The problem with magical experiments was that you always ended up needing a human test subject. You could fiddle with the parameters and the equipment all you wanted, but at the end of the day, unless you wanted to risk trying it on yourself first, you had to find someone else with a magical signature similar to your own.
Ethan Dynas released a trickle of unflavoured magic into the optical fibre cable. His magic shot down the cable to the amplifying machine, which filled the cave with a strong, grass green illumination.
"Good. Very good."
Ethan stepped back and eyed the amplifying machine as a whole. He'd manifested it entirely using his own magic, which had taken him ages. It looked like the electric chairs they'd used to execute criminals when he'd been a child. Seven arms, each with a needle, hung over the machine, waiting to be plunged into each of the subject's bodily chakras. The calibration apparatus was attached to the side, like a large glass cabinet. A magic-nullifying cocoon hung above, to envelop the entire thing.
It was ready.
Now came the tricky part of returning to Earth to find a test subject.
Ethan looked around his workshop. He'd made his home in one of the luminescent caves that overlooked a fractal field. The cavern walls were translucent crystal. Soft crimson, evergreen, and violet lights danced in them. His sleeping bag was pushed against one corner, and his stash of canned goods lay against the back wall. Magical creatures filled this realm, but they were made of magic, not flesh. The food chain consisted of magical energy in its rawest form, a system that was fascinating, yet ultimately useless to a flesh and blood being like himself.
He'd tried to find a way to subsist off magic, had studied the way the Yotnar consumed magical energy to survive, but had never been able to make it work. Certainly a study in humility. Trying to sever ties to the human world for a time, and yet something so crass as his stomach being the tether that kept him going back.
Ethan chuckled to himself.
He was curious to return to Earth after all this time, even if it was only to find a test subject. He wanted to see how the world had changed in the two decades since he'd abandoned it. He wanted to taste fresh meat. A hamburger, maybe. He wanted to feel what it was like to walk in a city again, surrounded by other human beings. He wanted to feel the tingle of the sun on his face. He let out a low sigh. Good Lord.
Sure, he crossed the barrier between this realm and Earth occasionally to get supplies from the Dayak farmers in the river village nearest his lair, but it wasn't the same.
Ethan threw a heavy tarp over the amplification machine and weighed it down with big translucent crystal shards so heavy he had to augment his strength to carry them. Didn't want any curious magical creatures poking around and damaging something in his absence.
His informant in Puruk Cahu—he'd forgotten the local Indonesian term but the man was essentially a 'witch-doctor'—had sent him a message eighteen months ago saying that the Regulation Order had abolished the death penalty. A superficial change at best; a blatant show of the Order's rampant hypocrisy at worst. He might not face the headsman's axe if he went back, but he'd have to be delicate in returning. The Order's Rangers were everywhere.
He went to the mouth of the cavern, absently working through the spell he'd cast to search out someone with a magical signature similar to his own. He needed to figure out a way to distract the local Rangers wherever the test subject happened to be so he could cross the barrier between this realm and Earth unnoticed.
As he approached the mouth of the cavern something tickled his senses. He froze, like a squirrel that had seen a shadow pass along the ground in front of it, surveying the land before him. The fractal fields were a jagged landscape of the same translucent crystal as the cavern, dotted with crystal pillars and growths that shone with inner light. In the distance, a violet wyvern soared over it all, its scales glittering in the ambient light thrown off by the luminescent crystals.
Usually, he could hear the calls of the creatures that inhabited this area. Sounds you could never hear in the human world. Sounds his senses had evolved no instinctual reaction to. What sounded like the screech of banshee in the distance. The gruff bellow of a chimera protecting its territory.
But nearby the air seemed too still, like a breath held in anticipation. The change was so subtle, so ephemeral, Ethan knew that if he hadn't been living here for as long as he had, hadn't naturally grown closer and closer with his environment to the point where it was as much a part of him as he was of it, he would have missed it. Something had disturbed the creatures around his lair.
No, not something. Someone.
Ethan crept out to the mouth of the cave and peered around, suddenly on edge.
"I know you're here." He said.
The Ranger stepped out from behind a crystal growth halfway across the flat precipice outside Ethan's lair. This one was a tall man, gaunt like a scarecrow. His black Ranger's coat billowed out around his shins and his face rose above the coat's high collars like the blade of a worn, mean hatchet. Leather straps lined with pouches made an X on his torso, and a holster was strapped to his right hip. In it slumbered a beautiful glass revolver.
