Mage Dissolution

by Christopher George

  I had heard of cases of Mages who had suffered from internal haemorrhaging caused by the pressure placed on their bodies by the excess of Mana use. The stories never made it seem pleasant. I had no idea if I even had it in me for the extended use of teleport spells that would be required to get back to civilisation. I could do with about three days of sleep, unfortunately the compulsion had no intention of letting me have it. I suspect that may have been Victor’s intention. Either I die through Mana fatigue or Marcus or I kill the other. Either way – he wins. I gritted my teeth as I summoned the power to teleport back into the snow-drift and then from the Tatras mountains.

  It didn’t take me long to get back to civilisation. I survived the three teleports to get back to the closest small town where I could make a call. I planned on moving quickly as I didn’t know if they were still in Berlin or had moved on. It was likely that they wouldn’t have lingered long in Germany. It had been almost a week since I left Berlin. They could be anywhere – hopefully they’re still in Europe.

  My last teleport was a little wonky and I felt a sharp pain in my left wrist as the Mana field dissolved around me. I pulled the phone Marcus had given me shakily from my pocket, turned it on and dialled Renee’s number.

  “Where are you?” I demanded when Renee picked up.

  “Devon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m in Paris.”

  “Is Marcus with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ok, I’m coming to you.” I said, immediately cursing myself. Paris was within teleporting distance, but it would be about six jumps. There was a good chance I was going to do myself some serious damage here.

  “No! Devon! Not here! We’ll meet you somewhere else – somewhere safe.”

  “No, no time. I’ll come to you.” I hung up.

  I didn’t have time to waste setting up a rendezvous it would be simpler to meet in Paris. Sure, it was a touch dangerous as Paris was the city that the Primea lived in. There were many of our kind in residence. An outcast going there would be quickly discovered. I had previously avoided Paris for this reason, but this seemed worth the risk. Surely I’d be able to get in and out without creating too much of a scene. Besides, it would be something that Marcus wouldn’t expect.

  The journey to Paris was uneventful other than the fact that I was well and truly running on fumes. I really wanted to stop and rest for a few days, but I simply didn’t have the time. I could rest once this was done.

  I reached Paris the next day on the verge of complete exhaustion. My temples were on fire and it felt like my veins were about to explode. I staggered as the final teleport dropped me onto the top of a building on the outskirts of the city. I almost passed out as the teleportation finished, but I had done it. I could barely lift my hands I was so exhausted, but I was in Paris and that was all that mattered. All I needed to do now was to locate Marcus. That shouldn’t prove too difficult. All that was required was to sneak into the city with the most Mages on the planet, track down and assassinate an Arch Mage whose power was far in excess of my own and get out with my ass intact. No – this wouldn’t be difficult at all.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My arrival in Paris hadn’t yet been noticed by the resident Mages, but it would be. Teleporting, while requiring a lot of power was at least quick. It was like a lightning strike. If you weren’t looking directly at it you wouldn’t have known where or what it was other than a flash of power. I’m sure that some of the Mages of Paris were aware that something had happened, but just didn’t know exactly what. The more academic of my kind may have recognised a teleport spell, but that can’t have been uncommon here. No, for the moment I was safe. The question was – for how long?

  Unfortunately, I was somewhat of a celebrity in my infamy amongst my kind. It wasn’t out of the realms of possibility that I would be recognised. This would lead to disaster. I wasn’t in any condition to adequately protect myself from even an apprentice. No, I would need to be quick here. My only hope was to get in, meet with Marcus, catch him by surprise and then get out as quickly as possible. If my first shot didn’t kill him I was unlikely to get a second.

  I called Renee again to arrange to meet up with her and Marcus. Renee sounded worried on the phone but agreed to meet me at a small bar. She gave me the address and rough directions. Unfortunately, as French wasn’t one of the languages that I had learned to speak, I was having some trouble navigating. Paris is a warren of boulevards and side streets.

