Mage Dissolution

by Christopher George

“Don’t go!” Renee whispered as her lips left mine.

  She had thrown me against the wall the moment that Tychus had left.

  “I have to.”

  “No you don’t!” she murmured, “you want to.”

  “Allie needs me.”

  “No, she doesn’t.” Renee scoffed, “She’s what sixteen? Seventeen now? Old enough to take care of herself.”

  “Maybe even eighteen,” I had always had trouble keeping track of her age. To me she was my little cousin that I used to see at Christmas and Easter. I wondered about the kind of woman that she had become. The woman that Victor had made her into. What was she like? Did she still resemble the girl I once knew? I had no idea.

  “I can’t go with you,” Renee said.

  “I know.” I put my arms around her.

  She leaned in close. “We could just disappear.” She whispered. “Now, tonight. They’ll never find us.”

  The idea had some appeal. Find somewhere safe, somewhere far away from all this and just be with the woman I loved. I was sorely tempted to just leave it all behind, the pain, the fighting. Let others do it. There are others as capable.

  “I need you,” Renee urged, “I can’t do this by myself.”

  “Then help me!”

  “I can’t.” she said sadly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there is no good ending for this.” Renee replied darkly, “I can see only your death in this. Either at my father or grandfather’s hand. I don’t want that. You don’t want that.”

  “Of course not, but Allie deserves to make the choice herself.”

  “She’s made her choice. You need to make yours!”

  I didn’t answer her.

  “You’ve already made your choice haven’t you.” Her eyes narrowed, “Go on then, leave me.”

  “I’ll be back,” I promised.

  “No, you won’t,” she sighed. “And I’ll already be gone.”

  I often wondered what would have happened had I taken Renee up on her offer. Would we have lived happily ever after as husband and wife? Would we have had children? In my quieter moments I often dream of this. It brings me peace and solace to think of a life that I cast away.

  “Devon…please.” Renee whispered.

  Regret is a powerful emotion, more powerful than hate, sometimes even more powerful than love. It is the knife that slips between the plates of your armour and brings you down. Regret will cause you to do things that you do not wish to do. To think things that you don’t want to think about. Regret is the bane of mankind, it brings discord when there should be peace and it brings pain when the wound has long since healed.

  “I can’t…” I whispered, “I just can’t.”

  “Devon, I’m…” Renee started, but I cut her off. I often wonder what she would have told me had I not. She looked and me strangely as if she was judging something. Her expression went dark and the she wouldn’t look me directly in the eyes.

  “Then go. “Go off and find your place to die. I don’t care anymore. I don’t need you. I can do this on my own.”

  My decision not to run away with Renee still haunts me. Did I make the right choice? Did I even have a choice or are we merely following our predestined fate? I chose to go after Allie and that choice may very well have led to the end of civilisation as we know it. Mine is the hand that casts down mankind, not in anger, nor in hate, but in love – misplaced though it had been. And I will be forever cursed by it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The journey to Melbourne would not be difficult. I was far more powerful now than when I had made my original trek north. What had previously taken me four or five teleport jumps I could now do in one. I hadn’t measured my range yet, but the outer limits of my Scry range were impressive.

  I hadn’t seen Renee since our last conversation. She had left Paris and hadn’t told me where she was going, but it was obvious that she had chosen to remove herself from the whole situation. I couldn’t blame her. This was a family matter for her and despite her vocal hatred of her grandfather I knew that deep down she was conflicted – the man had raised her after all.

  I packed lightly, just a small backpack. Hopefully wouldn’t be on the road for that long. Most of my belongings had been stored by Renee when I had returned from Poland. I was able to find my laptop and other personal effects. Against my better judgement I kept the mobile phone that Renee had given me so I could be contacted should she so desire.

  I didn’t linger long in Paris. I couldn’t risk being seen by another of our kind. Now that my powers had returned I assumed that the death sentence also had returned with it.

  I passed through Europe and into India with just three jumps. I was unable to make the jump directly across the bay of Bengal, so I deviated southwards into Sri Lanka. From Colombo I jumped straight onto the mainland of Malaysia and helped myself to a hotel room in Jakarta. From there I knew it wouldn’t be too difficult to get back into Australia. Three or four jumps later I would be home.

  On my original journey north I had been forced to island hop between Broome and Jakarta as I didn’t have the range. Where I was unable to find an island that suited my needs, I used a commercial fishing boat or ocean liner to jump to. Now, none of that would be necessary. I could make the jump directly from Jakarta to Broome and from there I could make my way south to Melbourne.

  While my new Scrying abilities were impressive I still doubted that they were at the same level as Victor. I could not yet teleport straight from Singapore to Melbourne, but it wasn’t that far from it. Maybe with enough time. I wasn’t sure if my new strength had been caused by my burnout or if I had achieved this level prior, but had never needed to test it. In the end it didn’t matter. I was becoming more powerful and that was all that mattered.

  The actual jump into Australia was uneventful. I didn’t feel a sense of relief as I walked once again on my homeland. It was just another place to me now. I made my way across the deserts of central Australia and down into central New South Wales. I didn’t particularly want to teleport straight into Melbourne. I was sure that my arrival would be noticed and didn’t want that just yet.

