by Justin Swapp
Marcus took his brimlet first. If this was his chance to end this once and for all, he wanted to take it. He wanted to get rid of Sol and to protect the others, and he knew only he could do it.
To the touch, the brimlet felt leathery and malleable, even though it appeared to be as hard as glass. It was almost as if his eyes were deceiving him, but he had become accustomed to that feeling by now. He slipped the cold material on his hand, and the crystal stiffened up immediately.
Then he felt the power surge.
Magic coursed through his veins, up his arm, and through his body. He felt alive, like a live wire let loose to whip around and electrify anyone within its reach.
Then Sol, still panting, put on his brimlet again, and suddenly Marcus’s arm became a little heavier as if a heavy chain was now connecting them together and weighting them down. The draw to reach out to Sol and grab him with the brimlet became stronger; frustrating him like a scratch in the middle of his back he couldn’t quite reach.
A fiery ring, its color crimson red like blood, slowly emerged from the ground around them. The air around them became electric—a little heavier, a little hotter—and Marcus could feel the ominous presence of their enclosure.
And they were alone.
“Why did you do this, Son?” Sol asked. “This was a horrible mistake. There is no way out of this now.”
“Don’t call me ‘Son,’” Marcus said. “You have no right.”
By a force unseen, Marcus’s brimlet jerked up, taking on a life of his own. It lurched and shot out at Sol, meeting his brimlet in the air with a loud crack.
Marcus was ready for this, as he had seen Caleb and Sol crash into each other, and he had determined that he wouldn’t make the same mistake. He leaned away as the brimlets clashed and connected. What he didn’t account for was that Sol would think of this too—that, and Sol’s strength.
All at once, the brimlet became hot, and Marcus felt as if his arm would burn off. Then, unexpectedly, Sol lifted him up, turned him over, and slammed him on the ground.
Marcus yelled as a sharp pain webbed across his back. He was just a boy. What had he been thinking, egging on a Dun-Bhar like that?
“Son, don’t make me do this,” Sol begged. “Once you give in, it’s difficult to go back.”
“The old way must be obeyed,” Marcus said sarcastically, annoyed that Sol still called him ‘son’, “and you must pay for your crimes.”
“The only crime,” Sol said as he pinned Marcus down a little harder, “is that you were stolen from us.”
“What do you call what you did to Uncle Caleb?” Marcus asked between short breaths. “You almost killed him, and left him a mere shadow of his former self.”
“My brother was involving himself in things he shouldn’t have been,” Sol said. “Sometimes you trip across something and it blows up in your face.”
“What could he have possibly stumbled on that would have caused you to do that to your own family?”
“You’ve felt it before, Marcus,” Sol said, easing the pressure on him ever-so- slightly, “the magic, haven’t you?”
He did know the temptation, the lust of the magic. This made Marcus think for a moment. If Sol had really only wanted Caleb’s magic he would have drained him dry and left him dead. “But you didn’t finish him off. Why?”
Sol looked disconcerted by this question, and Marcus felt him almost pull away. “What do you mean?”
“If you only wanted his magic, why didn’t you just take it? You obviously want him dead,” Marcus paused. “Or do you?”
Without warning, the look of fear that had briefly appeared on Sol’s face was replaced with anger. He lifted Marcus up slightly off the ground, and slammed him back down again. Magic darted out from Sol, through the brimlets and into Marcus. “That line of thinking will only put you in a place where your uncle was.”
Marcus groaned at the pain, and when Sol heard it, he hesitated a moment. He did care, if only a little, and Marcus would use that to his advantage.
“See, Grandpa was right. He did save us. You just wanted to kill us, so kill me if you want me dead so much.” Marcus knew he had pushed the right buttons by bringing his grandpa into it.
Tears welled up in Sol’s eyes, and his face grew red. “I don’t want to hurt you, can’t you see?” Sol said, shaking him. “That’s why I started all of this! They took you from us, and I had to find a way to—”
“Started all of what?” Marcus asked. “Tell me. I deserve to know the truth before I die.”