  I saw several others of my kind as I moved through the crowded streets. I kept my collar pulled tight and nodded briefly to them as I moved on. To ignore them completely would be to draw suspicion. Our community wasn’t so small that they would recognise me by sight, but there were few enough that my passing could draw attention if I were discovered. Fortunately, those I passed weren’t curious enough to investigate.

  The bar that Renee had selected was quite open and in a very crowded street. I think she’d intentionally chosen a public address in the hope of keeping it relatively civil. She had obviously guessed that something was wrong. There was small chance of keeping things friendly though – Victor had seen to that. The compulsion ran through my mind like wildfire burning my senses and fuming at the delay.

  “Kill him,” it whispered. “Kill him now!” The constant distraction of my subconscious making demands coupled with the fact that I managed to circle back on myself several times meant that I was seriously late. I gritted my teeth and cursed my luck.

  There were only a few customers inside. I suppose that this was for the best. I didn’t particularly want an audience for what I was about to do. Marcus and Renee were seated at the table on the far side of the room.

  Renee looked up as I entered. She looked worried, far more worried than she should be. As I made my way to them, the barman gestured towards me in greeting and said something. I assumed he was asking if I wanted a drink. I shook my head. His face wrinkled in confusion. Maybe I’d assumed incorrectly. He let me pass without further comment.

  Renee glanced nervously at me as I approached the table. She tried to hold my gaze, but I wouldn’t let her. I had a job to do and I wasn’t going to be distracted now.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” she murmured as I sat down opposite them. Marcus looked at me; his face was unreadable.

  “Kill him!” The voices in my head screamed! “Kill him now!”

  My fingers itched within my coat and the Mana ran down my arms to pool at my hands. I would have done it too! I was just about to, when a second voice bombarded into my head. I didn’t recognise it at first. It was my own. I knew that there was an above average chance that I was going to die here and there was nothing I could do about it, the best I’d be able to do would be to take Marcus with me.

  I shook my head to shake off that thought. It was too soon! Another voice in my head cautioned me to wait, that I still needed him, that now wasn’t the right time. Victor had said strike at his most vulnerable! I latched on to this idea. Yes, I could wait. Wait until it was the right time.

  “No! Kill him now!” the first voice thundered back in response. The argument went back and forth, back and forth.

  “He knows where Allie is!” the second voice urged frantically.

  That did it. We wait. I nodded and breathed out. I could wait for that much at least. Once he had told me, then I would kill him.

  My prolonged silence had obviously created some discomfort in Renee and Marcus. Hopefully they it attributed to my obvious exhaustion.

  “I’m pleased to see that you survived your ordeal.” Marcus commented. The sound of his voice made the urge to strike him down to rise within me once again.

  “Victor was there.” I replied darkly.

  Renee and Marcus exchanged glances. Marcus seemed to be telling Renee to be quiet, but she shook her head firmly.

  “He knew Victor would be there.” Renee whispered. “Marcus led Victor to believe that he would be going there himself.”

  Ren
ee’s eyes expressed conflicting emotions. She was obviously upset with her father for the betrayal and guilty about her own involvement in the deception, but there was something else there. She was nervous about something. She knew something and couldn’t tell me with Marcus present. It didn’t matter much in the long run though, after tonight either he or I would be dead.

  An icy feeling of anger rose in my stomach, I glanced at Marcus, my eyes narrowed with rage. He’d lured me into a trap. He had wanted Victor to finish me. He had intentionally placed me in a position to die, but he would not get the opportunity to do so again.

  “You tried to have me killed?”

  “No,” Marcus said softly, “I needed to ensure that you were fully aware of the consequences of your actions and how futile attempting to engage Victor would be if you weren’t properly prepared.”

  “Lies! I’ve become a liability to you now.”

  “Liability?” Marcus smiled disarmingly. “Maybe, but you also could become a powerful ally. You simply had to be tempered. You had to understand why your assaults against Victor could never achieve your desired goals.”