  Victor would have left someone watching over his prize. Stealing Allie from under his nose would be difficult. The only advantage I had was surprise. I was trusting that the news of my recovery hadn’t reached him yet. Or if it had, that he would be too busy facilitating the exchange of the Primeaship over to himself to care.

  I found a cargo truck heading into Melbourne and stowed away in the back. This way I could sneak into Melbourne without anyone detecting me. Teleporting myself into the cramped confines of the rear of the truck proved easier than I had anticipated. There was a great deal of space available on top of the cargo and all I needed to lie flat on top of them. My skills with teleport had obviously improved much since the last I had tried to teleport into a moving object. Then again, this truck wasn’t moving anywhere near as fast as the plane had been.

  My arrival into Melbourne wasn’t the cause of celebration. I did not arrive in my hometown in splendour and triumph. I sneaked into it like a thief in the night, hiding under the cloak of darkness and the deceit of my powers. I was careful to limit the use of my powers once inside the city limits. Nothing that would draw attention to myself.

  A quick teleport out of the truck and into an empty street off the highway gave me my first glance of my beloved city. It had been almost three years since I had last seen it. It hadn’t changed much.

  It wasn’t until I reached the city centre that I realised just how much I had missed my home. It was a part of who I was and would be forever dear to me. It was perhaps fitting that my quest would end in the very same place that it had begun. I glanced around the street outside my father’s old apartment with detached interest. I didn’t linger here, my search was not yet over and I didn’t have the luxury of self-indulgence in memory. That wouldn’t be healthy anyway. Some things are better left in the past.

  I pondered where to be
gin my search. Allie could be anywhere, but something told me she would be in the city. I procured a vacant hotel room and began my surveillance. I decided to use a slender Scry thread to do my searching. This would mean that my vision would be impaired, but the thread would be harder to detect, especially over distances.

  Locating Allie didn’t actually prove that difficult. She was in the last place I would have expected to find her, and yet once I found it was the most obvious place I should have looked. It was a small unassuming apartment in Carlton. It was an apartment I knew well. It had been Renee’s.

  It was difficult to get a feel of my cousin through the Scry thread. She seemed so different from the young girl that I had known, but I knew from experience how a Scry spell could warp your perception. When we gaze upon our kind we don’t exactly see their features. We see their Mana signature, and the more powerful the Mage the more we see their power, and not them. Allie was powerful, very powerful indeed. And she wasn’t alone.

  Her companion was one of our kind. It was difficult to get a good read on him. He was obviously there as a body guard and certainly seemed powerful enough to fit the role. I was sure that Victor would only have placed his most trusted underling to protect his cherished prize. He would be difficult to deal with, and what’s more I couldn’t rely on the situation not getting out of hand with Allie. I would need to rely on my subtlety. This was unfortunate; subtlety isn’t my strong suit.

  * * * * * *

  It took several days of surveillance and three swaps of hotel rooms before I was able to find a chance to talk to Allie. I had learned that she was attending Melbourne University, which meant that she was almost never alone. What time she spent away from the university she spent with her bodyguard.

  There was something that wasn’t quite right about him, but I couldn’t place my finger on it. I was sure that I’d met him before but for the life of me I couldn’t place where. I just had this nagging feeling that something was very wrong. I would need to be cautious. If I could just get Allie alone, I was sure I could convince her to come with me.

  It wasn’t until late Thursday night that I was able to get my opportunity. Allie appeared to have had a late class that day. There were many parks and nooks throughout the campus. During her travels between the buildings it would be possible to talk to her somewhat privately. If Allie followed her usual route she would pass through a park area on her way to the tramline she used to get home.

  I teleported onto one of the campus buildings and dropped down to road level, lurking behind a series of trees to remain out of sight. Allie would emerge through a set of double doors and make her way across the park any second now.

  This was the first time that I had seen her directly since I arrived. The last time I had seen her I had been involved in a fire-fight with the Melbourne police department and Aaron Chen. She had been confused and frightened and so very, very young.

  She didn’t look so young now. She looked tired and had a tightness around her features that hadn’t been there before. Her eyes were dark and cold. It’s possible that the scowl on her face could have been caused by her studies, but I got the impression that it was more than that. It looked permanent.

  She made her way across the road and into the park. I walked out from behind the trees and fell into step behind her, letting out a slight flair in my Mana signature to alert her to my presence. She reacted with predictable speed but an unexpected level of power. A shield sprang around her instantly and she spun around to face the threat. Her eyes narrowed down as she scanned the environment looking for whatever had spooked her.

  Her shield was very strong. It radiated power and was very, very complex. Victor had obviously trained her well in the three years that he had her under his tutelage. Her eyes widened as she spotted me. I wasn’t sure what I must have looked like now or if she actually recognised me, but her face immediately lost colour and I thought for a second that she was going to make a run for it.

  I didn’t want to scare her any further so I slowly walked towards her with my hands held before me. I hadn’t raised a shield or made any move to protect myself. This may have been a mistake. With the speed at which she was able to raise a shield, she would easily be able to strike me down before I could raise my own.

