Primal's Wrath: Book VI of 'The Magician's Brother' Series

by HDA Roberts

"This is a second chance for both of you. Not many people get those."

  "Is his mind... safe? Can it break again?"

  "No, it's solid. Don't go poking around in there, though. I recently learned a modern expression: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Otherwise, he’ll be fine."

  "Again, thank you."

  He bowed and then waved as he stepped through a Portal.

  I quickly texted an update to Hopkins, who would pass it on to everyone else and stop any apocalyptic balls that may have started rolling. Then I all but ran back to my brother... who I found talking to Tethys.

  Oh dear.

  "Well hello, Miss Smyth, I'm Desmond, how are you today?" he said in a voice he thought was smooth, but which actually came across as a little creepy.

  Tethys laughed, "Oh, fine thank you, Desmond; you remember me, then?"

  "Most memorable lectures ever," he said with a smile.

  She nearly had him lynched; I try not to hold it against her.

  Tethys smiled at me as I came in. I joined her on the sofa opposite Des.

  "So, you must have questions," I said.

  "One or two," he said, looking back and forth between Tethys and me.

  "Go ahead," I replied.

  That took a while. I had to tell him my life story more or less from scratch and fill in a few holes in his own while I was at it.

  There were some things that I didn’t tell him. I left out the Lifelink stuff, for example, and any time I’d helped to prod his life along. I didn’t want him feeling guilty and I didn’t want this new phase of our lives to begin with him feeling like he owed me.

  At first, he was angry with me for lying, but it was a quick, flashing anger that came from a brother's bond, not the deep ugly thing that came from madness. I couldn't say that things would ever be as they once were, there was too much water under the bridge for that (even if he couldn't remember it), but I could feel us start towards a new place, and maybe a better one. A place built from honesty and equality, rather than lies.

  I told him how I’d discovered my own Magic, and how I’d hidden it away in fear of being made to use it. I told him how I’d kept it hidden when he developed his, not wanting to steal his thunder. I covered our school days, meeting Tethys, and the Shaadre that had tried to kill him, but I had a bit of trouble continuing when we approached the gap in his memory.

  "And then?" he prodded, picking up the last of the ham sandwiches from the snack tray (we'd been in there a while by this point and he'd gotten hungry). "Don't stop now; we're getting to the good part!"

  I smiled, but I'd run into a bit of a wall. How do you tell the brother that loves you that he went insane and tried to kill you and your whole shared family? How could I explain in a way that wouldn't drive him into a spiral of guilt and shame?

  Thankfully, Tethys was able to pick up the slack.

  “You and Matty shared an incredible bond, Desmond, one that really only exists between twins who are also Magicians. In cases like yours, the Affinities are always opposites; one brother’s will be for Water, the other’s for Fire, one Earth, one Air, that sort of thing. In your case, you are a Light Mage, and Matty is a Shadowborn."

  “Okay, with you so far.”

  Tethys smiled and Des blushed.

  “The details are quite technical, and I don’t really understand them myself, but the best way to describe it is to say that your Magic and Matty’s weren’t compatible with one another. And because you are twins, with that bond I mentioned, they were always brushing up against each other just a little bit. That caused what you might call a resonance to build up in your Well and mind, until it started to cause damage.”

  He frowned.

  “The effect was small at first, but it was cumulative, and eventually you reached a tipping point and... you lost yourself.”

  “Myrddin told me a little bit about that. But he didn’t mention... did I... did I hurt anyone?”

  “You frightened the family a little, but nobody blames you. You weren’t yourself,” I said.

  I decided that he didn’t really need to know about what he’d done to me... or those doctors and nurses he’d tried to eat.

  “You’re certain?”

  “Quite.”

  He blew out a relieved breath, and a certain lightness returned to his posture.

  “Good. Glad to hear that, at least! What happened next?”

  Damn, that was easy! I’d expected guilt, shame, self-recrimination... but then that had never really been Des’ way of dealing with things. If it had been me, I wouldn’t have been satisfied until I had my memories back, bad or not; damaging or not.

