Mage Against the Machine

by Shaun Barger

  Steeling himself, Nikolai took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. He moved to put his hand on hers.

  She didn’t pull away, exactly. She just happened to reach for her pack of cigarettes at the exact same instant his fingers brushed across hers—appearing not to have noticed.

  A subtle but pointed rejection. Or was Nikolai being oversensitive?

  “Hey. Ilyana. About what happened . . .” he began, just as their drinks arrived.

  Ilyana crushed out her cigarette on the table and drew her crystal flask Focal, seeming not to have heard Nikolai. “Disc, I’m thirsty!”

  She turned the top and the silver dust within was replaced by a sluggish, milky red liquid. Her favorite drink—a potent liquor called dragon’s milk. She poured it on ice—the liquor igniting blue and red—and raised her glass to toast.

  “Cheers!” she said at the exact moment Nikolai opened his mouth to say her name again.

  He closed his mouth. Then, after a moment, he just shook his head, his frown turning into a bemused smile.

  Oh well, Nikolai thought, nervous tension softening into a bittersweet, melancholic sort of relief. Might as well take this generously offered opportunity to retain my dignity.

  “Cheers,” he said, raising his glass. “To never going back to Marblewood.”

  “Seriously,” she agreed, raising her glass even higher. “Fuck that place.”

  “Yeah!”

  “Fuck Marblewood!” they shouted in unison, clinking their glasses and passionately raising their middle fingers in Marblewood’s general direction.

  As Ilyana drank, her liquor would occasionally reignite with cold neon fire.

  She met Nikolai’s gaze, lips in a tight smile as if to hold back from teasing him about something. Her eyes were a deep, rich brown—so dark that they were quite nearly black.

  The fire from Ilyana’s drink reflected neon red and blue against the inky mirror darkness of her eyes. The colorful reflections seemed to punctuate the teasing, affectionate warmth emanating from within—where just moments before, there’d been only cold.

  “Ugh,” Ilyana choked, coughing up long puffs of the cold fire like a laughing dragon. “That is not for chugging!”

  Nikolai grimaced, clearing his throat as he placed the now-empty honeybrew glass on the table.

  Ilyana pushed aside her mostly finished drink, the ice still sputtering with tiny spots of flame, and drew her crystal flask. She turned the top. Inside, the bloodred dragon’s milk was replaced by a vibrant swirl of liquid rainbow. Eyes never leaving Nikolai’s, Ilyana poured a small puddle of the colorful concoction onto the table.

  “Have you ever been in love before?” she asked to Nikolai’s startled surprise.

  “Um . . . well . . .”

  The relief he’d begun to feel disappeared. Of course Nikolai had been in love before. But the last thing he wanted to think or talk about at that moment was his estranged childhood sweetheart, Cecilia Astor.

  “No need to feel embarrassed around me,” she said. “About anything. I’m such a fuckup.”

  Ilyana laughed a little too loudly. She holstered the flask and drew her dagger Focal, dim light glinting darkly through the ruby blade as she dipped its tip into the colorful puddle and stirred.

  The image of a handsome, richly dressed mage with shaggy hair and a cocky grin formed in the pool. He turned his head, meeting Nikolai’s gaze with a smug sort of confidence.

  “Meet my ex, Jet. Or Prince Jiang, if you take any stock in the titles of Schwarzwald’s castrated nobility. Total fuckboy. We were never exclusive, exactly, but we had an on-and-off thing for years. He always wanted to talk about his feelings.” She practically spat the word. “About us and our relationship. No matter how many other girls he’d screw behind my back. It drove me crazy. Even though I do miss him. Sometimes.”

  Nikolai shifted in his seat, staring at her with narrowed eyes. “What happened to never tell me about your exes?”

  Ilyana dipped her finger in the paint. “You don’t have to tell me about your ex if you don’t want to. Even though now I’m curious, because when I asked, you looked as if I’d just kicked you in the balls.” She leaned forward, voice breathy. “The kind of girl who could leave such a lingering, obviously traumatic mark on Nikolai Strauss? Now that’s a sorceress I’d like to meet.”

