by Shaun Barger
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TO CAITY—
for the profoundly stated nonsense of your fever dreams, and your ceaseless enthusiasm for mine.
TO MOM—
for that same enthusiasm, and for making sure that I stayed kind. The whole “teaching me to write” thing was pretty useful, too.
(Let’s not forget the thousands of pages of pro-bono editing you’ve both done.)
FINALLY, TO JOSH AND ANNA—
for being way cooler than I was at their age.
YOU = THE GODDAMN BEST.
PART I.
A DOOR IN THE SKY
I.
AMERICAN WIZARD
A mage in black followed a trail of footprints through the darkness of a thickly wooded forest, unseen.
The trail had been left by a dead man who’d been speaking to his revolver, last the mage had seen him. Anxiously eyeing the shadows between the trees, he wondered if the rune-etched firearm had responded.
The mage was young—barely out of training—with dark, carefully tousled hair and a slight frown that might have seemed permanent to those who didn’t know him well. His replica high-top sneakers squelched wetly in the sodden moss as he tracked the dead man’s steps, which shimmered with a golden light through Nikolai’s enchanted spectacles.
Nikolai Strauss was being stupid. He knew that he was being stupid. His first actual assignment and he’d already lied to his team—to his friends. Already defied his orders to: Observe. Do not engage. Report immediately should the buyer be spotted.
Technically, Nikolai wasn’t really even on this case. He’d been a cadet until a few months ago. The Edge Guard insignia on the breast of his uniform was so freshly made that the enchantments still tickled when he brushed his fingers across the slick enamel surface.
This was supposed to be some simple field experience for training—a low-risk opportunity for Nikolai to observe more experienced Edge Guard agents working the field as they staked out an illegal artifact exchange. They probably wouldn’t have even brought him with them all the way from the capital if the buy hadn’t been going down in Marblewood, Nikolai’s hometown.
The captain had suggested that Nikolai’s relationships with the citizens of Marblewood might come in handy should they find themselves short on leads.
Though Nikolai hadn’t kept in touch with anybody from his hometown (and would have preferred to keep it that way) the intel implicating the Eaglesmith family had smothered his protests.
He was indifferent to the family as a whole. His scorn was reserved for his former classmate, Joseph Eaglesmith, rich-kid golden-boy athlete and longtime boyfriend of Nikolai’s estranged childhood sweetheart.
Nikolai hated the prick. And now, for his pettiness, here he was. Alone. In the dark. Following a possibly demented Battle Mage with a magic gun.
Sure, Nik was also a Battle Mage, well versed in the magical arts of violence. He was a member of the Edge Guard, a powerful government order charged with the defense and maintenance of magical domed Veils that hid the magi from the ruined human world, which had been reduced to lifeless, magically radioactive wastelands a century prior, in 2020.
The Edge Guard also investigated crimes that fell under the jurisdiction of multiple Veils.
But mostly, Nikolai got coffee.
Nikolai was happy to just get coffee for his senior teammates, leaving them to handle the dull responsibilities of the stakeout. To nod and say “Yessir” at all the right moments, occasionally jotting a note into the margin of whatever novel he currently had his nose buried in.
The problem was, Nikolai was now pretty sure that their entire reason for being there was bullshit. That there’d never been any artifact smugglers—that the intel was just a ruse. Bait, specifically set to draw Nikolai back to his hometown, away from the watchful eyes of the capitol. The Eaglesmith family’s involvement was a juicy worm wriggling at the end of a hook.
Nikolai hadn’t said much about his life back in Marblewood to his fellow Edge Guards. From what little he’d let slip, however, his thinly veiled grudge against the rising flyball star had featured prominently. After a couple of drinks, at least.
The mage who’d set the bait had once been Nikolai’s mentor. His friend, even. And Nikolai knew that if his superiors got to him first, he’d never have a chance to speak to Hazeal alone. Never have a chance to ask without supervision why his former mentor had gone to such lengths to contact Nikolai. Or how the hell he wasn’t dead.
His old mentor had first made contact when Nikolai was on his way back from a cafe half a block from the stakeout earlier that day, three boiling hot coffees floating precariously before him on a tray of hardened air that looked like frosted glass.
“I have a message from your mother,” came a voice so quietly that Nikolai might have imagined it.
He spun around, searching, scanning the bustling pedestrian crowd until he found a swarthy, middle-aged mage (whom Nikolai had almost certainly never seen before) staring at him from across the street, under the awning of a butcher shop.
Everything about the mage was forgettable. He was neither ugly nor attractive, wearing a plain charcoal topcoat over a suit that might be found in the closet of any clerical mage with a middling desk job. The only noteworthy thing about him was his conical, wide-brimmed hat, which was normally only worn with formal robes.
Still, there was something about the mage that put Nikolai on alert. His hand, hovering twitchy and trembling at his hip. His eyes, wild and tight with pain.
The stranger pinched the rim of his hat and the illusory disguise pulled away in neatly angular folds of colorful light to reveal a mage that Nikolai knew quite well.