Sol stopped and took a deep breath, then slapped the ground next to Marcus’s face. The echo hurt his ears.
“Please understand, Marcus, that I can’t help having magic,” Sol said. “I was born with it; with its curse. I use it, and I have to have more. Its like I drink it, and I’m still thirsty. I want to be the only one to feel its power running through my body. I sense it in people, and all I want to do is take it.”
“Why didn’t you kill Caleb?” Marcus demanded.
“Because he would tell Elba,” Sol said in one gasp. “She governs our dead; speaks to them. Surely he would have told her. She always gets them to talk.”
“Tell her what?” Marcus asked, his mind racing to understand what was so important that he couldn’t risk her getting it from the dead. Then it hit him. “About the magic?”
For what seemed like a while, Sol said nothing, he just breathed heavily through gritted teeth. “I didn’t want to hurt other magic users, Marcus, especially my own children. So when my research lead me to a way to use a small portion of my own magic to create a synthetic magic of sorts, a magic I could give to non-magic users, I had to do it. Caleb discovered this, and threatened to expose me.”
“What’s the point in providing magic to non-magic users?” Marcus asked. “For money? Or just to have a long, influential I.O.U. list?”
Sol nodded, then swallowed hard. “Yes, all of that, I suppose, but you must understand, it was really to keep you safe, Marcus.”
“How does you distributing magic to non-magic users make me any safer? If it anything it makes it worse. I was at The Magic Box when they killed—”
“Because it grows in them, Marcus,” Sol said sheepishly. Sol waited for Marcus to light up with understanding, but that confused him even more.
“Think, Marcus,” Sol said. “I have a whole group of influential humans who would do whatever I ask because I have the magic.” He tried to hide a grin. “What they didn’t realize is that once they used that magic, they had magic too, swelling and growing up inside them, just like you and I did when we matured.”
At that moment it became clear to Marcus. His father would hurt, or even kill; of course he would, he was Dun-Bhar. He just wouldn’t harm his own children. “So you gave them this magic just so you could harvest magic; drain it from them later as it grew stronger in them?”
Sol hung his head, and for the first time, Marcus saw him as an old and tired man. “It was the only way to keep you safe and to feed my appetite for magic.”
“How do you create this magic?” Marcus asked.
“The phoenix, of course,” Sol said. “I really should have seen it earlier. It’s the only magical creature with the properties to regenerate magic. It’s just the ingredients are hard to come by.”
“Phoenix bone?” Marcus asked.
Sol nodded slowly. “Then you had to go and do this with the brimlets, Marcus. We could have started over together.”
Without warning, Marcus’s arm began to convulse. Burning pain ran up his shoulder, and then his neck. “I’m so sorry, Marcus,” Sol said, a tear running down his cheek into his mouth, which was full of gritted teeth. “I’ve fought all these years to prevent this very moment, and now you’ve forced my hand. I have to think of your sister now.”
Bearing down on Marcus, Sol yelled a horrible noise that none outside the blood circle could hear. He let free all the years of anger and frustration he had obviously been carrying around, and unleashed it on Marcus.
The pain was too much to bear, and Marcus felt that he would break at any moment. He trembled as he tried to focus his thoughts and his emotions on the piercing magic that Sol was boring up his arm and toward his vital organs.
He had to send magic back, like a game of tug of war. Marcus put all of his energy and thought into the magic, but it just didn’t seem to be enough. Then it occurred to him that he was missing one thing.
His emotions.
It had been his emotions that had always triggered his magical episodes. He reached deep, and thought of his father’s betrayal and what he had done to their family, to Caleb. The anger in him swelled. He thought of how disappointed Ellie would be if she learned the truth, how many years Anabell had sat at Caleb’s side in the hospital, Anabell being perfectly normal. That was love. He thought of the children at school who had made fun of Marcus and Ellie for having “old” parents, and not younger ones like the rest.
