by Lee Isserow
“No!” it shouted, light receding from Shana as it turned the Rune towards him.
“Oiad d Mad Oali ol Page,” Jules said, fingers whipping through the air as he cast, repeating the Enochian again and again. “Oiad d Mad Oali ol Page.”
The light burst from the rock. Jules saw it coming for him, but continued casting, saying the phrase again, “Oiad d Mad Oali ol Page.” He would not let the creature hurt these people, could not abide anyone else getting hurt by this damn thing. “Oiad d Mad Oali ol Page,” he said again, as the light struck him.
But it only struck him for a moment, and then it was gone. The djinn was gone. The Karmec Rune falling to the floor, clattering against the marble.
Jules allowed himself to do the same, catching his breath, wiping the sweat from his brow. Other than his frantic inhalations, the room was silent. The crisis was over.
'Can you hear us?' whispered a voice, three voices, in his head.
“Yeah.” Jules said, between gasps for air.
'Is the djinn dealt with?'
Jules nodded, then realised that the barrier was only just coming down, and they might not have been able to see the nod. “Yeah,” he said, forcing himself to his feet, stumbling over to where the throne had been to confirm it. He picked up the teapot that lay in its place. “Oil lamps aren't exactly in fashion these days... but this'll do, right?”
There was a chuckle in his periphery. 'That'll do perfectly.' Talika said. 'Good job.'
Light peeled into his vision. Jules turned, just in time to see the Karmec Rune vanish into the glimmers of a teleportation.
“Not that good a job...” he said. “Did you see that?”
Tali only caught a glimmer. But Jules knew all too well what it meant. The djinn wasn't the end of this. There was someone else out there pulling its strings. And he wanted no part of having to track whoever the hell that was down.
27
Sapped
Even though an immediate evac was an option, Jules insisted on delaying. His first priority was making sure his teammates were okay, using the same healing glyphs he had seen them implement to bring them back to adequate health. Faith was all but about to order a teleport when Jules put his foot down. They weren't the only ones that had been hurt by the djinn, and he wasn't going to let the Circle just leave the villagers in various states of injury as collateral damage. Between the ten of them, they made sure the villagers were healed and settled back in their homes. There was unrest amongst the rest of the team, they were not in the business of playing red cross, but Jules reminded them that he had single-handedly saved their lives, and that shut them up pretty quickly. He couldn't help but notice how much concentration the others had to use to heal the villagers. The first team more than his team, but all of them seemed to be exerting themselves to encourage skin, let alone eyelids to regrow. He reminded himself of what Shana said, that the Karmec Rune siphoned magick. All the magickians present were born with magick flowing through their veins. Depending on how much had been sapped from them, they might only have the power of the mundanes at their disposal, hence the effort involved to cast simple healing sigils.
His grandmother had often told him that their innate power was technically accessible to all. Given that life on earth evolved from the outer realms, all humans had it in their blood to some degree. However, the magick had been watered down by breeding, just that little bit less potent with each generation. Even though he didn't particularly know his teammates, let alone like them all that much, he worried for them. If they were having trouble with even the most basic of castings, how would they cope if put back in the field straight after this. Maybe, he reasoned, they would recover, regain their strength. But in all honesty, he didn't think that was likely. They might well be essentially mundane for the rest of their lives.
When the villagers were returned to their homes, Faith called for a door, and they returned to the Epicentre for a quick change and shower before the debrief. Jules had the djinn-containing teapot ripped from his hands by an overenthusiastic operative who had been assigned with returning it to the lock-up, where he guaranteed it would be guarded twenty-four seven, on top of being held in place by all manner of bindings. Jules was not entirely convinced, given that somehow the oil lamp made it out of the Epicentre without setting off all manner of alarms.
“We didn't find any sign of the Karmec Rune! Isn't that something we should worry about?” Shana said nervously, as soon as Faith had finished his description of events.
“How can you be certain it was the Karmec?” Comstock asked. “There are all manner of artefacts that could do as you described.”
“It was the Karmec,” she insisted, emphatically. “I've spent my entire life studying these things, I know what I saw!” her vigour was sapped instantly, when she realised her voice was raised. Shana sunk down in her chair sheepishly as Comstock's stare burned into her.
“We shall have a team return to the villa for a thorough check.”
“You won't find it.” Jules said. “Someone teleported it out.”
“I find that very unlikely, Mister Nichols.”
“It's true,” Talika said. “I saw it, well, kinda... And Three said they felt it, soon as the barrier was down something was teleported out.”
“You must be mistaken, Miss Rei. You know full well there are very few magickians who can teleport on a whim, especially without a direct line of sight...” he opened his mouth, as if to continue dressing her down, but no words came out, a realisation coming over his eyes. “But the Rune was taken the same time as the djinn's lamp...”
“... When Shay absconded?” Faith continued.
Comstock's glare found a new home at the mention of Shaman Kahgo, burying itself deep into Faith's skull.
