Mage of Shadows

by Austen, Chanel

  In the light of his magic, I could see his features a bit better, but other than sky-blue eyes and sandy blond hair, I didn't see anything that identified him to me. I had no memory of ever meeting this student before. Then again, I had only been at the university for only three weeks.

  After a moment of silence, the well-dressed mage gave a short laugh, "You have balls." He complimented me cheerfully, "But that's not enough, sorry."

  One finger flicked on his right hand, a tether of glittering power flashed and pulled the still un-cocked weapon from my hand and towards my more experienced foe. He grabbed it from midair, flipping it around to point it between my eyes with a lot more skill than I held, whilst cocking the safety at the same time.

  I stared down the barrel and gulped silently as I felt sweat drip down my back. My heart thudded dully and no new plan sprung to my mind on how I could get out of this very bad situation. I was done, this was it. If this mage, User, whatever… wanted me dead, I was dead.

  A few more thudding beats later, I heard him laugh quietly again.

  "Relax," My opponent said with a new smile, as he flipped the safety back on the gun and stowed it in his jacket. The mage pointed at the dorms.

  "Go back to your apartment." He said with a too-cheerful smile, "I'm sure you have classes in the morning."

  The words were hardly an order, but I felt my weary body respond almost immediately. I wanted more than anything to get back to safety. I backed away until I had almost twenty feet between us and then turned to start jogging with no small amount of pain towards UT's double doors and welcoming light.

  His laughter followed me, mixed with the sirens of cop cars that sounded too close for comfort. His words were partly lost to the cold September wind, but I heard them as he called out to me one last time.

  "Be more careful next time, Stratus! Not everyone is as nice as I am!"

  Chapter 2: Death of Dissent

  Reggie went down last. Reggie always went down last. His last look to me was one of complete betrayal. It had been my fault that he died… my fault…

  …Nat… I don't understand, why…

  I shot up, awake and breathing harshly in the darkness of my room. Despite sweating profusely, I felt very cold.

  Despite being driven to the point of complete exhaustion by the late night's events, I slept fitfully once I returned to my apartment and collapsed atop my mattress. I was never what one would call a deep sleeper, and my late night escapade plagued my already restless mind with new fears.

  What little was left of the night had been plagued with a terrible mixture of new worries along with old terrors bleeding fresh into my mind, like scabs picked anew. I wondered if I would ever escape them completely. They felt like wounds that would never fully heal no matter what I did.

  I could physically escape across the country or even across the globe, but I would never be able to outrun myself.

  I guess that was part of being human. No matter what we do, we have to live with our choices and mistakes. Only death sets us free, and most fear that more than anything else. I can admit to having a healthy fear of that unknown abyss as well.

  A tired glance at my digital clock told me it was ten minutes before my phone's alarm would start. Instead of waiting for it to begin, I pulled my covers off and rolled from my mattress onto the floor. I was too shaken to sleep now anyways.

  That step accomplished despite my bone aching weariness, I made to stand. The wave of dizzying pain that accompanied the simple movement nearly sent me back to the floor. My head beat with a pounding nostalgia of days past, when I sated my teenage curiosity and desire to be 'one of the gang' by inhaling illegally acquired alcohol like it was a job. If there was one plus side to magical exhaustion in comparison to a hangover, my mouth didn't taste like a dry and smelly sock.

  As I stumbled to hold myself against the nearest object of similar height- a small dresser/nightstand combo, I let out a horrible sounding retching cough. Maybe I had spoken too soon in terms of dry mouth; it had been a preferable alternative to this hell.

  For a moment I feared I would literally cough up a lung, and I prayed my roommates wouldn't hear me. Raj could sleep through just about anything and had three alarms to rouse him, but David was nearly as restless as I was.

  The coughing spell was thankfully short, if agonizing. I waited for several long moments but heard no approaching footsteps. Feeling as if I had gotten away with something, I slowly crept towards the spot I had dropped my phone the night before. I deactivated the alarm and flipped the nearby light switch rather than open my curtains and let the weak morning glow spill in from outside.

  My room in the apartment was small, but I didn't share it with anyone. Raj and David had been rooming already for couple years and split the larger one. I was glad for that, I liked my privacy.

  It was a fairly Spartan set up. I didn't come with much, and hadn't made a lot of impact on the room since I had gotten to the University of Detroit. Other than the mattress and several blankets, the dresser was the only other piece of furniture in the room. Various garments and books were scattered across the floor, the only bit of real personality in the room. Any person would take one look and conclude whoever lived here was messy, lazy, but appeared to be well read. It was a great disappointment that I couldn't carry my entire collection of books from home.

  In all honesty, I just slept here. It wasn't even worth assembling a full bed in the modest space. I wasn't even sure if I would be staying at University Towers next semester. Looking back, I wonder if it was a subconscious decision to stop myself from creating new personal attachments. That wouldn't last long. Even someone who had turned as anti-social as myself wouldn't be able to continue forever alone.

  I got dressed slowly, my body still aching and mind weary. The jeans I wore the night before, with a different shirt of muted color. Slightly different clothes, same theme, same person.