Screaming, Marcus jabbed his brimlet-bearing arm back at Sol with surprising force, drawing a look of shock from him. Sparks of blue tendrils tried to push back the red, vein-like tendrils of magic that assaulted Marcus, but it merely managed to slow them down.
Then something else happened; something that neither of them fully understood.
Marcus’s magic changed. The blue tendrils he had become familiar with were overcome by dark threads of shadow, and became sickly and black. Horrible black wisps moved along Sol’s arm and took on a lustrous, liquid shimmer, like an oil spill.
Marcus looked around to see the Kabbahl and his family pointing through the field above the blood circle, obviously noticing something different. He couldn’t hear them, but he recognized the expressions of alarm and dismay.
They had seen the shadow magic.
This time Sol howled in anguish, and Marucs thought that he might rip his arm off with the force with which he was trying to pull away. “What is that?” he spat as he swiped at the brimlet with his free hand. “What are you doing to me?”
In that moment, Marcus didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He had been pinned down, trapped by his oversized father. Now he felt power, raw and unwieldy, but pure and unmitigated, and he liked it.
“Son, please,” Sol said, his voice gurgling as if the oily shadow had now made it into his throat. “You’re killing me.”
Marcus wanted to be free of all of this, however he could achieve it. He didn’t sign up for this. He was tired of his parents, of this other world he knew nothing about that tried to kill him at every turn. But the magic…
“It’s too strong,” Marcus said as more and more of the shadow magic leapt from his brimlet to Sol’s.
“Make it stop,” Sol said, “please.”
What happened next, Marcus wasn’t sure if he saw or heard it first. Everyone outside the blood circle seemed to stop paying attention to them as they shot to their feet. The invisible, fiery field above the blood circle shattered in a puff of smoke and the brimlets disconnected, and fell to the ground. All around them, and all at once a ferocious, inhuman shriek enveloped them.
The far wall exploded in fire and smoke, launching debris and raining soot down on the entire place. The ground began to shake and Marcus wondered if there had been an earthquake. Then a familiar, throaty voice echoed in the hall.
“Who defies the old ways and makes a mockery of magic?” the voice said from behind the cloud of smog and pollution the explosion created.
“That voice isn’t speaking to us, is it?” Cyril asked, spitting dirt from his mouth. He stared at the Kabbahl, almost daring someone to justify this intrusion. Then he lifted his brim and yelled into the darkness. “I swear by all that is magical that you shall die a horrific death the instant I see you. Show yourself, and I might speed up the process!” The Kabbahl erupted with cheers and jeers.
“You dare swear by magic in my presence?” the voice said. “Magic is something you apparently know very little about. You freely violate its laws and selfishly mock its intentions. You have corrupted a whole generation, and now I have finally returned to correct your misdeeds.”
“What could possibly justify this level of audacity?” Nicodemous asked.
“Stop yapping,” Cyril said, “and do something about this nuisance for us.”
The flames came first. Random streams of fire leapt out from the shadows, followed by balls of flame.
“Whatever it is,” Cyril yelled, pointing his brim at the collapsed wall, “kill it quickly.”
Var jumped off the balcony before Nicodemous even flinched. Various members of the Kabbahl followed, making their way to the hole in the wall until the ground shook violently again.
Then Marcus saw a large, golden bird, which could have easily been mistaken for a dragon, fly into the room.
What Marcus saw next didn’t scare him, but shocked him even more than the beast’s entry. Everyone, including Cyril, fell to their knees, gasping and bowing down before the beast.
“Mighty Ovix,” Cyril said grandly. “Your Majesty. I… I had no idea it was you.”
“It’s been too long, great dragon,” Nicodemous said, oilier than normal. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“Silence your insincerities,” Ovix said in a low, throaty voice. ”I’m in no mood for your empty niceties. Where is the shadow magic? It must be properly destroyed before it brings down wrath and destruction on us all. I know it’s here. I can smell it from miles away.”
Sol coughed, and turned to Marcus, realization surfacing on his face, but he said nothing.