His name was Hazeal. Lieutenant Armand Hazeal. The kindest of Nikolai’s teachers during cadet boot camp in the capitol, who’d always gone out of his way to make sure that Nikolai, more than any of his other students, was managing well both as an Edge Guard trainee and a young, small-town mage adjusting to life in the big city.
Killed just six months prior, in a scuffle with a pair of corrupt Watchmen.
So they’d been told. There’d even been a funeral.
Underneath his disguise, Hazeal was sweating, filthy, and appeared to have aged ten years since Nikolai had seen him last. A strange revolver hung holstered at his hip, surface etched with runes that pulsed as Hazeal pushed aside his topcoat to grip the pommel.
Nik had been so dumbfounded at the appearance of his old teacher that he momentarily neglected maintaining the spell he’d used to create a tray for the coffees.
“Sh-shit—akro!” He’d cast too late, whipping out a half-formed blob of the glassy substance in a fruitle
ss attempt to catch all three drinks. One of the boiling brews poured harmlessly down the defensive enchantments of Nikolai’s Edge Guard jumpsuit uniform, but reflexively he yelped and dropped the rest as he danced back.
When Nikolai looked back up, Hazeal seemed to be engaged in a furious hissed debate with the revolver. Noticing Nikolai’s gaze, Hazeal angrily tugged his coat back over the holstered weapon and released his pinched fingers from the brim of his hat—the illusory folds of his disguise snapping back into place.
“Find me where she used to hurt you,” he said, once again barely audible from across the busy street. Then, with a strange smile, he tipped his hat at Nikolai and darted away into the crowds.
Though reeling from the words and the flood of traumatic memories that came with them, Nikolai managed to fire a tracer enchantment onto the back of Hazeal’s coat before completely losing sight of him. Then, struggling to maintain some semblance of calm, the young mage took off sprinting toward the building where his team was hidden on their stakeout.
The Edge Guard trio had spent the past four days holed up in a dusty apartment across the street from the secondary Eaglesmith estate, practicing the art of silent patience while they waited for their covert surveillance wards to trigger any sign of activity.
Nikolai’s first superior officer, Junior Lieutenant Ilyana Xue, passed the time between shifts by working out, chain-smoking from a long-stemmed cigarette holder, and experimenting with various chemicals and potions—with occasionally explosive results.
There was a crass sort of elegance about Ilyana. She had the swaggering, smarmy charm of a trust-fund troublemaker, despite her oft-voiced contempt for the upper class she was obviously a product of.
Nikolai’s second superior officer, Junior Lieutenant Albert Cross, wrote letters to his extensive noble family, bid extravagantly on remote auctions for rare art, artifacts, and grimoires, and caught up on the hottest new Schwartzwaldian operas: tiny stages vivid on postcard glossies from his sister, audio quietly resonating from a polished copper memory cube. He’d idly translate lyrical snippets from French, German, and Italian, explaining the plots while Ilyana and Nik politely feigned interest.
Ilyana and Albert were only a couple years older than Nikolai, and now just one rank higher. Though they’d initially taken him under their wing as informal big-bro/big-sis mentors, in the two years since he moved to the capitol to join the Edge Guard they’d become Nikolai’s closest friends. Maybe his only friends, considering how long it had been since he’d spoken to anyone from Marblewood.
They looked up with shock as Nikolai burst into the cramped apartment.
“Just ran into my ex,” he lied in a rush. “Said I’d grab a quick drink with her, you guys don’t mind, right? I’ll be back in an hour, maybe more, sorry bye!”
And off Nik had gone, his two supervising officers too startled to argue as he pursued Hazeal into the thickly shadowed depths of Marblewood’s forest.
Nikolai had recently graduated the Edge Guard’s sparsely populated cadet training academy with the rare honor of highest distinction—a fact that he was always sure to teasingly remind Albert and Ilyana of, who, without the edge unpleasantly afforded to Nikolai by the brutal training he’d endured as a child from his Edge Guard mother, had merely graduated with distinction.
For the first time, Nikolai felt a true appreciation for the immense scope of drills and training he’d received as a cadet, covering everything from tactical featherweight acrobatics to covert urban and wilderness tracking—the latter of which he was, at that moment, specifically grateful for.
The afternoon sun grew soft in the wood, the dappled light dim across Hazeal’s fading footsteps that Nikolai could see through his government-issued tracking spectacles. Hazeal’s tracer was no longer moving up ahead, and it wouldn’t be much longer before he’d catch up to the disturbed mage.
With every step closer he took to his former teacher, Nikolai grew more apprehensive—his initial confidence that Hazeal would never hurt him growing less and less certain. But as his fear grew, so did his curiosity.
A message. From his mother. Had Nikolai heard him correctly?
His parents had been dead for a decade. Killed in a skycraft crash when Nikolai was only ten.
Ashley Strauss, his mother, had also been a member of the Edge Guard. Lancer Class—the highest rank attainable, required for expeditions beyond the Veil, into the ruins of the human world.
