by HDA Roberts
Chapter 33
And that was how I ended up standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
Nothing to break there, especially not in the part I was standing in. Aside from a single structure and its occupants, there wasn’t a living thing for hundreds of miles.
Now, anyone who knows the desert would tell you that while they are desolate, they aren’t completely uninhabited. There are insects and cacti, hardy plants and burrowing creatures that could survive and even thrive in that environment.
All perfectly true, but where I’d ended up was the exception. It was a place where nothing grew, nothing lived. Not even birds flew over that land. Water couldn’t settle, nutrients wouldn’t stay in what little solid ground could be found. It was as dead as dead could be.
Allow me to explain.
Before Magicians revealed themselves to the world and opened up our historical archives, most students of ancient history would have told you that complex human civilisation began around four thousand BC. That was when the evidence said people started gathering in larger settlements and cultivating the land.
Alas, that evidence was... incomplete.
Civilisation actually began about a thousand years earlier, along the bank of a river whose name has been long forgotten, mostly because the river itself doesn't exist anymore. This river ran from the mountains in what is now the Tassili N'Ajjer National Park in Algeria, east through what is now southern Libya and northern Sudan before joining the Nile near Agreen.
Back then, the whole area was lush and fertile, a beautiful expanse of forests, lakes and tributaries. It was the home of the first Magicians to walk the earth. They built the first city, in a valley near the most north-western point of modern Sudan, a great shining place of marble and white stone, with an immense white pyramid at its centre, where the rulers of that land lived. They spread west along that life giving river, bringing civilisation to the disparate tribes they found living there, little more than hunters and gatherers at the time, but soon uplifted to a world of prosperity and unity, where life wasn’t a daily struggle for even the simplest of things.
It wasn’t a quick process by any means, but over a few centuries, that ancient civilisation grew and advanced, until what Magical scholars call the First Empire reached the source of their river. There, they built a second pyramid, this one black, but just as heavily Enchanted as the first, this one to be the western marker for a society that straddled half a continent. Magic was everywhere, the strongest Magicians ruling somewhat benevolently over a population of millions, a true jewel of the ancient world.
About this time, the Archons of that era came onto the scene. Three of them were born into that grand old empire, Death, Space and Shadow. At first, that was the trigger for ever greater prosperity, advancement and joy as the three Mages pushed their borders further, embracing ever greater numbers of people, reaching for ever greater heights of knowledge and power.
But then, as you might have guessed, it all went wrong.
The Archons of Death and Life fell in love and had a son, an astonishingly powerful Magician in his own right. Unfortunately, he was also an ambitious one. I say ‘unfortunately’ because, as you can imagine, there is very little chance of inheriting a kingdom when your parents are immortal and are unlikely to die without a little help along the way.
You can probably guess what happened next.
It was an era of brand new ‘firsts’. Before, it had been the first city built, the first bridge, the first selectively-bred calf... now it was the first city conquered, the first population razed, the first massacre, the first mass-enslavement... it was a disaster. By the time the Archons were prepared to believe what their boy was up to, he'd conquered a third of their empire and put a fifth of their population to the sword or into shackles.
Eventually, even they had to realise that something needed to be done, and they fought back. Accounts are sketchy, but that was about when things started to get really ugly in the First Empire. The Son of Life and Death, as he was known by then (not the most inventive name, but there was no such thing as clichés back then), fought without restraint, which his parents and their brother Archon could not match. He was still family to them, they loved him; they wanted to help him, to bring him home...
That let the Son’s numerically and Magically inferior forces run rings around the Archons. The Son slaughtered thousands in the first example of unrestricted warfare, ruining hundreds of years of work in a handful of months.
Even so, even with all of his advantages, the Archons simply had the numbers on their side and managed to drive the Son back. It took months and cost many loyalist lives, but the budding conqueror was finally pushed away from the capital and the Empire’s half-wrecked heartlands, back into the frontiers.
Hundreds of thousands of people had died, civilian and warrior alike, to claim that small step on the road to victory, and in the end, it just made things worse.
Because it made the Son desperate, and that led to a brand new ‘first’.
The first Black Magician.
The Son counterattacked. The First Shadow died first, the original First Shadow. The Son killed him with a single Spell.
Some scholars would say that the Empire died with him, because it was at that point that the remaining Archons stopped trying to save their people and simply started trying to slay his. From what I understand, they went mad with grief and rage and started slaughtering everything in sight that might have even the slightest connection with the Son; their son.
Their armies burned and slaughtered everything they came across, killing their way from the outer edge of the heartlands to the boundaries of the Son’s capital. Nothing survived.
The little weasel knew he was losing, and he knew what was likely to happen to him when his parents finally caught up with him. He had nothing left to lose, and so, in an act of pure spite, he deployed a weapon.
Nobody knows the specifics of what it was or what it did. We know it took a while to work, but it wasn’t more than a month before it killed almost every human being east of the Black Magician's domain.