“Perhaps we could address this another time, Your Majesty?” Nicodemous asked. “You see, we were in the throes of a trial of sorts. It was great fun in the moment.”
“If it is judgment you seek, than you shall be judged,” Ovix said. “Nicodemous, your heart in particular is as black as the substance I seek.”
Cyril looked uncomfortable at this line of talk, and moved quickly to change the subject. “Surely there is no shadow magic here, Your Majesty,” Cyril said. “We would have—”
“Your ability to sense magic for what it is abandoned you years ago,” Ovix said.
“I must confess that this is—” Cyril started.
“Where is the man-child?” Ovix asked. “The one that freed me from the bonds of the shadow magic that held me captive all this time?”
There was no fear in Marcus even though the flaming dragon was easily the largest, most powerful thing he had ever imagined. He was bigger than he was before, and could probably incinerate him with a sideward glance. He felt connected to the dragon somehow, so he stepped forward without hesitation at Ovix’s request.
“Here I am.”
“Where is the shadow magic?” Ovix asked. “The magic you freed me from?”
“I didn’t mean to use it,” Marcus said sheepishly, “not exactly. When they put the brimlets on me, the shadow magic was there, mixed with my own.”
“Show me the magic,” Ovix commanded.
Marcus collected the brimlets from off the ground and held them up for Ovix to see. The dark, oily tendrils of the shadow magic still writhed on the surface of the brimlets and inched closer to Marcus once he touched them.
“The use of this kind of magic has been forbidden since magic began,” Ovix said. “It must be collected and destroyed.”
“Look,” Marcus said, “that’s totally fine with me. I wasn’t—”
Ovix raised a giant, flaming claw, causing Marcus to swallow his words, then the dragon plucked a scale from his body. He opened his mouth, lined with flaming fangs, and blew white fire onto the scale, melting it. He shaped the scale, which, once melted, looked like Uribrim, into a sphere. “I have fashioned a vessel for this magic, and must travel far to the shadow lands to see it properly destroyed.”
Extending the sphere he had
just created, Ovix’s eyes lit up a cold blue, and the shadow magic that once crawled on the brimlets shook free, evaporating into shadow again, and found its way to its vessel.
“Thank you, great Ovix,” Cryil said, placing a hand over his heart. “The slightest rumor of shadow magic in our midst would have caused the people to panic and revolt.”
“These people are no longer your concern,” Ovix said. “I have returned, and there is no longer a requirement for a Kabbahl.”
“But they need us,” Cyril said, “and they are used to our governance.”
“Not to mention we are also in the middle of a trial,” Nicodemous said. “Surely we can complete this one last duty before—”
“This is no trial,” Ovix said. “You have a semblance of the old ways, but you misunderstand, and the result is mockery for your own gain and pleasure. But this isn’t why I am here. I have come for the one who brought the shadow magic from the shadow lands and bound me all this time. He must stand trial and face the consequences of this dangerous betrayal.”
“What?” Cyril asked. “Someone here, with shadow magic?”
Nicodemous, silent, took a step back and fell into his chair.
“No,” Ovix said, breathing deeply through his nostrils, “the smell is gone. The shadow is contained in the vessel. But I will have the traitor.”
“How will you know who it is?” Cyril asked.
“The loyalty of shadow magic is earned by blood sacrifice,” Ovix said, “but it is fickle. At the time I wondered how the boy could recall and unbind the shadow magic from me. He so easily contained it. But not until now, until I saw him fight in the blood circle, did it become clear.”
“It could not have been Marcus,” Winston said. “He’s just a—”
“Judgment is mine, old man, and my judgment is true,” Ovix said. “It is one of his parents.”
“No,” Mirella said, covering her mouth.
“For this shadow magic to respond to the boy and to have leapt so easily to his father, it is clear that this shadow magic obeyed the bloodline.” Then, with one mighty sweep of his arm, the dragon scooped Sol up and raised him up to look him in the eye.
