Lost Cause

by S A Magnusson

  John Adams scrambled to his feet, and power built from him, streaking toward the Draconis. This time, it looked almost as if it would strike, but once again, the spell bounced off, fizzling into nothingness. It was as if the Draconis had a way of deflecting all magic.

  Darvish took a step toward it, holding his hands outward. They swirled, and blue light glowed between his hands. It crackled, and the air shimmered, filled with the energy.

  “No!” John Adams shouted. He lunged, but he was too late.

  The Draconis swooped down. A spell or something burst from it, shooting beyond me, crashing into the ground. The creature grabbed Darvish, and streaked away.

  I stared, unable to do anything else. Darvish was gone. The Draconis had grabbed him, and it had left me with John Adams. I licked my lips. What was I going to do?

  It came for him,” John Adams said, making his way up to me.

  “What?”

  I could barely think. My mind was frozen, and yet, I needed to get unfrozen, so I could help Darvish in whatever way I could. If he had been claimed by this creature, somehow I had to go after him, didn’t I? Only, I had no idea how or whether there was anything I could even do. The nature of what I had just seen and experienced was far beyond anything I could ever imagine. If this creature would attack like that, and if there was such power coming from it, how was I supposed to go after Darvish? Then again, I couldn’t leave him behind. Darvish was only here because of me and because of what I had heard from Kate.

  “The creature came for him.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said.

  “I have experience with the Draconis,” John Adams said. He looked around the clearing, and I was surprised he made no effort to attack.

  “Are you going to cross back over the Veil?”

  “Unfortunately, I have expended too much of myself,” he said.

  He watched me, and I had the sneaking suspicion he was going to try to use me and force me into helping him cross back. If he did, there might not be anything I could do to resist. I had fought him once before, and though I had a handful of spell coins, I wasn’t sure whether it would even be enough. Then again, John Adams had just admitted he’d expended too much of his own strength. It was possible that admission was nothing more than a ploy to try to get me to work with him. But did I not want the same thing?

  “And even if I could, there is no way for me to cross back over.”

  “Why not?”

  “You didn’t notice what the Draconis did?” He motioned behind him, toward the circle, and I froze as I stared at it.

  The neutral ground, the circle, was completely destroyed. The spell I’d detected coming off the Draconis had hit it, smashing rock, leading to the complete disruption of the circle.

  We wouldn’t be able to cross back over here.

  15

  I continued to hold my protective circle in place, though in reality, I had no idea whether it would even be enough against someone like John Adams. It was possible my barrier wouldn’t withstand anything he threw at me. Instead, I looked around, trying to focus on the sense of magic in the air. There was nothing more than what we had already detected. The cold chill along my skin had retreated, almost as if it was never there. And yet, I couldn’t shake the sense there was still something out here.

  “I’m going after him,” I said.

  “Then you’re a fool,” John Adams said.

  “I’m not a fool. I’m going after my friend.”

  He shot me a look. “Is he really your friend?”

  “If you mean Darvish, then I don’t know. But Barden is. Kate is. And if they’re both on this side of the Veil, and if such a creature has them, I need to go after them.”

  “You don’t have nearly enough power to do so.”

  “And you do?”

  “No.”

  The admission surprised me. I had always felt a sense of arrogance from John Adams, and there was always a sense of otherworldly ability, a power which struck me as beyond what anyone else would be able to possess, but this admission was different.

  “I thought your people worked on this side of the Veil.”

  “Not if they can help it. Most of the time, we try to avoid this side of the Veil, knowing the dangers here. Why do you think we’ve been trying to collect power?”

  “You’ve been trying to collect power so you can rule on our side of the Veil.”

  “Rule? I think you’ve been mistaken, Dr. Stone. While I can’t deny I’d enjoy more power, it’s not at all about ruling. It’s about preparing for the possibility of encountering things like this. And this is just the beginning.”

  “The beginning of what?”

  “The beginning of what you will experience on this side of the Veil.”

  I still wasn’t sure what to do, but needed to have a moment to figure things out. needed to settle my mind, and I wanted to do so without having to worry about John Adams attacking me. “Tell me more about the Draconis.”

  “What more is there to tell? They are creatures of the Unseelie, and they are twisted,” John Adams said.

  “Why would Darvish have brought me to the Unseelie fae realm?”

  “It’s possible he doesn’t have enough understanding of the various realms, or else it’s you who brought us here.”

  Was that true? I was the one who had triggered the neutral ground, so maybe it was me. But returning to the other side of the Veil wasn’t an option. What could we do, then?

  “Hand me that coin,” John Adams said.

  “Why?”

  “You wanted to find Barden, didn’t you?”

  “I did, but why would you help?”

  “Because I told you I would.”

  “That was what you were saying before.”

  “And I intend to survive this, but seeing as how the passage is now disrupted, I don’t know I have any choice.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You can’t. But I think you need me, like I need you.”