  With a shaky breath, I stared around my meager, sad little room. Its sparse contents felt like a reflection of the emptiness I felt in me. I had left and lost so much before coming here. A home, family, friends, all gone because of stupid mistakes and greed. It wasn't all my fault, but I could have done it differently, trained harder, said something… done something.

  Now it felt like I was just piling on more mistakes.

  The repercussions of last night weighed heavily on my mind. Barring nearly killing someone and my run in with the cops… that 'User' knew my name. He knew who I was and where I lived. Not only that, he was stronger than me by a margin, and I wasn't even sure how much.

  I was afraid.

  I had felt it in the air within the shared confluence last night, the difference in our abilities. If he was the magical equivalent of an artist, then I had been comparable to a house painter. In a situation like that willpower was everything. The one better able to control the ambient magic around them would win the fight, plain and simple.

  Though, along with trepidation… I felt excitement. That kind of ability was exactly what I had sought when I came here. Covens were the backbone of the magical society. There had been no noticeable one where I had come from, which had been one of the reasons learning to control my abilities had been such an uphill battle. I came to Detroit with the belief that there was a magical presence in the form of a coven at UD.

  A coven was a distinct and present group of mages that had formed sometime in the past and gathered untold riches in the form of magical knowledge. People who could actually teach me how to use my skills so I wouldn't have to just bungle through everything with clumsy enthusiasm. I wanted to learn, but I'd never had anyone but my friends to teach me. They had been just as ignorant.

  More than that, I wanted safety in that kind of group identity. Covens were powerful, once accepted they protected their own. It was almost like joining a very exclusive political party- if you had something to contribute to the group you were accepted, but the group ideology would have to become your own.

  I wasn't
really considering that little fact, at the moment.

  Once dressed, I ran an unnecessary comb through my short black hair and glanced at the small mirror attached to my dresser. Dark circles ensconced the bright hazel eyes that stared back, more haunted than I would like to admit. I poked at my nose, which had once been broken and healed quickly afterwards, giving it a defined bend in its curvature, not extremely noticeable. My face was thin with visible cheekbones and the short beginnings of a bristly beard poked out from my otherwise clean jaw.

  Could've been worse, I guess.

  I turned away from those eyes with a heavy sigh, moving with a slow gait towards my room's door. I only stopped to gather my backpack and jacket into my hands and then stepped out into the small hallway.

  Our apartment's living room was a bit larger than either bedroom and came with an attached kitchen near the front door. The 40-inch plasma that Raj had brought from home was turned on, the volume low. No electric lights were on, but the curtains here had been opened to allow morning to spill in and fill the room with the hazy glow that came as night was slowly vanquished.

  It was a little before eight, but David was awake and doing crunches in front of the TV.

  David Cao was nearly twenty and built like someone who knew what he was doing when he went to the gym. He wasn't quite ready to be posing for any catalogues as a model, but his physique left him pretty damn close. One thing was for sure, he was in much better shape than I was.

  Shirtless and with a fine sheen of sweat, I could tell he had been working out for at least twenty minutes, if not more. He finished his set of crunches and stood for a moment to nod politely to me.

  "Good morning." His voice was deep and cheerful, as always. David was someone who always had a smile on his face. He was the person who seemed to have everything in balance, whether it was school, the gym, or his love life. Despite being jealous of how he seemed to have it all together, I don't think I could have ever disliked him. I wondered if David ever really had an enemy.

  Before I had even replied, he had dropped back down and was completing a set of some kind of pushups that looked a lot harder than normal ones. I think he called them dive bombers or something, but I couldn't remember for certain.

  "The two men were left unconscious, severely wounded and one near dead…"

  I glanced at the television screen and stilled. David had the news on, the volume low but easily discernable in the quiet of the early day. My heartbeat became conspicuous against my chest as I heard the report from the news anchor; she appeared disturbed as she read from her teleprompter.

  "One man was found with third degree burns, and the other with unconscious due to blunt force trauma. It has been hypothesized that the man had been slammed into the alley wall several times. The identities of both men have not been released at this time, but they have been placed under police watch at an undisclosed hospital…"

  "Crazy, huh?" David grunted as he got up from his pushups. "Those gangers must really hate each other to go at it so hard."

  I nodded numbly, not trusting my voice.

  David hopped back to his feet, looking only slightly winded. He sent a look of genuine concern my way, "I heard you coughing, are you sick?"

  I mumbled something about feeling ill.

  My roommate didn't notice my troubled thoughts, so hopefully they didn't show up on my face. He grabbed his white shirt from the couch and went to the small kitchen, which was little more than an open countertop, fridge, microwave, and stove. He began to prepare a protein shake for himself while I shook my head clear and walked back towards the bathroom to brush my teeth and slap water on my face in an attempt to think clearer.

  When I came out, David was sitting on the couch drinking his shake and still watching the news.