  “You took that remarkably well, Des,” Tethys said, her eyebrow quirking upwards.

  “Well, what else can I do? Matty says I didn’t hurt anyone, and even if I did, you’ve said that it wasn’t me. I can’t remember any of it, so why wring my hands over it?”

  Tethys blinked before turning to me with a smirk.

  “Don’t start...” I said.

  She giggled, “I just thought it was interesting that someone with the same exact genes as you was able to take a problem in his stride without turning into a guilty flesh-puddle.”

  I gave her a glare, which earned me a kiss on the cheek. Des' eyebrows shot into his hairline in surprise. His smile became knowing and sleazy.

  I moved on. Swiftly.

  I started telling Des about how I’d discovered I was an Archon, but was interrupted by Burglar coming in, moving very cautiously. That was only fair; the last time Burglar had seen Des, my brother had tried to eat him, too.

  "Hey boy!" Des said, offering his hand to the dog. Burglar came forward and sniffed tentatively before darting away to cower behind the sofa.

  "Did I do something to him?" Des asked.

  "He'll get over it," I said. I heard a doggy harrumph from behind my seat, which I hoped wasn't an indication that my dog was becoming capable of both understanding human speech and expressing doubt (because life was already complicated enough).

  I went back to my story. First I had to explain what an Archon was (he didn’t seem to have paid any attention to those lectures Tethys and Hopkins had put on back at Windward Academy), then I described what that meant in terms of my day to day life. He might have been a little jealous when I started, but he definitely wasn’t when I was done. Just that bit about the Black Revenants had been enough to put him off, but after I told him what had happened in Gardenia, he wasn’t even slightly envious anymore.

  I told him a little more of the bad stuff than I’d intended to, but I didn’t want him to feel jealous of me in any way. I didn’t want our new start to be weighed down by something like that.

  Finally, I covered my first year at Stonebridge University, Crystal, and how that ended up with Myrddin rescuing him from Magic Arkham Asylum.

  When I finished, Des leaned back. "Damn, Matty, you have been busy!" he said.

  "Too busy sometimes," I replied.

  "You didn’t mention Mother and Father much, are they okay?"

  I nodded, "We had a bit of a rough patch, but we’re fine now. Would you like to see them?"

  "Yeah," he said softly, his expression becoming a little wistful. “I think I would.”

  I smiled. "That can be arranged."

  I thought about calling them, but I felt that they would enjoy the surprise and started making arrangements to get us to them.

  They were in Mexico City.

  Ever since one of their graduate students had knocked down a ziggurat, my parents had been fighting tooth and nail to get the Mexican authorities to let them back onto their research site, though without much success. I'd offered to tweak the Minister of the Interior's thinking a little, but had been categorically told not to (they thought I’d meant Telepathy and never gave me the chance to explain that I meant bribery).

  As a result, they were working out of one of the local universities while they pled their case. Professionally, they were treading water; but at least they were ke
eping busy, categorising this and analysing that; writing the odd paper. My father was happy enough poking through the bowels of his host institution, but my mother was not a happy woman. She was actually developing a bit of a croak from shouting at Mexican officials five days a week.

  Getting to them was a little tricky, as I didn’t have a Portal anchor in the area, and I still had the occasional problem guiding Portals over long distances. I was getting better, though. I was even starting to imagine myself as competent, certainly for a trip to a relatively familiar place.

  I’ll admit that my confidence took a bit of a hit after Des, Cassandra and I emerged from my Portal and sank up to our knees in a swamp.

  I don't know if you've been to Mexico City, but it was not well known for its swamps.

  Cassandra turned towards me and stared for a long moment.

  "Matty?" she said evenly.

  "Yeah Cassie?" I said, going red in the face.

  "Admittedly, I’m no expert, but aren't there generally more buildings in a city?"

  "Generally, yes."