Man, woman, child, Magician or Pureborn, the weapon didn’t care, it killed everyone it touched, not even the Son, himself, could survive whatever this thing was.
Out of an entire civilisation, there was only a single survivor, the Archon of Death, holding the Archon of Life, the man she loved, as he died in her arms.
She... didn't take the loss very well.
In her rage, she cast what remains the most destructive Spell on record, consuming her own Life Force to do it. It killed her, but in death, her wrath swept the First Empire clean of the plague...
And everything else along with it. Right down to the bedrock, it was all scoured into dust and sand. Buildings, plants, animals, the bacteria in the soil and the very waters of the river, everything was destroyed.
When the last traces of the Spell dissipated, all that remained of the First Empire were two Pyramids, one white, one black, both empty of any trace of life.
It was a sad story. A tale of love and loss and the end of an era's hope.
But what does that have to do with me?
Well, the Black Pyramid was lost, buried by the force of that final Spell, forgotten and good riddance to it, but the White Pyramid... that was still there. It had been the home of the Archons of Death ever since, and even after all those centuries, it still hummed with the power of Death’s Last Spell.
That signature was in everything, for miles; the air, the soil, even what little water there was to be found. Nothing could grow, nothing could live, and anything with a brain could sense the energy of the place on an instinctual level and stayed well clear (though I have to say that the inside of the Pyramid was actually quite homey; no existential dread in there... well, most of the time. That really depended on Killian’s mood).
In practical terms, that meant I had access to several thousand square miles of completely lifeless land that I couldn’t possibly wreck
. There wasn't so much as a shrub for two hundred miles, except in the Pyramid, but I couldn’t even scratch that. It was the perfect place for a Magician to cut loose without fear of making a mess of anything important.
Oh, in case you were wondering, no, that wasn’t the only reason I told you that little story. I’m sorry to say that it turned out to have considerable relevance to the time I spent in that part of the world, as much as I would have preferred otherwise.
But, for the moment, the important thing is that I had a spot to practice...
Cassandra and I stood on a patch of sand, staring at the somewhat bleak, yet majestic, view while Kron, Hopkins and Killian were chatting by the entrance to Death's Pyramid. The monument was just as magnificent as it had been all those years ago, its protective Enchantments (only added to over the millennia) keeping it gleaming and immaculate. It was three hundred metres a side at the base, just over a hundred and fifty metres tall. It looked a little squatter than Egyptian pyramids, but was far nicer to look at. The sides were chequered, half white marble, half clear crystal, which let the light in, keeping the interior bright and cheerful (important when you bear in mind the purpose of the place, which was to be a house for Death to live in).
The majority of the building was underground, twice as much as above, built right into the rock. There was a complex system of halls, chambers and dungeons, and Killian used the latter for their intended purpose, too. About five years ago, some Sudanese rebels had ignored the subconscious warnings from their hind-brains and actually managed to stumble upon this place. They made the mistake of wounding one of Killian's servants. They're still down there somewhere, desperately regretting what they did.
"It's too hot," Cassandra complained.
"You're telling me? I'm melting!" I replied.
"Then do something about it! This is my only jacket!"
"Who brings a jacket to the desert?"
"Cooling Spell!"
"And risk causing a tornado?"
"Would it be cooler?" she asked with a scowl.
I frowned.
"Oh, fine," she said. She cast a little cooling Spell of her own that swirled the air around us a bit. I couldn’t say I really noticed a difference, but then it was over forty degrees Celsius out there. God, what a dreadful place to live...
"I hate you so much for dragging me to the desert."
"You insisted on coming! Demise offered," I pointed out, "and she used to live here, she likes the heat."
"Shut up."
I chuckled and did my best not to shift from foot to foot. I was eager to get started. It had been a packed couple of days since that mess with Myrddin, and I hadn't been allowed to use Magic at all. They'd even put all of Cassandra's manacles on me just to make sure I couldn't do anything by accident. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I’d barely noticed they were there.
My parents had gone back to Mexico, taking Des with them for a little working holiday to show him the sites (and the sights, see what I did, there?) and start the work of setting up a new dig. I sent two wardens and the Cat with them, just to be on the safe side (and make sure that Des wasn't slacking off with his self-study), but I wasn’t too worried.
My brother had been reticent to go at first, worried that he might miss trying out for a Duelling Team, but once I’d managed to pull a few strings with the Stonebridge Regional Team, he became a lot more willing to go as they didn’t try out until September. If he kept up his training with Cassandra, he might actually have a pretty good shot.
Worryingly, there had been no sign of Myrddin. Nobody had seen so much as a trace of him, and believe me, we were looking. I was really worried about that. Myrddin was not a man to underestimate. Even with all he’d lost, it would be a mistake to call him powerless. He was a centuries-old Magician, with more experience than anyone outside of my Circle, with more power than a strong Sorcerer (I hadn’t taken all of his Magic). With his connection to the Hyde and his various contacts, there was no way that he wasn’t licking his wounds somewhere, plotting something truly horrific for me and mine...