Hazeal claimed to have only known Ashley in passing—praising her brilliance and lamenting her loss whenever Nikolai had asked, but no more so than any of the other Edge Guards who’d served with his mother. If anything, Hazeal had been more reticent than most. As if he hadn’t actually liked her very much, but knew better than to say so. Though it was obvious they’d never been close.
So what could Hazeal possibly have to tell Nikolai about his mother?
Nikolai wondered if Captain Jubal, the commander of the Edge Guard, knew that Hazeal was still alive. Nikolai was extremely fond of the captain, and couldn’t imagine that he would have lied to them about it.
Maybe Hazeal was undercover, and the funeral had been a government-sanctioned farce. But why would an undercover agent who’d gone so far as faking his own death reveal himself to a lowly sergeant?
Second possibility: Hazeal was dirty, and was going to trick or manipulate Nikolai into helping him with some sort of espionage. Maybe he was corrupt—maybe he’d gotten deep into some shit and the Moonwatch had caught wind of it. Maybe he’d faked his own death to get out of Dodge, and not even Captain Jubal was the wiser.
But Hazeal? Corrupt? It just didn’t fit. He was a family man with a long career in the Edge Guard. He liked expensive tea and cooking extravagant meals for his children and grandchildren on the weekends. He was respected, and, well, a little bit boring.
So if Hazeal had faked his own death, then why? And what did any of that have to do with Nik’s mother? Nikolai had to know.
If he told the others about seeing him, not even Ilyana would hesitate to call in the higher-ups. She was fiercely loyal to the captain, and Albert, though less fond of Jubal than Ilyana and Nikolai, was a strictly by-the-books kind of mage.
“Hello, Nikolai.”
Nik wheeled around with a stifled yelp, barely resisting the terrified knee-jerk urge to blast his former teacher with a thousand degrees of boiling flame. The tracer remained stationary a mile or so north—but then Nikolai noticed that Hazeal was no longer wearing the coat.
Damn. He must have found the enchantment.
Hazeal idly spun the chamber of the rune-etched revolver. His smile was weary, his eyes unfocused as he stared through the spot where Nikolai stood, hidden from view by a thin layer of magical invisibility.
Hazeal’s voice was soft. Raspy.
“No, no, I can’t see you.” He popped the chamber into the revolver, admiring the weapon. “But this can.”
“Lieu . . . Lieutenant.” Nikolai tried and failed to keep the tremor from his voice.
“Not lieutenant.” He chuckled bitterly. “Not even a mage anymore.”
Only then, with Hazeal no longer wearing his coat, did Nikolai notice the absence of the ivory staff and the jeweled whip that used to hang at his sides. His Focals. Objects much like a wizard’s wand from one of the old human stories—objects a mage never went without, due to the weakening of power they would suffer without a Focal to channel their spells.
Nikolai looked him up and down, sure that he must have them hidden away. But no, he realized with horror—they were gone.
Hazeal’s pleasant expression slipped into irritation.
“If I’m going to kill you, there’s nothing you can do about it. Even without my magic. Not even the Mage King could stop a bullet from this gun. So please drop the cloak. I like to look a mage in the eyes when I discuss matters of importance.”
Nikolai bit back a growled response at the threat, considering whether or not it was a bluff. But the mage—half-mage now, appa
rently—gripped the revolver more tightly with every passing moment.
“Okay. Please don’t shoot, Lieu . . . Armand. I just want to talk.”
The weaves of invisibility melted from Nikolai like mercurial foam.
Hazeal smiled, eye twitching. The fingers holding the revolver remained tense. He reached over his free hand to caress the papery skin of his gun hand, as if calming an animal.
“I thought you were dead,” Nikolai said. Careful now. “The captain sent us here to investigate an . . . artifact exchange.”
Nik glanced down at the gun.
“Don’t look at it don’t look at it DON’T LOOK AT IT!” Hazeal snarled, weathered face pulling back in animal terror as he closed the distance between them.
Nikolai stood, frozen, eyes locked with Hazeal’s, inches from his own. Trembling. Unmoving.
Hazeal let out a long sigh.
“You have to be careful,” he said. “It’s sleepy now. I’ve used it too much, since I lost my magic. Been its servant for too long. It’s a powerful weapon, Nikolai. And the knowledge it carries! The spells! But it’s like snatching gold from a dragon’s mouth.”
Hazeal chuckled, pale eyes twinkling, and for the briefest moment Nikolai saw the shadow of the jovial mage he’d once been. But then Hazeal flinched, whipping his head back and forth as he looked around the clearing, seeming to have forgotten how he got there. Then he looked back at Nikolai, the weathered lines of his face going slack.
“I’ll be dead soon, and I’m a half-mage now. My soul is . . . withered. When I die, I’m just going to turn off. Whatever lies in the Disc, whatever afterlife or void might await normal magi—I’ll no longer have the opportunity to discover what that might be. So why not deal with the devil?”
“Do you really have a message from my mother?” Nik asked, voice barely above a whisper.
The smile returned, the half-mage’s eyes clearing. He pointed up.