“That's not right,” Jules said, feeling Comstock's stare switch to him. “The Shaman Kahgo from the stories I heard would never do anything like this.”
“Those 'stories' you speak of are exactly that, Mister Nichols, their connection to reality is tangential at best...”
There was a knock at the door. Comstock waved his hand and it swung open, a medic standing through the threshold.
“Mister Comstock, may we borrow you a moment?”
“Not now!” Comstock barked.
“It is rather important.”
“What the bloody hell is it?”
“The... the initial team, well, they are...”
“Spit it out, man!”
“It seems that the magick has indeed been sapped from them...” His eyes darted around the room, to Raven Shaffec-Argo, Dana Singh, Gali Daliyah and Talyn Kartovski. He was hesitant to speak of them whilst they were in the room. “Essentially, what it boils down to... is that after their experience with the Rune, they're... they're little more than mundanes...”
“I see,” Comstock said, coldly. His eyes glided over each of them in turn. “Very well. You know what needs to be done.”
The medic swallowed hard and stepped back, signalling to others outside the room. Four security operatives walked in past him, grabbing hold of the sapped agents.
“Get your hands off me!” Raven shouted, batting the hands off her. “I may be 'sapped', but I'll still kick your arse!”
“Miss Shaffec-Argo, please have some dignity.”
“Dignity? You call this dignity? Getting manhandled, dragged across the damn Epicentre in front of everyone? For what, a mind-wipe and being thrown back on the streets!?”
“You know the protocol. You'll be placed in an occupation that suits you, and handsomely rewarded for your service.”
“Damn the protocol. All you need to do is find the damn Rune and we can get our magicks back. No need to go all draconian, this is a temporary malady at the worst.”
“Assuming we find the Rune... Get them out of my sight.”
The security team did as instructed, dragging the operatives towards the door. As they tried to walk through it, a thick barrier of darkest black climbed up from the floor, sealin
g it as an exit.
“It's not going to be that hard,” Jules said, standing to defend the four magickians. “Whoever has it unleashed the djinn, right? But that was only a distraction so he could make you guys turn up and sap you. He might have the rock, might have whatever power he took from you, but it's not going to be enough... its never going to be enough. It might do for a day, or a week, but he's going to want more, the lust for power isn't a one-and-done deal.”
“Power corrupts...” Shana said, under her breath. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
“Exactly. Just keep these guys on the bench for the next round, soon as your guy shows up again, you know he's got the Rune, you'll be ready for him. No need to throw them out just because of a minor setback.”
“Mister Nichols, I appreciate the vigour at which you defend these operatives, but they are no longer able to carry out their responsibilities. If your team had been subjected to the Rune for much longer, they would be in the identical situation. Now be so kind as to withdraw your shadows from the door.”
“There is a literal cure to their condition. I'm not going to let you do this to them, they're people dammit, they're your employees, they might even be your damn friends.”
Raven coughed and shook her head, indicating that they were by no means friends.
“Well at the very least, they've done whatever it took to do their job, and sacrificed themselves in the process. They deserve some damn dignity.”
“There's no time to argue about this...” Tali said.
“Really? Your on his side now?”
“No, but...” she waved a hand, taking light from the bulb in the ceiling and conjuring a feed picked up from a television station, displaying it in the air in front of them.
The entire village of Cortenova was assembled in front of a news reporter, speaking fervently into a microphone in their native tongue.
“What is this?” Jules asked.
“CNN Italy, they picked up the story and sent a team down to the village.”
“What are they saying?”
Comstock raised a hand and drew a figure out in the air, whispering under his breath. The audio filled the room, an ethereal voice speaking out over the top, translating it.
“For days, we had nothing to eat but our own flesh,” the villager raised his hand, three of his fingers raw to the bone.
“I thought we healed them all?” Faith said.
Raven looked to the floor guiltily. She hadn't wished to let the others know just how weak she was.
“They were British, the ones who attacked us, military, I am sure of it.”
“Wiping mundane minds is protocol! Why were they allowed to remember what happened?”
“We were... preoccupied...” Faith said, glaring at Jules. “It was our initial plan, before healing them took priority.”
“And you apparently failed at that spectacularly...” Comstock grumbled. He waved the dancing lights of the television broadcast away, and rose from his chair. “Talika, send the call out. It is time to convene the Circle.”
28
The Circle
Jules had a thousand questions, but it seemed that none of them were going to be answered until the Circle had met and done whatever it was intending to do. He stood to the side of the room, waiting impatiently whilst magickians flocked this way and that, communicating with their brothers and sisters across the world. He knew it had to be a ritual of some kind, a massive ritual that required many to perform. But until it began, it seemed there was no time to fill him in on the minutia.
One by one, the operatives walked through the doors that surrounded the Epicentre, their destination beyond the threshold looking dark and dank, stone lined walls with candlelight somewhere beyond.
“You coming?” Talika asked, as she rose from her desk.
“Where?”