  “I’ve told you, I’m not in this for your war. I don’t want to become any more embroiled in this than I need to be,” I said.

  “Like it or not, you’re involved,” Marcus said curtly.

  “No, I’m not. I’m going to rescue my cousin and then we’re out of this.”

  “Don’t be naïve,” Marcus sneered, “Victor won’t allow you or your cousin to walk away from this. You’re both among the most powerful Mages in the world. Victor can’t afford to let you be unaligned, and neither can I.”

  “So sending me to be killed by Victor was a recruitment tactic?”

  “No, it was to open your damned eyes boy. He’s evil – anyone can see that. He needs to be stopped. The problem is he can’t be stopped and now you realise that!”

  “Then he’s the more powerful amongst us and deserves to be Primea.” I retorted angrily, “We only respect power and the truth of the matter is he has the most.”

  The argument in my head was still raging and playing havoc on my nerves. The power kept rushing to my fingers and a thread was just itching to be launched at the man across the table, but my mind kept whispering not now. Now’s not the right time. Wait for it – wait for it.

  My finger-nails had gouged small holes into my palms as I clenched and unclenched my fingers. The pain was a good distraction from the argument in my head and the conversation going on across the table.

  “You can’t possibly believe that!” Renee said, aghast.

  “No,” I amended. I had only said it for shock value, “I just don’t see why I should be the one to do something about it.”

  “He tried to kill you.” Marcus said irritably, “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “No,” I replied, “he doesn’t want me dead. He could have killed me yesterday, but he didn’t.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that! Do you remember my aide?” Marcus asked. “When we first met in that car in Singapore?”

  “Winters? Yeah?” I nodded.

  “Winters worked for Victor, I’m quite sure that he shot you on Victor’s orders. He was a double agent designed to keep an eye on me. When I found out I had him fired.”

  “I know. Winters told me, just before I killed him.”

  “Victor thought you were a risk to Renee and therefore needed to be removed.” Marcus continued. I could tell that he was a little thrown off that I’d already known about Winters.

  “Sounds like someone else I know,” I muttered.

  “I didn’t send you to Victor to kill you,” Marcus said, “I sent you there to make you realise the monster you face.”

  “You’re just as much of a monster as he is,” I snapped.

  “Devon, you know that’s not true,” Marcus said.

  That was just the point. I didn’t know it. As far as I was concerned Marcus was every bit as manipulative and cruel as Victor. As much as I didn’t want to be, I was now wedged firmly between them. Either of them would take me down in a second if it meant achieving their goals. The only sane thing to do here would be to run. But I couldn’t.

  There were two reasons. One was screaming for blood in my head and the second was sitting on the other side of the table from me. Renee had already signed on to Marcus’s side. I’m not exactly sure what he had shown her or what he had told her. But she was a willing advocate of his, despite all this. I sighed deeply and pulled the books that I had taken from Victor’s complex.

  “I took these,” I threw the books down on the table. The Nazi emblem gleamed in the light from the candle. “I’m assuming they were what you wanted me to recover?”

  Marcus stared at the books as if I had just thrown an angry snake onto the table.

  “No,” he breathed, shaking his head, “I didn’t expect you to bring back anything. I assumed that you’d confront Victor and then escape once you realised you were over matched.”

  “I wasn’t over matched. I won.” I hissed.

  For the first time the stern façade of Marcus’s expression broke and I caught a glimpse of the man beneath. He didn’t like my statement. Didn’t like it one bit. The lapse only lasted for a moment, but it revealed the depths of ambition and cruelty within the man. I finally saw the monster in Marcus that I always knew was there.

  “You won?” Renee said.

  “The battle at least,” I continued. “Your father is right. There’s no way to kill Victor. I beat him and he damn well regenerated. He’s immortal.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” Marcus interjected.

  “We need to nullify the magic sustaining him.” I said before Marcus could continue.