  "And, correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't we expect less in the way of mud on the grounds of an internationally recognised university?"

  "That would be traditional, yes," I said, going even redder.

  "Matty?"

  "Yeah Cassie?"

  "Are we even in Mexico?"

  "Umm..."

  "Because that looks a lot like the Mississippi River over there."

  Des started laughing.

  "And, once again, I'm no expert, but that shack over there is sporting the U.S. flag. Mexican shacks don't generally do that."

  "Maybe it's a Mexican shack with an American owner?" I suggested, discreetly pulling my phone so I could check the GPS... and yes, we were in Louisiana.

  She gave me another long look while Des tried to avoid laughing himself into the mud.

  "Alright, fine, we're a little off course, but I would point out that the Mississippi feeds into the Gulf of Mexico."

  "Mathew, we're three thousand miles away from where we're supposed to be!"

  "That was deliberate."

  "Really, Matty? Was it really deliberate?" she asked dangerously, squelching her five hundred pound leather boots in the two feet-deep muck.

  "Is there a good answer to that question?" I asked, resigned to what was likely to be a long scolding, followed by an even longer period of never hearing the end of this...

  "I would doubt it, now would you kindly get us to where we're going before I throttle you?!"

  After that very small detour that we will never mention again, I managed to get us to the right part of Mexico City.

  Alright, fine, I got lost two more times, are you happy?

  I don't travel well, alright?

  "I am never travelling with you again," Cassandra complained as she squelched her way into the Histories Wing of Mexico City Polytechnic (one of those slight mistakes may have involved pouring a solid chunk of a small lake on us; I don't want to talk about it).

  "I offered to clean you up."

  Magic meant that I was dry as a bone and as clean as when we'd left and so was Des. Cassandra was just being dramatic and doing her best to make me feel guilty (which was working, unfortunately. Nobody could do the guilts like Cassandra... except maybe Kandi, but that generally had a naughtier undertone to it and was much more fun).

  "As if I'd trust you with that! With your performance today, you'd set out to dry me off and turn me into a frog or something!"

  "That hardly ever happens!"

  "And another thi- wait, what do you mean 'hardly ever' happens?!"

  "Nothing," I said, quickening my pace, doing my best not to let her see my smile. I heard her splutter for a moment. It wasn't often I got one over on her like that; I treasured it.

  Des followed us into the building, just shaking his head, "Matty, is it just me or have you gotten weirder?"

  "It's not you," Cassandra replied, pulling her boots off to empty out the swamp water into a nearby fern, leaving a small puddle on the marble floor that I discreetly cleaned up.

  Otherwise, I ignored her and opened up my Magical senses, looking for Grommit, the Warp Cat who guarded my parents. I found him two floors up and I felt his own equivalent of mystical senses reach out to prod at mine. I felt his recognition and a sense of welcome. I sent an image of Des to him, so he wouldn't be startled. The way Grommit’s fight-or-flight response worked didn’t allow much room for unpleasant surprises. If I’d just showed up with Des there was a fair to middling chance of the Cat either biting off bits of him or dropping him into a volcano.

  Like Burglar, Grommit's experiences with Des hadn't been pleasant. In fact, it was the Cat who had saved the family from Des the first time he'd gone really mad.

  Grommit disapproved of having Des near his charges, so I sent him feelings of safety and calm. He expressed his doubt, but I felt that he was willing to allow our approach. He was also very clear about the fact that if he recognised a threat from my brother, then there would be a claw-related response that Desmond would not enjoy. I sent back my gratitude and my absolute approval, which surprised him, but also made him happy that I trusted him. I could practically feel him purr through the link.

  It was only at that moment that I realised just how effectively I was communicating with a non-human, though sentient, creature without words or even a telepathic link. We’d exchanged complex ideas without any trouble or misunderstanding, just through emotions and images.