  “Why do you need me? I thought you had all of this power and ability on this side of the Veil.”

  “Normally I do. But seeing as how you’ve disrupted everything I possess, now it’s simply my connection to magic. And when it comes to magic on this side of the Veil, I’m little more than a novice.”

  “And I’m not?”

  “You are even less than that, but you have a particular gift which might be useful.”

  “How so?”

  “Do you think that circle is the only rune we will find on this side?”

  I hadn’t considered that, but it did make sense. And if there were other runes on this side of the Veil, would I be able to trigger them the same way as I could trigger other magic? If I could, we could use that, and it might be enough to help keep us safe. But we needed to be more than safe. We needed to find other passages across the Veil, and until we did, we were trapped here.

  Having no other choice, I lowered the protective barrier around myself. The power was about ready to extinguish anyway, and it wouldn’t have lasted much longer. Rather than continuing to waste my power, I decided to release it.

  Then again, I didn’t feel as weakened as I was expecting. Most of the time after holding such power, and triggering as many spells as I had, I would begin to feel fatigued, and though I felt something, the effect of it diminishing a little, it wasn’t what I was expecting to have suffered. Could this be the effect of being on this side of the Veil? Or could it have come from my willingness to serve as Jean-Pierre’s familiar?

  “Where do you propose we go?” I asked John Adams.

  “Luckily for you, I have some experience here, and once we get moving, I should be able to determine where we are.”

  “I need to know more than just where we are. I need to know where my friends are.”

  “And perhaps when you hand me that coin, I can help you.”

  Reluctantly, I handed over the paralytic coin Barden had made. I worried about it, unsure whether o
r not he would use it against me, and I was prepared for the possibility he might trigger it. If he did, I had to have a protective circle in place, ready to trigger at a moment’s notice, but there was no sense from him that he was trying to use the paralytic on me. Power surged from him, though it was a trickle, and it headed into the coin. John Adams’s eyes closed, and he concentrated, letting the sense of the spell wash through him. “It’s faint, but I detect it.”

  “Why can you detect it but Darvish could not?”

  “I suspect my experience with tracking spells is greater. It is in our wheelhouse, after all.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  John Adams pointed. “If I’m correct, then Barden will be in that direction.” He pointed, and it was the same direction in which the Draconis had carried Darvish away.

  We started off, and the landscape quickly changed. With each step, everything blurred past us.

  I paused, and John Adams glanced over at me, his flat eyes amused. “You will find the strangeness begins to pass in time,” he said.

  “What’s it from?”

  “It’s from you. From me. From this entire landscape. All of us are connected. We all have power, and we can use it. In doing so, we can draw enough power that we see the changing all around us.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Have you transported before?”

  “You know I have.”

  “This is the same thing, except, with each step, it’s almost as if you are transporting. There is power in the land, and it pulls you along when you walk. I find it best not to pay any attention to it or fight it. It’s better for us to simply go along with it.”

  We continued to walk, and after a while we paused again, this time near a stream running through a meadow. John Adams placed a barrier around himself as we paused and he took a drink.

  I frowned, wondering why he would do that. There was nothing but beautiful flowers all around us, and knee-high grasses which we’d been walking through. I turned to the flowers, and a hint of a chill worked up my arms. I reacted, dropping a barrier coin, triggering it quickly, and was almost too late. The flowers burst with a pollen plume, and a green cloud drifted toward me. As it struck the barrier, there were sparks.

  “You knew about that,” I said to John Adams.

  “I might’ve suspected it,” he said.

  “A little warning would’ve been nice.”

  “And unnecessary. I thought it was best to see what your reaction might be.”

  “Would they have harmed me?” I stared at the flowers. Many of them were incredibly beautiful, the colors more vibrant than any I’d ever seen before. The petals curved up, practically arching toward the sunlight, and yet as they watched, the flowers themselves seem to twist toward us, as if they were aware of our presence.

  “I have yet to find out. Everything on this side of the Veil can be dangerous, and I have discovered it’s best to simply be prepared for the possibility anything can attack me. Even beautiful flowers.”

  “You didn’t strike me as the kind who would find flowers beautiful.”

  “You don’t think they are?”

  I shrugged. “They’re pretty enough, but they seem like they’re aware of us.”

  “I am certain they are.”

  We waited by the stream for another moment, and when John Adams had finished taking a drink, I paused and took one of my own, still holding onto my connection to the barrier. If we were to move through the meadow, I’d somehow have to find a way to hold onto my barrier, preventing the flowers from triggering me.

  John Adams solved that for me. He stepped into the middle of the stream, and I followed. As I did, a sense of power washed over me.

  “Is this a ley line?”

  “Very good. This side is similar to the Mississippi River.”

  “It is?”

  John nodded. “Can you not feel it?”

  “I can feel the hint of power but wasn’t sure what I was detecting.”