  He nodded briskly.

  “Do you know how to do so?” I asked.

  “No, but the answer will lie within those books.” Marcus said, his eyes eager as his fingers ran across one of the book covers. “I hadn’t expected you to ever find them. I had wondered what had happened to them. I had assumed that Victor had had them destroyed.”

  “He wouldn’t have destroyed them,” Renee whispered, “they’re a part of the magic and he couldn’t knowingly destroy them. No matter how evil they are.”

  Renee and I exchanged glances. I knew that Renee disapproved of her father’s forays into Necromancy and it seems that by giving him these books I hadn’t helped matters. With Marcus so distracted by the books it would be a perfect time to attack, but I couldn’t do that yet. He still hadn’t told me where Allie was.

  “Okay,” I nodded, “I’ve done what you asked. You’ve now got your weapon against Victor. It’s time to give me what you promised.”

  Marcus didn’t respond. I could feel him trying to delay. He obviously didn’t want me going after Allie right now. His eyes flicked between me and Renee. Renee looked at her father in annoyance. It was obvious that she knew what he was thinking and that she disapproved. Maybe their relationship wasn’t as harmonious as I had thought?

  “Where is my cousin?” I prompted again. There was no way around this. Marcus was going to tell me and he was going to tell me now.

  Marcus sighed as he came to his decision. He obviously couldn’t see any way of out of this either. He was at least a man of his word.

  “She’s in the last place you would think to look. Somewhere you searched years ago.”

  I coughed impatiently as I waited for him to get to the point.

  “She’s in Melbourne.” He said eventually . “Melbourne is the site of the next Occursus.”

  I closed my eyes. It made a strange kind of sense – if I’d stopped to think about it. I’d been chasing her all over the world and she’d been put in the one place I’d ruled out. Besides it was likely that Victor would keep her close to her parents.

  “Why was Melbourne selected from the next Occursus?” Renee asked. “There’s almost nothing there for our kind.”

  “The Primea thinks that the rise of such powerful Mages from Australia
bears investigation. It is an area that we have long avoided. Devon’s rise and subsequent fall has led her to believe that we need to keep a closer eye on those who find their powers without our guidance.”

  I was only half listening to his explanation. I didn’t care. I just cared that Marcus and Renee were distracted in conversation with each other. It meant that they weren’t focusing on me. I was slowly and quietly building the Mana down towards my fist. One strike – that was all I needed. He didn’t have a shield up; he was defenceless.

  The effort of drawing more Mana was almost more than I could manage. Pain lanced through my temples and ran down my arms, but it would be enough. I shivered as the usual wave of euphoria overtook me and washed away the pain.

  I knew the pain would return once the Mana left me, but for now I was in a state of peace. A delicate balance between the pain of over-use and the ecstasy of its consumption. There would be payment required for this later. I was consumed by the Mana and sustained by it as it flowed down towards my wrists. The process was taking far too long, if I were refreshed this would have happened almost instantly, now it seemed to be taking eons to summon my powers. I glanced up, Renee and Marcus were still distracted. When I was ready I didn’t shout out, I didn’t even stand up. I made no effort to announce my actions.

  I simply raised my hand and sent the thread arcing towards my foe. Maybe it was my exhaustion, or the fact that I truly didn’t want to do this, but the movement of the thread seemed woefully slow as it lanced towards Marcus.

  The smug façade of condescension dropped from Marcus’s face as his death approached. As slow as the thread was, he wouldn’t be able to get a shield up fast enough.

  Time seemed to slow down. Marcus attempted to throw himself from the chair to get out of the way, his body literally glowing with power as he sought to raise his shield, but it was too late. He wouldn’t be able to get away in time. This was done, or at least I thought it was.

  The blow never landed. A second thread arced out and collided with mine out of nowhere. Time immediately sped back up again as my thread was brushed aside. The force of it caused both threads to slam into the table, smashing it into splinters.