Ethan engaged his magic without thinking. He dropped into a stance and backed away to a safe distance, power roaring in his ears. He kept his face neutral, hiding his shock at this Ranger nearly getting the jump on him. Another few steps and he'd have walked right into an ambush. Sloppy. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been caught off guard like this and it made him angry.
The Ranger faced him full on, gloved fingers flexing, itching to be given an excuse to draw.
Ethan eyed the revolver at the Ranger's hip. It was magical, but to guess its effect was a fool's gambit. The magic revolvers most Rangers carried usually fired augmented projectiles designed to break through resilience spells or defensive wards, but this one looked different.
"How did you find me?" Ethan said, stalling for time to assess the Ranger. This was a hard man. A man who had killed. You came to be able to see it in their eyes. Ethan had fought Rangers before, unlucky ones who'd stumbled upon him, but this man was different. The unique revolver, the stance, the patiently prepared, nigh-perfectly hidden ambush just outside his lair. This man had hunted him. This man had been sent to kill him.
He tried to gauge the Ranger's magical abilities, but the looseness of his stance gave nothing away. He was most certainly a criminal hunter, which hinted at physical augmentation magics, the gun perhaps at projectile proficiency. The well hidden ambush bespoke a familiarity with the magical realm few possessed, perhaps even the ability to cast a veil for hours on end. But Ethan knew that the only thing more important in a fight than knowing your enemy's abilities was to not assume you knew them.
The Ranger's gaze never wavered, his stance never slackened. "A white man appears and vanishes repeatedly in a rural Indonesian village. One pieces things together."
"You don't know who I am. Leave, now." Ethan had no intention of letting the man walk away.
Raw, unchanneled magic crackled through the air between them.
The Ranger's hand flexed. "We know who you are. Who you really are. The Council offers you a fair trial if you return willingly."
There were no magic-nulling handcuffs Ethan could see or sense, and one man wouldn't be enough to take a convict to prison. A stalling tactic equal to his own.
Perhaps it was because he'd been alone for so long, perhaps it was because his combat edge had dulled just a touch, but at the realization that the Ranger had no intention of carrying him back to prison, Ethan grinned.
The Ranger drew the revolver and augmented his perception and speed.
Ethan augmented his perception and speed at the same time. His magic flowed through his body, down his limbs, imbuing his muscles and tendons and joints with magnitudes of power.
The whiplash quick movement of the Ranger's draw slowed to a movement through water. The hand eased the revolver out of the holster. The revolver's slender barrel began its ascent.
Ethan allowed only the briefest flicker of disgust that the Ranger had gotten the jump on him. He could afford no more. If the Ranger was going for the gun instead of casting it would be deadlier than most magics, perhaps unstoppable. Casting perception had given him time for one spell before that lethal barrel levelled out. The revolver could be anything from ultra powerful to tear through resilience spells, magically encased to shatter through wards, or even something as crazy as pure magic nullification.
Ethan couldn't guess what the revolver did; couldn't risk guessing wrong; couldn't waste moments thinking. So he cast a spell he knew the Ranger wouldn't have much of a defence against; a spell belonging to a branch of magic blacklisted by the Regulation Order.
Ethan entered the Ranger's mind.
The world vanished, the sensation of his own body dissipated, replaced with a synesthesia of colour, emotion, memory, assaulting his mind like a strong wind on a bluff. He fell through red hot anger, tempered in the coals of a forge. Nervous excitement like little electric shocks in darkness. And a ruthless eagerness like the lick of a tongue over shivering skin. For a moment he was shocked numb as if he'd plunged into icy water. His conscience was lost in the storm, his goal forgotten as he fell aimlessly through the chambers of the other man's mind.
Then he was running on a playground, up the stairs and down a metal slide that glinted in the sun and scorched skin that brushed it. Down and landing on the small pebbles at the bottom, sending them scattering. His brother chased down after him, ploughing into him and knocking them both over.
"Matthew, play nice!" His mother called. At the sound of her voice his gaze was immediately drawn to her. She sat on a park bench, a half-folded newspaper in one hand. Her golden hair glowed in the sun, her young features smooth and hale. A radiant half smile lit up her face as she looked at them, brighter than the sun, more beautiful than the whole world.
This isn't you. This is his memory.
He was walking across the graduation stage at Tisdale Academy. His stole and robe were heavy and hot and he was wondering why, in an academy for magic, no one was magically cooling the auditorium.
"Matthew Yale." The announcer called out. "1st in the 2006 graduating class. Winner of the 2005 Tisdale Tournament. Distinctive Honours."