  “On our side of the Veil, the Mississippi River is impressive, not only in its physical sense, but also in the ley lines running through it. On this side, the ley line here is not nearly as impressive.”

  I wondered if that were true. I was only faintly aware of the ley lines on our side, but over here, I could feel them. Something I couldn’t when standing along the shores of the Mississippi River. Then again, I hadn’t been aware of this ley line until I had climbed into the stream.

  We meandered along it. As we walked, the flowers all turned toward us, each of them erupting with a plume of pollen, and the plume drifted toward us, a green fog which seemed to try to strike us. As it neared the edge of the stream, it dissipated. Somehow, the stream protected us. John had known that. What else did he know? Maybe he was going to be more help than I realized.

  The real challenge was going to be when we reached Barden. I didn’t know if John Adams would be willing to help free him. Moving beyond the border of the meadow, John stepped back out of the stream, onto dry ground, and then hurried off, taking each step quickly.

  I followed him, and as before, everything blurred past. Every so often, we would pause, and I would see the landscape had shifted dramatically, but there was nothing else. So far, we hadn’t encountered anything other than the Draconis and the flowers. It didn’t change the fact that there was still a sense of magic everywhere, but there was nothing else which suggested power.

  “Are you sure we’re heading in the right direction?”

  John closed his eyes. As he did, power built from him again, heading into the coin. This time I was aware of it differently, and could feel the spell tracking outward from him. There was something else to it, though. It was something that should have worried me sooner. The further we went, the more John Adams’s strength would begin to return. And as he pushed power into that coin, tracking Barden, there was more power collected in it than he had possessed before. What would John do if he got to the point where he realized he didn’t need me? As far as I knew, he didn’t need me. He might think I was useful for triggering various spells, but I suspected he had a similar talent in doing so. He was the one, after all, who had trained the Shara and the other operatives.

  “We’re getting closer,” he said.

  “Do you recognize which realm we’re in?”

  He nodded. “This is the Seelie realm, so the Draconis should not have been here.”

  “Because they’re Unseelie?”

  “The Draconis would not be welcome in the Seelie realm. They are creatures of the Unseelie, and though they’re powerful, there should be protections in place which would prevent them from crossing. I don’t understand why they would have been here.”

  We continued on, and as we did, I searched for a sense of magic, anything more than just the chill along my arms, but there was nothing.

  How long had we been gone? It had been maybe an hour on this side of the Veil, though certainly no longer than that. An hour might be a day or more back home. What would I have missed? Had I missed shifts? My magical side was now affecting my medical side. That was what I’d tried to avoid, though I realized now that Kate had tried to do the same thing and had failed too. Was that going to be my fate? Was I going to be drawn more and more into the magical world, forced to stay away from the medicine I actually enjoyed, the ways I enjoyed helping people?

  We reached another stream, and John Adams paused. This one was different. There was a rocky shoreline. Rather than wading into it, John paused in front of it. Power built from him, and it drifted down into the water before it quickly retreated.

  “We have to find a way around this,” he said.

  “Why? Can’t we just walk across it like we did the last time?”

  “This doesn’t represent a ley line as it did before.”

  “What does this represent?”

  “A separation.”

  “What separation?”

  “One that is between the realms.”

  I stared at the rock
, wondering if there would be anything I determine about it which would help, but there was nothing. I glanced in either direction along the shoreline, searching for a bridge or a way to cross. The stream was too wide to simply jump across, and I thought I should take John Adams’s word for it that the water was too dangerous for us to simply wade through. He hadn’t been completely trustworthy, but when it came to this side of the Veil, he hadn’t tried to harm me.

  Starting along the shoreline, every so often John would pause, looking into the distance. It took me a moment to realize what he was doing. He was using his tracking spell. Each time he did, his head swiveled a little bit more and more back in the direction we’d gone. Traveling in this way was leading us away from where we needed to go.

  “Don’t you have some spell you could use?”

  “Not one which can penetrate the crossing.”

  “What’s there to penetrate?”

  “There is a distinct separation between each of the realms. They are not meant to be easily crossed.”

  “What forms the separation?”

  “Power,” he said.

  “Is there anything to that power we might be able to use?”

  John Adams looked at me. “You mean is there anything you might be able to trigger?”

  I shrugged. “Is there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  As we continued along the shore, I searched for the sign of any runes or any patterns which might give us a clue. I didn’t find anything, though that didn’t mean there wasn’t going to be something. The further we went, the more troubled I became. Every time we paused, John looked back in the direction we were going.

  “How far off course are we now?”

  “Far enough that we’ll be backtracking a lot,” he said. “I hope we can make up time as we go, but…”

  “But what?”

  “But I don’t know whether there will be anything that impedes us from doing so.”

  “What would be there to impede us?”

  “There could be many different things. I’m not even certain what realm we might find on the other side.”