That made the idea of letting my family head to a different country a little nerve-wracking, but Cassandra assured me that they were as safe as could be managed, and the Cat would make sure they stayed that way.
Still...
"Can't you at least put some cover up?" Cassandra asked, interrupting my worried musings.
"Through all these manacles?" I asked dryly, jangling my arms for her.
She glared.
"Fine," I said.
I called my Shadows... and slightly misjudged the cast.
I’d intended to conjure what should have amounted to little more than an umbrella made of solidified darkness. What I got was almost an explosion of Shadow that tore up the landscape on its way into the sky, where it covered a square mile and plunged us into darkness.
Cassandra called a light and glared at me again. So did Killian, Kron and Hopkins. I pointed at Cassandra, which earned me a swat.
Kron came over to us and shook her head in exasperation.
"Sorry," I said.
"No, this is why we brought you here. You can take those ridiculous things off now," she said, pointing at the manacles.
I gratefully handed them to Cassandra, who tucked them into a backpack. That felt better. It wasn't stopping me, but it made me feel a little Magically backed-up.
"And Dispel that, will you?" Kron said, waving at the sky.
Cassandra sighed a little, but I did as I was told and carefully released my hold on the Shadows. It took work to send them away; Magic was coming out of me so easily, that it was almost more work to keep it in than use it. Finally, the world returned to its normal state, and I had to flinch away from the sun again.
"Alright then, if you look that way," Kron said, pointing to the west, "there is a nice open spot of desert. You'll head there for your practice. Try to point any experiments to the west or the north."
She handed me a compass, which was thoughtful.
"Now, it is nasty out here, so remember to keep hydrated, and that there is practically no water in the atmosphere for you to draw out of it, though you may find a way around that, if you're clever."
She handed me a satchel, which bulged with water bottles.
"The goal of today is to let yourself loosen up a little. You're all pent up, and that's no good. Relax, enjoy it, find your limits, experiment. You can't break anything around here, and we'll all be indoors where even you can't do us a mischief. I'll be in touch Telepathically if I see you doing something really stupid, but the idea here is to be silly, to be frivolous, to find your new equilibrium, understand?"
I nodded.
"Okay then; that-a-way," she said, pointing. “Far that-a-way.”
"See you later," I said, more than ready to get started. I turned in the indicated direction.
Cassandra made to follow me, but Kron touched her arm.
"You're with me, Captain," Kron said firmly. "He can't be free to practice if he's worried about scorching you."
"But..."
"We'll be watching, don't worry."
Cassandra made an unhappy sound, but did as she was told and followed Kron back to the pyramid. Hopkins and Killian waved and then went inside as well. A huge slab of white stone slid down to seal the entrance. I tried not to take that personally.
I decided that walking far enough away for safety would take too long and called some Shadows (even being careful, I still conjured more than I needed). Before long, I was flying in the direction Kron pointed. I put a solid bit of distance between me and the pyramid before looking for a nice sand dune to perch on. I found one a little deeper into the desert and drifted down for a gentle landing.
Now that I was free to use Magic, I didn't really know where to start, to be honest. I had seven new Affinities to explore, including one I had not the slightest amount of experience with; Spirit. That, alone, was a whole complicated kettle of fish, including its own sub-dimension. From wha
t (very) little I understood, it was much like the Shadow Realm, full of strange and wonderful things that I wasn't going to fiddle with just yet. Mostly because that was also where things like Poltergeists came from, and I had enough problems at the moment.
With no brains around to play in, and no living things in the vicinity, I decided to focus on the four physical elements. I sat on the top of my dune and slowly started to let my mind drift. I didn’t rush, taking my time to really get a grasp of my new abilities.
Earth, Air, Water, Fire. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Alas, it’s anything but. When these categories were invented, they didn't have things like physics and chemistry, not as we understand them today. Nowadays, it was better to describe the four basic elements as Solid, Gas, Liquid and Energy, and even that wasn't especially helpful, because many Magicians would find that their Affinities would have overlap in a variety of places.
Take something as relatively simple as a Water Affinity. A strong Water Magician would be able to influence water, naturally, but also things like solutions in water, metals that had melted into a liquid state, steam, which is water that has evaporated, which makes it a gas; ice, which is a solid, but also water... you see what I mean? All sorts of overlap, and rarely were two Mages precisely the same with what they could do without actual Spellwork.
And that only got more complicated when you took into account the fact that I had all the Affinities, and thus none of the restrictions that might allow me to define and categorise what I could do.
So I decided to start with the basics. I expanded my senses, letting them seep into the world around me. I have to say that it took me a while to really get used to that. When I let my mind drift out from me and become one with my Affinities, it was almost overwhelming, the sheer awesome complexity of creation seemed to press down on my mind, and this was just the bit without minds, bodies and Spirits to worry about.
Eventually, things started to resolve. I started to really feel the sand under me, the heat in the air, then the air itself twisting around me, connected to the great swirling currents high above, then there was the water deep below my feet, cool and steady...