Clasping the President's gnarled, shaking hand, smiling for the photos and his family sitting in the eaves, and all he could think about was how badly he wanted to be out from under the lights, out chasing down rogue mages like he had been during his final internship. How good it had felt when his mentor, Derrick, had let him clamp the magic-nulling handcuffs on a Deputy who had abandoned his post.
That isn't my name. I never went there.
He was looking at his own steady hands as the blood congealed in his palms and dripped onto the black ground beneath him. The rogue mage's corpse lay broken, twisted around the shelf of dark rock, blood still dribbling from the gaping hole Matthew had left in his chest. Somewhere to his left Amir's body was frozen to the ground, victim of the rogue mage's trap. And he felt nothing. No pain at Amir, no remorse at the body below him, no disgust at the blood.
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What would his mother think? That he'd killed a man? That he felt nothing but a low, grating satisfaction? But this is what he had to be. This was what he was made to be. Someone had to do it, someone had to keep the lunatics in check, someone had to protect those that couldn't protect themselves, and he was good at it, very good at it. What was more, he liked it.
No, no. This is not me. Get it together, Ethan!
He tore himself away from the onslaught of the other man's brain. He could sense the Ranger's-
Matthew's
-defences mounting, his willpower taking shape as he recovered from the shock of the psychic attack, there at the edge of Ethan's sensation like assassins encircling an encampment at night. Ethan didn't dare risk locking wills with this man. He flitted through the chambers of the mind with the speed that comes only with lengthy experience, avoiding the memories that momentarily consumed him and the personal grooves and tracts of logic and emotion that one could settle into as easily as a train switching tracks. The chambers were closing off one by one as the Ranger's mental bulwarks increased, squeezing Ethan out like pus from a zit. Ethan soared back and accessed the topmost layer of the Ranger's mind, shifting his magic as he did so. He managed to twitch the nerves in the man's dominant hand, then bounced himself back into his own mind.
Suddenly, Ethan was perceiving the real world again.
The Ranger's dominant hand opened and the glass gun dropped from it, glittering as it fell to the ground. He reeled from the psychic attack, leaving a split second opening.
For a moment Ethan considered a force-ward, or a potent blast of fire, both quick projectiles. But no. He had to close the distance between them before the Ranger could recover the gun or retreat. He could attack from range, but he trusted his gut that this man was a good projectile fighter. He knew enough about the Order to know that a manhunter Ranger like Yale would have his choice of magical weapon. You wouldn't pick a gun if you liked to get in close.
Ethan pushed off and launched himself at the Ranger with his augmented strength, covering the distance as if shot from a rifle.
The Ranger's eyes blazed with fervour and he leapt backwards. A spell built up in him, quick as a whip, and he raised his hand to cast.
Ethan hissed, gathered the magic in his limbs, and threw it out into the ground between himself and the Ranger. It left his body weak, vulnerable, suddenly slow moving, but he kept the magic in his mind augmenting his perception so he could cast as quickly as the other man.
A jagged white flash like a bolt of lightning shot out from the Ranger's hand, zigzagging across the space between them. At the same time, Ethan raised his hand and a crystal sprout the size of a man jutted up out of the ground. The bolt smashed into it, shattering it.
Ethan dragged the magic he'd used to transform the crystal back into his body, augmenting his strength once again. He blew through the shattered wreck of the crystal, the shards glimmering in the air, a storm of jagged, rainbow raindrops.
The Ranger started to cast another spell, but Ethan closed the gap between them first.
Ethan slid most of his magic into his fist to augment the force and punched at the Ranger's face. The Ranger turned the strike aside with his forearm, then countered with a quick jab. Ethan dragged his magic back into his torso, strengthening its resilience, and took the blow on his pec. They traded blows for a moment; an entire martial arts contest compressed into the space of one blurry instant. Ethan slid past an open palmed strike, snaking in close, sending most of his magic to his fist to augment the blow. The Ranger anticipated his move and bashed his elbow into Ethan's now semi-vulnerable nose. Crack. Blood spurted out and his head rocked, stars exploding in his eyes.
Despite the pain, he surged forward, grappling the Ranger, trying to hook his leg. The Ranger avoided. They fell to the smooth crystal ground together and rolled over, shattering crystal spindles. Ethan grunted as he took a hard knee to his abs, and pushed the Ranger down.
Now was his chance.
Ethan sent his magic out again and transformed the crystal ground around them. Sprouts of crystal shot out of the ground, entrapping the Ranger's grasping arms. The Ranger surged against the binds, a spell building in him.
Ethan was quicker. He tore his magic back and mixed fire and force and drove a lance of magic and augmented strength into the Ranger's torso.
