1814: Untitled, Chapter 6

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His eyed darted one way then the other; his awareness heightened, his mind feeling more alert and agile than it had done for months.

He couldn’t see his quarry; it seemed that they were long gone… or were they?

He stood up straight and clasped his hands together in front of him. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He reached out with his mind and felt like his consciousness was separating from his body, scanning the area, searching, probing. Then his eyes snapped open, and it was back where it should be.

A flash of golden light. Or, more accurately, a streak. It raced towards him at such a velocity that he nearly didn’t have time to leap out of the way, but his heightened reflexes meant that by the time the golden swoosh had reached where his body was standing just a moment ago, he had already leapt high in the air and was gracefully floating down to face his assailant.

During all this, Magnus remained dimly aware of his own self, but at the same time felt as if he was trapped in his own body: his form a prison from which he could only look out and wonder how he could possibly ever perform such physics-defying feats. He could not find a rational explanation for it because there simply wasn’t one; whatever was happening was simply ignoring what he had, up until recently, considered the inviolable laws of the universe.

He landed on the rooftop softly; first one foot, then the other, and gazed across at his attacker, who was standing on the next building over, hands on hips in a confident expression of superiority, for it was a humanoid figure — or perhaps even a human figure. It was difficult to tell for sure, since the radiant golden glow that seemed to emanate from within the figure’s very skin made making any details out somewhat difficult, but he recognised the outline as a male form; trim, fit and tall, very different from the way he saw himself in his mind’s eye.

For a moment, he simply stared at the figure, and it stared back at him; a second later, there was another golden streak, and the figure was standing right in front of him. The golden radiance dazzled him, but he also noticed that the figure appeared to be casting no light on the rooftop beneath his feet; he was simply glowing in an otherworldly manner that, even in his detached state, Magnus found somewhat unsettling.

“Hi,” said the figure in a low voice. “I guess you’re not happy.” Magnus could, from this distance, barely make out a mocking smirk on the figure’s face.

“To put it mildly,” growled Magnus, the words coming out of his mouth before he was even aware what he was saying. The sensation was frightening; something was in control of him, and he seemingly had no influence over what was being said or done — or what was going to happen next.

Magnus lunged forward, the same dark tendrils that had brought him to the rooftop in the first place once again erupting from his hands, this time desperately seeking the golden figure. But it was too late; the figure had already moved to another rooftop with such rapidity that he may as well have been teleporting.

“Well, tough shit,” called the golden figure in a mocking tone. “I got one of yours, and before they even knew what was going on. Oh, it was so sweet seeing the life drain out from behind those desperate, sad eyes; how she finally realised that her embracing of the Dark had brought her to the end of her own existence. Delicious. Anyway, got to dash! Later!”

The figure swept off over the rooftops, and before long was out of sight. Magnus considered giving chase, but even in his current state of consciousness, he knew that was a fruitless effort. Instead, he leapt from the rooftop and floated down into the alleyway, an incorporeal cloak of black flowing from beneath his outstretched arms as he defied the laws of gravity without a second thought. Then, as he touched the ground, the primal feeling was gone; he looked at his hands, and the strange, gnarled, mottled appearance they had taken on was gone, too.

He bit his tongue and winced, and realised that he was once again in full control of his own actions; though the biting of the tongue was accidental, it was a perfectly normal thing for him to do, and certainly a far cry from his unusual descent from atop the building.

He looked up and contemplated quite how high the structure was; not only was there no way he should have been able to get up there, thanks to the broken fire escape, but there was no way he should have been able to survive getting back down in the way he did, either. And yet here he was, without a scratch on him, considering the baffling events that had just transpired.

It took him a moment to remember the prone figure of the girl. She was still lying where he had left her; she was obviously dead, though he couldn’t tell how long she had been that way.

“How tragic,” came a voice from behind him. He jumped and span around. As he did so, the world seemed to shimmer and twist, and suddenly everything seemed different to how it had done a moment ago; the air was thicker and darker, and the walls seemed to be covered with things that had not been there before: both words and indecipherable symbols, splattered in the same carefree painter’s hand he had by now seen several times, though they covered the walls with such thick, overlapping intensity that it was impossible to work out what — if anything — any of them were trying to say.