  "…have released a description of a possible suspect. Caucasian, small build and average height, dressed in a black hoodie. If anyone has any information pertinent to the case they are urged to call the tip line at…"

  It was a small relief that they hadn't gotten a good description of me. I had gotten away with it, I was in the clear… but the reprieve I felt was still overshadowed by guilt. It was dwarfed by Two-Bit's screaming, his pain derived by my heavy handedness.

  "You okay?"

  David was staring at me, concerned.

  "Yeah… I'm fine." I assured him. My roommates probably already thought I was strange, I didn't want to give them any more reasons to suspect my weird habits like going out late alone with no explanation, or having virtually no friends had some deeper sinister meaning behind them.

  "Is it Bio?" Dave questioned innocently, nodding to my backpack, "If you want, I can help you with that. The Pre-Medical Student Association offers student tutoring, you should definitely join. I could ask Tammy to tutor you, she's an SI for your class so she knows the subject really well." Tammy was David's equally successful girlfriend. A scholastic 'power couple' if I had ever seen one.

  Even back then, I had a handle on David. Anywhere he saw a problem that he thought he could fix, he did. David was a person who felt that if he could shoulder burden, he had a responsibility to do so.

  "Thanks, Dave… I'll think about it." I said after a few seconds. I was having trouble in classes, but I wasn't used to receiving help, or asking for it.

  "Anytime." Dave said with a smile. He turned back to the TV and his protein shake, conscience cleared.

  I quickly left the shared space at a brisk walk and heading down the hallway towards the fifth floor's elevators. I felt the frustrated flood of anger surge from my chest and I practically stabbed at the down button for the elevator.

  Even the thought of relying on others made me feel weak. What was the point of having supernatural powers if I couldn't even pass a class?

  In high school I didn't really care about homework or tests. When I discovered magic, I was excited, thinking it was the answer to all my life's problems if I just learned how to control my powers. I dropped from a B-average student to a C-average student, only maintaining that due to parental pressure. The more I learned about magic, the clearer it was that it wasn't going to solve any of my problems in school.

  Sure, I could use it to fight, cheat, and steal. But ultimately it wouldn't get me anywhere, and my control never became good enough for any really subtle stuff anyways. I was a bruiser at best, Normals wouldn't stand a chance, but anyone would be able to see in a fight that what I was doing was strange. The unnatural had a nasty habit of drawing attention from the wrong kinds of people.

  I couldn't stop time and copy answers from someone else, or read minds, or memorize information for tests at amazing speeds. My powers wouldn't help me do homework, get a date, or anything like that. All they served to do was get me in more trouble than I could handle, then slip out of it by the skin of my teeth.

  The cool windy morning was a reminder of the coming fall. I hardly noticed, my brooding carrying me to my first class of a day, the lab I had once a week for my biology class. It was a freshman level course, ranking just above would be considered remedial. Unfortunately, that didn't make it easy, at least for me.

  I stared in dismay at the D+, scribbled in red across the top of my first exam for the class. I numbly wondered if I had been too quick to reject David's help this morning, it was looking more and more like I would need it. My father's imposed 3.8 GPA requirement loomed in my mind like an insurmountable wall. If I didn't ace all my classes this semester, my GPA would automatically be lower than that. Any B would kill me, and here I was looking down at a 63%.

  The exam had been hard… but this? What had I done wrong?

  Flipping through the exam, it seemed like just about everything was marked down. The biggest problem seemed to come from the fact that unlike in high school, my typical half assed answers that were ten percent substance and ninety percent BS didn't fly. This test had admittedly snuck up on me quickly, but even if I only pulled a single all-nighter, I hadn't expected the results to be so… morbid.

&nb
sp; My TA was already moving away, washing his hands of the situation. Students that failed were a regular part of his job; I doubted he would offer much in terms of long term assistance. The teachers were much of the same. Dr. Thomas had to see hundreds of students pass through his Introduction to Molecular Biology class each semester; there was no way to give each student the time they needed to succeed.

  Granted, only a fraction sought out the teacher in the first place… I decided I would give that a shot, but I didn't hold much hope for the idea. My success or failure wouldn't ultimately depend on how many times I approached Thomas during office hours. It would all come down to how much more effort I was able to put in.

  I looked over to the lab station next to me where Eliza Raferty was flipping through her own test. Held steady in her hands, I could just make out the circled red 95% in the top corner of the first page. The etched red 'GOOD JOB!' next to it rankled me more than it should have.

  Superiority complex, much?

  That was the kind of score I needed on every test that followed, especially considering I had just used up my one dropped exam. The glum looks of my other lab-mates seemed to confirm that they hadn't found much success on the test either. More than a few of them I had seen studying near me at the library well into the morning of the test. Eliza hadn't been one of them. In fact, I couldn't remember ever seeing her in the undergrad library before.

  I spared another glance at her; still pouring over her exam like it was her job. Her chestnut-brown hair was kinked and tied back in a loose ponytail, her most discernable feature. She was slender, but her body showed little in the way of athleticism. Her eyes were dark brown, and her noticeably short nose scrunched whenever she was focused on something. Eliza had a thin expressive mouth, but I couldn't remember seeing her smile once in the two weeks I had known her.