  Ilyana drew her forefinger from the colorful liquid and pressed it against her tongue. She closed her eyes and visibly relaxed, savoring it.

  Then, to Nikolai’s great surprise, she leaned across the table and kissed him.

  Colors spiraled from Ilyana’s face as their lips touched. The dingy bar came alive with powerful oranges, reds, and blues. Like a warmly painted illustration of an idealized pub—a far cry from the reality of their surroundings.

  Nikolai sat there, dumbfounded, as the colors faded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, watching his face.

  “Sorry?”

  “For giving you drugs without asking.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That’s . . . okay.”

  She dipped her dagger in the fluid again and lifted it, point out, before him. A single droplet hung precariously at the tip of the blade. “Care for another?”

  He looked at her, hesitating for a moment before he leaned forward and carefully closed his mouth around the end of the blade.

  The world once again a vibrant watercolor, Nikolai pushed the blade aside and moved to kiss her.

  Ilyana turned her face, hunching her shoulders as she shrank away.

  He leaned back, aghast, as she squeezed her eyes shut and began cursing to herself.

  “Shit. Shit.” She opened her eyes. “I’m sorry. I should go.”

  Nikolai took another deep breath, trying very hard not to let his agitation show. “Ilyana. Wait.”

  She rose abruptly and made for the door. After a moment of baffled hesitation, Nikolai followed her outside the bar.

  Ilyana’s personal dragonfly craft awaited her on the glassy red street in front of the bar. Its long, cylindrical cabin gleamed metallic emerald. A stiff-necked chauffer awaited her, dressed in the formal robes of his station.

  “Ilyana, wait!” Nikolai called as she made for the skycraft. “If you really want to drop it, I’ll drop it. But please don’t go.”

  She stopped and slowly turned to face Nikolai. “Nikolai . . .”

  “You’re my best friend,” he said, practically shaking. “But I want to be more than just your friend. I care about you. I think you care about me too, and I know we’d make an amazing team. But maybe I’m wrong! Maybe I’m just totally misreading the situation. And if that’s the case—if you just don’t feel the same way about me—that’s okay.”

  “No,” she protested. “I do!”

  Nikolai took a step closer to her. “Okay. Then let’s do something about it. I know you outrank me, and I know things are weird right now. But if you want to at least try . . . I think we could really be something.”

  She stood there for a long moment. Silent. Impassive. Then, very slowly, she closed the distance between them and pulled him into a hug.

  “I’m sorry,” she said into his ear. “But you and I are both really fucked-up people. Nothing good would come of us being a thing.”

  Nikolai pulled away, shaking his head. “So what? You like me, and I like you, but we have baggage . . . so we shouldn’t even try? Come on, man, that’s bullshit. That’s just giving up on ever being better than these broken brains our shithead parents left us!”

  “Please, Nikolai!” Ilyana said. “You’re my best friend too! I trust you. And I have so few people I trust in this world.”

  “Then I wish you hadn’t fucked me!” he snapped, blinking back angry tears.

  Ilyana tried to pull him into another hug, but he resisted.

  She held him at arm’s length, not letting go. “Please, Nik. Don’t be yet another guy I care about who turns out to be just some asshole looking to get his. What happened in Marblewood . . .”

 
Nikolai shook his head, relenting. “No, no, you’re right. In Marblewood you were vulnerable. I shouldn’t have initiated things. It was a mistake, and I’m sorry. I get it. We were both in a weird place.”

  Ilyana leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. But instead of a kiss, like he’d expected, she stuck out her tongue and drew it up his face in one long, wet lick. She pulled back, grinning at his shock.

  “I’m always in a weird place.”

  She tousled his artfully messy hair, then turned to walk away. The chauffer opened the side of the gleaming emerald vehicle and she climbed in.

  Immense, glassy wings unfolded from the sides of the craft and began to flap too quickly to see, lifting the cylinder with a quiet buzzing hum.

  Numbly, Nikolai waved to her, his insides a tangle of confused hurt and disappointment.

  Ilyana leaned out over the side of the craft and blew him a kiss.

  Then she was gone.