“Oh, uh, well... what's the best way to put this...” she asked, rhetorically. “Hundreds of miles under the earth?”
“Excuse me?”
“You'll see...” she said, grabbing Jules's arm and dragging him through a door.
The stone hallway on the other side was not unlike that which had led to Three. Jules wondered if it was part of the same location, but as they walked for what seemed like a mile, he realised that it was not. The archaic stone corridor was warm, not from the candle light, but from the depth. Talika hadn't been exaggerating when she said they were travelling hundreds of miles under the earth. As they came to the end of the hall, the space opened out into an epic cavern that was lit solely by candles that had been dotted across the ground and buried in the dirt of the walls. There was no brick here, whoever had constructed this place had dug it out of the very ground from the inside. Jules could see no support structure of any kind. The wall opposite them might have been metres or miles away, the light from the candles being too frail to reach them. The same with the ceiling, which was nothing but a dark void. Hundreds of magickians sat on the dry mud in a row a few metres apart, each separated by a candle. They went on as far as Jules could see to the left and right, turning into mere dots in the distance. Talika beckoned him to follow her and pointed to an empty space for him to sit cross-legged next to her.
“What is this?” he whispered. The words caused murmurs to rumble from every other magickian around.
Talika raised a finger and muted his vocal chords, sending the words directly to her head, and doing the same back to him.
'This is the Circle.'
'I don't understand, I thought the Circle was the... agency or whatever?'
'It is, technically... but when there's an event such as this, when the wider world discovers that magick exists, we convene to, uh, make them forget...'
'You wipe their minds? Everyone in the world?'
'It's more complicated than that.'
'And this tunnel or whatever goes, what, round the entire world?'
'The circumference,' she confirmed. 'It makes a circle around the globe, hence, y'know, the Circle...'
Jules wasn't satisfied with any of the answers she had given him, but he didn't have a chance to question anything she had said, as a mighty hum filled the cavern.
He found himself compelled to join in, his mouth making the noise of its own volition, arms raising without his permission, fingers dancing in the air, words forming from his lips that were uttered by every other person in the endless void that encircled the planet.
There was no way to tell where the words came from, which of the myriad magickians present was pulling the strings of all these men and women. Each acted as one, casting the same ritual, their combined magicks reshaping the world. He could feel what was being accomplished. First they were healing the villagers fully, giving them no injuries to question what might have occurred whilst they were mesmerised. Then the intent was to wipe the minds of the villagers so that they would not speak to the media ever again. Then the memory wipe went further, to the reporters and news crews, then out to everyone who had seen the broadcast. The wipe was clean and precise, images and words appearing ahead of each of them in mind's eye before being removed from existence. The final step was deleting the footage itself, willing the computers and cameras to forget that they ever held the sound and picture of things the mundanes should not know.
It was a group effort, Jules realised. He could feel that was how this worked, a suggestion psychically raised by one or many in the group, that was reciprocated by others, before becoming a part of the ritual's intent. He knew what needed to be done, and thought long and hard about returning magick to the blood of those that had been sapped by the Karmec Rune. He could feel Talika seconding the motion, Isaiah Faith as the third, Sabre and Leopold and Jacobian adding to the request – after all, they too had been weakened by the stone. But the majority did not wish to carry out this request. Jules could hear their fears, understood them as if they were his own. To balance the magickal scales like that would mean a sacrifice, a small one, but none of the magickians in the Circle ritu
al wished to give up an iota of their own power so that they could return the four magickians to their former strength. Jules was disheartened, that the thousands upon thousands of natural magickians could be so heartless, so selfish, but he also knew that he shouldn't have expected anything less from them. As much as those with magick in the blood thought of themselves as special, or better than mundanes, when it came down to it, they were humans. And humans, he reminded himself, deep down were almost always looking after themselves rather than their fellow man, let alone their planet.
When the ritual was over, the magickians started filing out through various hallways off the cavern to return to their lives. Talika took him back down the passageway that led to the door.
“It was good of you to try,” she said. “I'm sorry the others didn't help.”
“Can't say I'm surprised...” he said, with a heavy sigh.
“Well, at least the world is safe, right? You did a great job out there.”
“Wish I could say I was glad to be of service... but frankly, it was hell.”
“It's not always like that, with so many people getting hurt, four operatives being kicked out, this was an especially awful op.”
“Somehow I doubt that...”
She pulled the door open and held it for him to step through.
“Thanks,” he said, walking back into the Epicentre. He waited for her to step through and close it before asking one last favour. “Can you dial up my house with this thing, send me home.”
“You should stay, we could really use you.” Her voice dropped into a whisper. “As another moral compass, if nothing more...”
He scoffed softly. “Monster's dead, my job here is done. Please, don't make me ask again.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly, feeling a sadness, a malaise, that she couldn't convince him to stay. Her fingers pirouetted through the air as she reached back to the door handle and tugged it open, revealing Jules's hallway beyond the threshold.