  Allie trembled as I got closer and her face fell into a mask of indecision and fear. She was looking at me as if I were death itself coming for her. Something had seriously scared the poor girl. What the hell had Victor done to this woman?

  “Allie,” I whispered.

  “No, no... no, “ Allie murmured, taking a hesitant step back.

  “Wait, please!” I begged. She looked poised for flight and whilst I could probably stop her, I didn’t want to do anything that might scare her off.

  Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to say much further as a shout from across the plaza interrupted us. Allie’s face fell as she realised who had called. It was her damned bodyguard. Where the hell had he come from? He had obviously been waiting for her and had been alerted by the use of Mana. Damn! I’d missed my opportunity.

  He was running towards us with a shield raised. The shield didn’t appear to be very well constructed. This didn’t count for much though, on occasion I’d used a roughshod shield as a form of deception to lure my opponents into a hasty action. I wasn’t going to fall for such an obvious trick.

  “Leave her alone!” he yelled as he barrelled through the park.

  A shield sprang up around me in response to the implied threat and I turned to Allie looking for confirmation. Allie was still staring at me as if I was a ghost. Her bodyguard appeared to be on a collision course with me. I think he intended to tackle me to the ground. A thread lanced out from him.

  With a flick of my wrist I sent a thread to intercept his. My thread easily knocked his aside and barrelled through to strike against his shield. The flare of my Mana thread impacting against his shield caused Allie to physically flinch. To my surprise the shield collapsed as if it were made of butter and my thread hit the guy on the side of the neck.

  It had happened so fast. I hadn’t meant to actually down the guy, merely to keep him from crashing into me. I’d known his shield was weak, but I had never expected it to be that weak! What kind of guard was he?

  Allie’s eyes narrowed in rage. She took a step towards me as if she was going to attack me. I glanced from her to the man I had just taken down in disbelief.

  Allie let out a shriek accompanied by a burst of Mana. The primal blast hit my shield buffering it. She took another step towards me. I couldn’t help but take a step back in the face of her anger. Power was flowing from her in waves. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to defend myself against her should she attack.

  Just when I thought a thread was about to come in my direction a strangled sob escaped Allie’s lips. She turned from me and ran over to the fallen man. She gathered him up in her arms and cradled his head against her chest. Tears were pouring down her cheeks as she looked at me.

  “Is this my punishment?” she sobbed at me, spitting her words at me, “I killed our father, so you kill him! It’s not fair! You should have taken it out on me!”

  “What are you talking about? Victor lied to you. You didn’t kill my Dad!”

  “No! Our dad! He was my dad too and I killed him!”

  “Allie, please!” I stammered, “you didn’t do it. You don’t know what you’re saying! You weren’t responsible! It’s not your fault!”

  “Yes!” Allie hissed. “Yes it is! I confronted him about it! I went to him and asked him. I asked him directly if he was my father and he said no!”

  Her face twisted with hate as she looked at me as her tears ran dry. The man in her arms wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if he was still even alive. A small trail of blood ran down from the corner of his mouth. I couldn’t see if his chest was moving or not. It didn’t look good though; the Mana in his body was gone.

  “He lied to me!” she snarled, “he said no! That he wasn’t my father
! But I could tell. I could tell he was lying! Why did he have to lie?”

  The sound of sirens rang out in the distance. Someone must have called the cops. The sound was getting closer, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to leave Allie like this. Let them come, I’d deal with them later.

  “I didn’t mean to do it!” She wailed, “it just... happened… and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to do it. It just happened.”

  I didn’t want to hear this. This just couldn’t be true, but staring into her hateful eyes I recognised truth when I heard it. I didn’t want to believe it, but Allie obviously did. She believed it with every fibre of her soul. In my darkest dreams I had never thought that my reunion with my cousin would go like this. How had this gone so wrong?

  “I killed your Dad!” Allie snarled, “… and now you’ve taken your revenge!

  “Justin had nothing to do with this,” she continued as she rose from the now still body. “You should have taken it out on me! I’m the one responsible. Justin had nothing to do with anything!”

  She took several steps towards me and my shield unconsciously strengthened itself in response to the threat. I didn’t have much time to get out of the way though. Allie shrieked at me and a thread arced out from her raised hands and hammered against my shield.

  The impact knocked the breath out of me. She was so powerful! I was amazed that my shield had been able to absorb the shock without sending me tumbling to my knees. Several more blows rang out and impacted against my shield. This was all going wrong, and it was going wrong very quickly.

  So far my shield was holding up but I was expending more and more energy to keep it held. Allie appeared to be getting angrier and angrier by the second that my shield hadn’t failed. For my part I was still reeling, I couldn’t comprehend that the one inflicting this damage was my cousin… or my sister or whatever she was to me.

  I deflected her next strike more on impulse than design and sent her thread careening into one of the trees that lined the park. The impact uprooted the tree and sent it tumbling down onto the side road and into a series of parked cars. Due to the laws of comedic timing a car alarm went off several seconds after the tree hit the ground.