  It was interesting just how natural it felt, like I'd always been doing it. I’d just... known how to make Grommit understand me. That spoke of Fairy Magic to me, which was not something that could really be quantified or understood by a Human, much less one as entrenched in his way of thinking as I. Perhaps I should have been worried, but I just couldn’t muster that up. The whole thing just felt too... right for that.

  I withdrew my senses and followed the signs, which I couldn't actually read, what with them being in Spanish, but the sign for a lift was pretty universal.

  We found my parents in a climate controlled storage room, kept cool and dry by an impressive bank of air conditioners. It was about fifty metres long, by twenty wide with display cases of wood and glass lining every scrap of wall space, those filled almost to bursting with artefacts of stone, wood and precious minerals, each one labelled carefully. The inner spaces of the room were filled with long benches on which there were even more bits and pieces.

  The Cat relaxed in a basket at the far end of the room, resting on pillows of silk and goose feather. His only visible response to our presence was to half-open one of his eyes, but the alertness was there if you knew what to look for.

  At the benches, my parents were hard at work.

  My mother, Miriam Graves, had lost a bit of weight since I'd last seen her. She didn't really enjoy the heat; it tended to cause her to lose her appetite (which made her choice of research subject a little perplexing to me, but there was no accounting for taste). Her dark hair was pulled into a practical bun, and she wore a loose shirt and jeans. She was busy peering through a microscope at what looked like a rather unremarkable chunk of rock, but what did I know?

  My father, Thomas, was sifting through a pile of documents and looked bored half to tears, just going by the way his head darted up as we entered, as if desperate for any distraction. His eyes went wide with fear at the sight of Des, and he looked to me. I nodded once, firmly, smiling reassuringly. He grinned broadly and touched Mother's arm.

  "What?" she said a little brusquely, looking up.

  Father was already moving towards us while Mother went through much the same transition as he had, her eyes full of fear before looking to me for reassurance. Once she had it, she all but bull-rushed Desmond, yanking him into a crushing hug that forced all the air from him.

  "Oh, Desmond, you're home, you're home!" she said, before bursting into tears.

  Des looked uncomfortable, and patted her on the back gently as he retur
ned the hug. Father, slightly slower than Mother, finally barrelled into the embrace, gathering them both into his arms, his own eyes wet with tears.

  I smiled. My family was complete again.

  Chapter 15

  Naturally, and this was one of the reasons why I eventually obliterated them as a political entity, the Vampires ruined it.

  A reunion eighteen months in the making, something that had required little less than a minor miracle, the culmination of three people's desperate hopes... and they ruined it.

  With a rocket-propelled grenade, of all things!

  Apart from anything else, that’s just tacky.

  After a good twenty minutes of crying and hugging (that I had been thoroughly left out of, by the way), my father turned to me and asked me what had happened. I explained while my mother conducted the standard maternal-inspection of Des. It wasn’t long before comments were being made about hair length, nutritional deficiency and clothing style (he was still wearing the t-shirt and jeans that Myrddin had given him to replace his prison jumpsuit).

  Once I was done sketching out the bare bones, my parents insisted on taking us out to eat so that we could talk in more pleasant and relaxed surroundings.

  It was just after ten in the morning there, and I felt my innards recoil from the very idea of a Mexican breakfast. At the best of times, I did not like bright colours in my food; that meant spices and other strange things that my rather delicate system (don't tell anyone I admitted to that) wasn't really built for, especially not when said system was under the impression that it was just about time for my afternoon hot chocolate and cupcakes.

  But it would make them all happy, so I went along with it. Cassandra followed, openly smirking at my obvious (to her) discomfort.

  We went back out the way I’d come in, emerging into a broad, bright square just beyond the hall we’d Portalled into. The walls of the buildings bordering it were painted with cheerful murals, the floors above held up by equally festive pillars. There was an impressive shrubbery in the centre, full of local plants, cacti and hardy ferns. There wasn't any grass, just patio stones in irregular shapes which somehow fit together perfectly. It was quite a pretty space, I could picture students sitting under the galleries, studying and chatting.