The Ranger's body convulsed—his magic dissipating—then went limp.
Ethan stumbled back and fell on his ass, breathing heavily. Blood ran out of his shattered nose, soaking his shirt. His abs cramped.
"Fuck."
With the immediacy of the fight over, the Ranger's memories and life, fresh from Ethan's time inside the man's head, assaulted him.
"It's not real. They're his memories. Not yours. You didn't know him."
Ethan's head dropped to his chest. He squeezed his eyes shut, but Yale's life, his feelings, and the terrible fact that Ethan had cut him off before his time, were too fresh. He gave in, and let them play through his mind like a movie he couldn't stop.
He'd killed a man, a man with a family, with hopes and dreams, who'd laughed and cried, who'd loved and was loved. He'd ripped him away from his friends, his family. Murdering a man who had attacked him was one thing, murdering a man he now knew as well as a childhood friend, even a brother, was another.
Every time he used Neuromancy, it ended up like this. The Order had banned it for a reason. All the banned magics were banned for a reason. It would be weeks, maybe months, before he could flush Yale's life from his head.
The first time he'd done this he'd bawled his eyes out for days afterwards, had nearly gone insane with anguish and grief and the horror at what he'd done. Every time he'd closed his eyes the life of the man he'd murdered had been right there.
But that had been a long, long time ago. He couldn't even remember that first man's name. Squeezed out by the dozens that had come after.
How many other lives had flashed into his head, and then been squeezed out again? At first, each time was a horrifying experience that plagued him for weeks on end, forced him to constantly distract himself lest he think about the other's life. Eventually, there had been a point where he'd become mildly curious with them, sometimes perusing through the memories and feelings—especially the extreme moments of love or joy, or even pain—like they were items of clothing at a thrift store.
But even that wore off after a while. One man's life started to seem an awful lot like another. The love, friendship, joy, pain, anguish, terror, all started to blend together, then started to feel the same, then started to feel like nothing at all. He'd seen this story before. He'd probably see it again. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat. Until everything was faded and nothing really mattered.
If anything, after the initial bombardment of Yale's life—like a sudden implant into his head—had worn off, Ethan found that the only thing he felt was a mild irritation that he'd have another life floating around in there for a while.
He rose to his feet and wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve.
The fractal fields were still silent, the crystalline surfaces glowing with their eerie internal light. It would be some time before the large creatures came out once more.
Back to the task at hand. The spell required to search out a relative match to his magical signature would require much mental preparation.
In the meantime, he opened a portal to Earth, hefted the Ranger's body onto his back, and stepped through. The rainbow tunnel between worlds swarmed him and then he was out and onto a bald face of rock high up in the Kalimantan jungle. He eased the Ranger's body down. Then he gently closed the man's eyelids, and stood for a moment in the sun. The beautiful sun.
Ethan wiped his blood on some leaves and returned to the magical realm and headed back down into the fractal fields. His nose started to throb sharply, but he ignored it as best he could. Translucent crystals rose up on either side of him like great shelves of ice. Their surfaces shimmered and rippled with faint colours, expressions of the magic contained within.
He cleared his mind and pressed his palm to the smooth, hard surface of one of the shelves. He closed his eyes. Beneath his palm, the crystal's magic beat like a heart. He let it flow into him, over him. His sensation plummeted into the surface, through it, into the heart of the fractal fields, then into the underlying latent magic that made up the fabric of this realm. He threaded his own magic out, using the fabric as a conduit that carried him across the realm in its entirety.
He felt the tiny impressions human mages made. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of them. The weight of their magic distorted the magical realm as gravity distorts space-time, bled over into this realm just as this world's magic bled over into theirs.
He fed his own latent energy into the spell, flavouring it to lock in onto similar signatures. He expected to have to expand the field but was shocked almost out of the spell when it locked into a target instantly. Not just a very close match, a perfect match.
Ethan broke out of the spell and eagerly opened another portal. He emerged into a forest of crystal not totally unlike the one where he'd made his lair. The crystals here were taller, soaring up into the sky, more cubic, almost man-made looking. Usually a sign of a city on the other side of the barrier.
Noises filled the forest. Distant shrieks of creatures, and closer, subtler ticks and buzzes. His entrance had startled a water sprite, a globular humanoid made of a clear liquid that floated through the air. It bubbled and slipped through the cracks between two crystal pillars.
Ethan backed up against a low crystal shelf and squatted down and observed his surroundings. He had to be careful here. His magic was low from the searching spell and the fight with the Ranger. He couldn't afford a fight with a big Consumer.