  * * *

  “Nikolai, you Fox-mother sow!” Albert sang.

  He slid into the booth across from Nikolai, who was silently nursing yet another honeybrew.

  “Sorry I’m late. The New Damascian upper crust may lack in some regards, but they certainly know how to throw a party.”

  Concern flashed across Albert’s steely blue eyes at Nikolai’s noticeably gloomy state.

  “Why so glum, chum?” Then, with a knowing smile: “Ah, I see. Affairs of the heart. No, no, don’t deny it! Ilyana’s a complicated sorceress. You two have always been close. Me, I wasn’t too sure about you at first. But you won me over in the end!”

  “Nah, Ilyana’s fine,” Nik said, not wanting to talk about it. “I’ve just had too much to drink. Plus I hate this fucking bar. I don’t know why I keep coming here.”

  The American Cowboy was a once-popular “human-themed” bar that had somehow become a go-to dive for Watchmen and the occasional Edge Guard. Though as human-themed as the American Cowboy touted itself to be, to Nikolai it seemed as if the owners had blatantly gotten everything just slightly wrong to annoy the rare mage who might notice.

  The bartender was wearing a football helmet and a torn-up wifebeater with RED SOX emblazoned on it. Behind him was a constantly moving mural of a giant gorilla clinging to the top of a skyscraper, slapping spaceships out of the sky with a giant banana.

  There were themed drinks like the Heinz Catch-up and the Huckleberry Finnisher, and gag-cigarette brands like Santa’s Polar Menthols and Sophie’s Choice available from an ornate machine in the bathrooms that only accepted wooden “dollar” coins.

  “But you love artifacts of the mundane,” Albert protested, leaning over to peer at Nikolai’s replica Converse sneakers under the table. “Just look at your shoes! Flimsy little things. Why don’t you wear boots like a proper mage?”

  Nikolai scowled. “My friend made these for me. I like them. And everything’s wrong here.”

  He began listing off inaccuracies and various oddities. Uniforms that didn’t make sense. Mixed historical references. Egregious merging of Star Wars and Star Trek mythos.

  “Do you remember the last time you sat at this booth?” Albert asked, dismissing Nikolai’s complaints with a bored wave. “Or the last time you drunkenly sprawled out in this booth, I should say.”

  Nikolai shrugged.

  “Funny. It’s because of that night that Ilyana and I were able to find you in the woods back in Marblewood. Just in the nick of time, I might add. You never did ask how.”

  “You didn’t just cleverly see through my ruse and follow me from a distance?”

  Albert leaned in, grinning. “Tracer weave in your shoe, my friend! Last time we were here, you passed out there—right where you’re sitting! You always go wandering when you’ve had too much to drink, and I wanted to keep track of you when you inevitably went off to go brood in some derelict part of town.”

  He imitated Nik with an exaggerated frown. “You’re such a miserable drunk I don’t know why I take you anywhere.”

  “A tracer?” Nikolai said, sitting up straighter.

  “Inside the sole of your precious sneakers! Just where you wouldn’t feel it. Where you haven’t felt it! Don’t you ever scan yourself for unwanted enchantments, sergeant? You are a government employee.”

  “Good thing I didn’t.”

  Nikolai suddenly became dizzy with the spins, mouth filling with sickly warm puke drools. “Disc. I didn’t need that last brew. Or the three before it. I’m going to get some air.”

  “So predictable,” Albert muttered as Nikolai walked away. “Farewell!” he called after him. “You wonderful, irresponsible wizard!”

  The American Cowboy was on the southern fringes of the Gloaming District. All the major districts in New Damascus had distinct styles and architecture, but some of the more iconic neighborhoods went so far as to have their own light and weather patterns. The ruby-paved Gloaming, for example, was permanently lit with the buttery red of twilight, no matter what the hour.

  Though it was well past midnight, the streets remained raucously packed with magi decked out in a high-fashion mess of pastel and neon—colors and glows and illusions spun into capes and coats and attire from every age, of every sort.

  There, a wizard in a jacket like the night sky that sparkled with the glimmer of real starlight. There, a sorceress in a waterfall cloak like a river of sapphire that poured endlessly from neck to hem.

