stink of it.
But Jubal was holding him now, making gentle shushing noises, squeezing him tightly. “There, there, Nikolai. It’s over now. The price is paid. You’re okay now, you’re going to be okay . . .”
. . . and Nikolai was no longer screaming. He was lying on his back, blinking, wondering if he’d gone blind. No—not blind. It was just dark. A solitary globe was set into the rough stone wall beyond a row of black iron bars with striping that glowed a dim white. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light he realized that he was no longer in the white room—he was in some sort of jail cell. Floors and walls of rough-hewn stone—like a dungeon.