A small creature, like a spider made of glass, scuttled near him, noticed him, then disappeared into thin air. Lots of magical creatures here. Definitely a city on the other side.
The spell had given him a rough approximation of his subject's location. He'd need to cross over into the human realm and perform a secondary search there, crossing the barrier but that would take magic, and alert nearby Rangers. If he was right and it was a city on the other side of the human realm, it would likely have its own detachment of Rangers, perhaps even its own Regulation Sanctuary. He needed something to distract them while he opened a portal into their city.
Ethan took off through the crystal forest at a lope. All he needed was to find a big Consumer, feed it enough magical power until it grew unstable and shattered the barrier between the worlds and entered Earth. The Regulation Order's primary purpose was to manage creatures that gained too much power and crossed over so there weren't magical creatures running around cities constantly. Intentionally inducing a crossover was punishable by death—well, not anymore, apparently.
Ethan chuckled.
However, if there was one thing he agreed with the Order on it was that feeding magical creatures and deliberately bringing them into the human world was a big no-no. You upset the balance, caused all sorts of ripple effects throughout this world and Earth. Inevitably, nature would viciously attempt to reassert the balance. Not good. But, necessary for what he needed to accomplish.
He hunted down small creatures like the spider he had seen, and some larger ones like the water sprite and carried their corpses with him. It wasn't difficult. Sneaking up on them, blasting them with fire or force, and collecting the corpses.
An enraged shriek echoed throughout the forest.
Ethan grinned. He knew that sound. The defensive call of a Phoenix. Perfect. He hurried through the gradually rising forest, vaulting low shelves of crystal, climbing up bare faces with augmented hands.
At the top of the rise was a small clearing. The Phoenix blazed in all its glory, bathing the clearing in red and gold. It was like a massive eagle with a wingspan wider than a small room. Red and gold flames wreathed its body, were its body. Its eyes were dark rubies, its beak and talons burnished gold.
Ethan raised a hand to block the heat coming off it in waves. It must have just fought and ate, because it was powerful, close to the threshold.
The Phoenix saw him and shrieked. Its crest blazed bright, the flames burning wider in some peacock-like show of strength. Ethan tossed the carcasses of all the creatures he'd killed on his way up at the Phoenix. It hesitated only a second, then began pecking and chewing them.
Ethan grinned. Even with all that majesty, it was still just an impulse-driven animal.
Silver blood leaked out of the creatures. The Phoenix slurped it up, grew bigger, brighter, its talons stretching into claws, its beak curling viciously.
Ethan felt the crossover before he saw it. The air around the Phoenix warped, dragging around the big bird as if it had become cloth. The Phoenix brightened to a silhouette of gold, then ripped through reality as if it were a flimsy blanket. For a split second Ethan glimpsed sidewalk and concrete through the ragged hole, then the Phoenix had fallen through and the fabric began to knit itself together.
Ethan raced down the slope from the rise, laughing like a madman. When he was far enough away he opened his own portal, went down the rainbow tunnel between realms, and stepped though into Earth.
He emerged in an alleyway off a busy pedestrian square. Smells assaulted him instantly. Cigarette smoke. Concrete. Food. Smog. The weight in the air before a rain. A scruffy man leaning against the alley wall smoking a cigarette saw him step out of thin air. The man's jaw hit his chest and the cigarette fell from his mouth.
"Morning." Ethan said.
He strode out of the alley and into the pedestrian square. The sun hit him square in the face, tingling along his skin, making his hair hot. He sighed as he surveyed his surroundings, hands in pockets. He let his eyes be caught by the bright advertisements, the colourful fast-food chain shops, the increasingly odd clothing people wore, the majesty of the tall glass towers rising around him. So many people. So many faces, eyes, shapes and sizes. Incredible.
It was good to be among the mortals again.
Ethan laughed. A woman weighed down by several shopping bags looked at him weirdly and hurried away. He stuck his tongue out at her back.
Across the square people flowed in and out of a bunker-like entrance to an underground area. A sign across the top read: Vancouver City Centre.
Vancouver then, in Canada. A fairly large city if he remembered his geography correctly. Good to know. Not that it mattered much to him. His subject was here in this city, somewhere amongst the millions. Now it was a matter of recharging his magic and searching them out.
Ethan grinned, then started strolling through the city streets. Until his magic replenished it would be good to immerse himself in the world again. Maybe get a hot meal. Maybe see what they were teaching in school nowadays. Maybe catch up on the events he'd missed. Maybe see what new technologies had been created. Ah, but the possibilities were endless...