  Hundreds of young magi were all singing, dancing, drinking, and smoking in the streets, spilling out of bars and clubs and theaters, all clamoring with music. It was incredible—like the visions of a cheerful schizophrenic who’d lost their way at the New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations of old.

  The luster of the Gloaming had faded somewhat to Nikolai in the two years since his first night out. The neon crowds that had once awed him now merely annoyed him as he shoved his way through the mob in search of quieter streets.

  Tension released in his chest as soft red light faded into darkness. It wasn’t raining now, but knowing the Noir district, it would be soon.

  Few magi came to the Noir at night. The streets were silent but for vermin, disenfranchised sex workers disparagingly referred to as flesh magi, and the occasional half-mage sheltering from the damp night air in whatever stoop or alleyway hovel they could find.

  Every city had its slums. Even New Damascus, the grand capital of the magi nations, with its impossible towers of jewel, alabaster, and stone so black one could barely see them.

  Nikolai loved the Noir. Loved it for its quiet, its gloom, and the near-perpetual drizzle.

  He’d never quite grown accustomed to the noise of the city, never quite wrapped his mind around a million magi all living under the same Veil.

  Nikolai ignored the eyes glinting hungrily from the alleyways. Magi never walked alone through this part of the city, unless they were either stupid . . . or dangerous. From the way the eyes would disappear into the shadows as quickly as they’d lit up, it was obvious that the more experienced predators could tell Nikolai was the latter.

  The thrill of terrorizing vicious pimps and alleyway hunters was half the reason he stalked the Noir’s grimier corners whenever he was drunk and feeling shitty about himself. It was the perfect place to seethe—face fixed in a scowl, fist pointedly clenched around the hilt of his blade Focal while he stared down anyone who might be foolish enough to fuck with him.

  Thus far, nobody had.

  Ilyana’s strange rejection repeating itself in his mind, over and over again, Nikolai wished that for once someone would mistake him for a drunk who’d lost his way and make an attempt on his life.

  She didn’t want him. That much was clear. Just like Astor had stopped wanting him all those years ago.

  Unbidden, memories of Cecilia Astor begin to flood his mind. Images of Astor, Stokes, his uncle—all the magi he left behind in Marblewood. All the people he’d spent the past two years trying to forget.

  He had a new life here in New Damascus. New friends and a career
in the clandestine services that excited him as much as it terrified him. Besides Stokes, and maybe his uncle Red, nobody back in Marblewood cared about him. They probably didn’t even think about him. So why bother?

  Considering how things had transpired with Ilyana, however, life in New Damascus had suddenly lost some of it its luster.

  His head was pounding. His vision swam, his mouth gone sour as too-sweet honeybrew and greasy bar snacks boiled in his stomach, threatening to rise.

  Worse was the lump in his throat. The stinging in his eyes. The crushing hot weight on his face, making it feel as if his eyes and cheeks were going to collapse in on themselves.

  Nikolai hated crying.

  Even now, whenever he wept he could practically hear his mother calling him weak with every drop that ran down his face. Pathetic with every sob. But one could only face so much hardship with steely-eyed resolve before the occasional, inevitable breakdown.

  As Nikolai stalked across the wet cobblestone, grateful for the slick mask of rain that hid his tears, he found himself lost in the memory of the first time he ever met Cecilia Astor.

  He’d been crying then too.

  * * *

  One day, when Nikolai was eight, he’d hidden himself in a stall of the boys’ bathroom at his school, praying that nobody could hear him as he struggled through snot and tears to calm himself.

  His mother’s lesson that morning had been particularly brutal, and all day he’d been distracted from class, struggling to breathe through the tightness in his chest that threatened to overwhelm him until he’d been forced to excuse himself.

  He hated it—wished his body would listen to the cold logic of his brain, could listen to his mother’s voice calmly explaining that there were terrible things beyond the Veil, and that if she didn’t make him strong, he and the people he loved—the people he needed to protect—would be hurt. Die, even.

  But Nikolai didn’t love anyone. Not really. His parents, of course. But did that even count? And weren’t they supposed to protect him?