As fast as his heart was beating, he found himself unsurprised to discover the shadowy, silhouetted female figure standing in the alleyway, her pose making it clear that she was contemplating the situation somewhat philosophically, even as it was impossible to make out any of her facial features. She had obviously appeared out of nowhere, but it was already very apparent to Magnus that whatever he had found himself involved with did not involve rational explanations, so he didn’t dwell on it.

“You… knew her?” he asked hesitantly, unsure quite how to address the figure.

“No,” she said. “But I — we — could have done. A life cut tragically short before she could realise her potential.”

A pause.

“Stacey Barman,” said the figure, with the practiced, measured tone of a detective on a crime show. “Twenty-four years old. A wannabe actress, struggling to make ends meet in a scuzzy, cheap, traveller’s hotel.” Here, the figure gestured to the building on one side of the alleyway, which Stacey had apparently come out of before she met her demise. “She was born in the wrong place at the wrong time and made a lot of the wrong choices. Things were not going well for her.”

This sounded alarmingly familiar to Magnus. He felt sorry for Stacey, but he felt that at least part of the empathy he felt towards the dead girl was self-pity because, even from that simple description, he related to her. He may not have been a struggling actor or working in a hotel, but he knew well the feeling of having made a series of poor choices that led to a seemingly inescapable bad situation.

“Our Stacey here may not have been having a lot of luck with life,” continued the shadowy figure, by now pacing around the dead girl’s corpse as if searching for evidence, “but, as I’m sure you know, that only helped draw her towards our side.” She sighed. “She could have been a powerful one. All that dark energy, gone to waste.”

Suddenly, the figure was in Magnus’ face. He wasn’t sure if she had simply moved quickly or had actually vanished from one spot and reappeared in another.

“This is what I was talking about,” the figure hissed. “Stacey shouldn’t have died here. She should have awoken. She should have been like you. But instead, here she is, and once again the Light mocks our efforts and desires for the world to remain in balance; the delightful chaos and unpredictability of existence, at this rate, will be little more than a memory for those of us who are even alive, or…” — here she paused a moment — “…at least aware enough to remember it.”

Magnus wasn’t quite sure how to respond. As he’d said to Dora earlier, the shadowy figure had previously explained the nature of the conflict between the Light and the Dark, but he hadn’t understood what that meant. Now, the grim reality was starting to sink in to his mind; there was a war on, and he wasn’t sure he was on the winning side.

The alleyway was silent for a moment as both Magnus and the shadowy figure continued to contemplate the corpse of Stacey Barman, the warmth of life rapidly leaving her still form as she continued to lie where she had fallen, exposed to the elements, seemingly unwanted and unloved.

Magnus felt an intense surge of pity for her, and seemed to feel something building up inside himself.

“No,” said the figure, not turning to face him. “It’s too late for her. But there’ll be other chances. For now, you should see to it that she is taken care of.”

The strange patterns and words on the walls seemed to twist and shift again, then the shadowy figure was gone, and Magnus was left standing alone in the alleyway.

He dropped to his knees in front of Stacey Barman’s body and felt himself starting to cry. He wondered if this could have been him — why it wasn’t him — and what all this meant. His mind was a jumble of complex emotions and confused interpretations of everything that had happened recently.

He let the tears flow; he knew better than to try and stop his emotions from overflowing when they were bubbling up like this. And, as he’d experienced so many times before, the storm eventually calmed; the pouring of tears slowed; gulping, sobbing gasps gave way to more regular breathing. It was always calm after the storm; he was always at his most rational after he had allowed himself to overflow and explode. He knew what he needed to do.

He pulled out his phone — which had somehow managed to stay in his pocket amid the earlier chaos — and called for the emergency services. He reported Stacey’s body, and its location, and that she had already passed away. Then, once he was satisfied he had done his duty, he headed back up the alleyway he had earlier made the ill-fated decision to investigate; before long, he was back on the road, his pace quickening until he broke into a jog, then a full-on run.

He reached the front door of his building as he heard the howling of sirens in the distance.

“I’m sorry, Stacey,” he said out loud to himself as he looked up at the moonlit, cloudy sky. “I wish I could have helped you. But I hope wherever you are now that you find happiness and peace.”

He opened the door to his building, unlocked his flat’s front door, went inside without turning any of the lights on and collapsed face-first onto the bed. He didn’t wake up — or even move — until the following morning.