From my point of view, everything is energy. Everything is magic. 

Only the normals, the humans who stay clear of the spiritual war all around us; only they are safe. Until they aren’t. 

These words, written as I sit in an ancestral chair of my grandfather, is a place of power. Great wisdom and power. That’s what old things and things that are charged by time and attention have. I write in my old notebook so that one day my children might have the history of their father, who was drafted into the war before he knew there was one, and so that I might remind myself of the things I could easily forget. And, I write this for you. So that you might learn the truth of the hidden world under your nose. That is, if anyone ever gets around to typing it and putting it out there. If you’re reading this now, then I suppose it finally has. 

Let it be known that so many legends you’ve read over your lifetime, the ones the world wants you to think aren’t real. Well, they are. All of them, in a manner of speaking, happened exactly as written. Faeries, dragons, monsters, spirits, and gods? Well, they’re all real. 

I hope that one day, you’ll grow to believe me. And that’s precisely what you’ll need to do to understand what I’m telling you now. Grow. Your. Understanding.

Because of the nature of my mind, and the way that my gifts work, it’ll be challenging to tell you my stories in a linear fashion. As I said, I was fighting in this war before I ever knew it. And maybe I’ll get around to telling you about the times I dwelled in the faerie realms before I even knew what I was doing. But because I didn’t know, it will be challenging. Hopefully the details come up as I go along. No promises.

What I do promise is the truth. I tell no spiritual lies. You might not believe me. But that’s besides the point. My children will. I’ll make sure of it.

My name is Will. Because I told you it is. And because I have one. A strong will is required for access to Source, that which we who wield magic draw upon. I’ve lived many lives in this one body. People believe I’m a madman for it. They’ve given me many names. But I’ve only accepted the ones that serve me.

Let’s start with the night I woke up by dying.

The shaman, OG Barber, it was his fault I died. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do me any harm. He saw something in me and wanted me to see it too. It just so happened that unlocking my third eye was a traumatic experience for me. I drank too much from the source, and that can do a guy in real good. 

“Turn right here and to the left,” OG Barber said to me.

“Right or left?” I asked.

“Right. Right here to the left.”

I nearly missed every turn as OG gave me misdirection after misdirection to Jake’s, the bar he and the other gifted people in Vegas spend their time recharging. I hit the gas and my car screeched left across four lanes to make the turn. It made me angry, but also excited. The adrenaline, the energy inside my body, my mind. 

Hypnotists are skilled at the power of suggestion and use it to influence people. They open doors in the mind and fill in holes with their words. That’s another form of magic. You could say my barber was a hypnotist, but I don’t like that word for him. I don’t know if all hypnotists know about the war. OG Barber certainly knows about the war. And the Darklings. He saw something in me like potential. All he was trying to do was use his gifts to wake up mine. He got more than he bargained for. 

Each word out of the mouth of a gifted person’s mouth are like fistfuls of energy when they use their will upon you. Each word out of OG’s mouth punched out my lights. Was he trying to confuse me? Trying to trick me? Yeah, the barber likes to do that to people sometimes; but when he did it to me, I fought back. And I learned quickly.

“Nancy is the street after this one, which is Margaret, and the one after is Diana. They are my girls and you know that my girls are good to me. You have to turn on the one before  the one after Margaret.”

I didn’t turn at all. I was already on to the trick. He wasn’t talking about street signs. He was speaking into my mind with his. Contrary to any of his words, his will was channeling something behind all the nonsense he was saying. And I heard the voice with my soul.

He was saying: Ignore everything I’m saying, and understand what my intentions are pushing into your mind. This is telepathy.

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I turned five streets down and to the left, and finally found my way to Jake’s. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Johnny Something was in the back seat freaking out. He couldn’t hear the conversation we were having under the street signs and stars on a random Las Vegas boulevard. “We should have turned back there. You’re going the wrong way.”

But we weren’t. OG Barber and I talked Chicken Talk. We talked nonsense the rest of the way to the bar, and yet we understood everything each other was saying. It wasn’t about the words. It was about the intention underneath it all.  And the energy that was being communicated between us. 

I let the barber take control of my body so I could learn. I broke free and took control over his body and manipulated him. Easy things, like scratch your beard and tap your nose. Before long I was taking control of Johnny Something. And he didn’t even know I was doing it. 

Telepathy and manipulation were the first skills I learned that night. But I learned too quickly and OG Barber got cocky. He wanted to see how much source I could draw in. So I drew it all in. I took in all the energy that the barber offered, and started to draw upon the source on my own until suddenly I could see through OG’s eyes. The way that some shaman can look through the eyes of a falcon they have a strong bond with from miles away. 

It was too much too soon for a green and unripe magician who only just learned there was such a thing as magic hiding under the threads of reality I had believed were scientifically fixed until just hours before. 

In Jake’s parking lot, I drew on so much source that my nervous system short-circuited. My heart stopped. I convulsed. 

OG Barber didn’t know what to do. He prayed over me and called the paramedics. Johnny Something bailed and got clear of the area. Didn’t want to be near any police when a white guy kicked it.

So there I was, in the car with no pulse. Convulsing in rhythm to a beat that only I could hear. I could have been a one man band drummer. Then I met the Source itself. It robbed me of words and… it revealed the existence of the war, the Circles all around the world competing for influence and power. It revealed the existence of the fae, and the power the dragons had across the world. 

It stole my language and gave me only emotion. It emptied me of all my hate and made me a prophet and a vagabond. It made me a child, stripped of pride and agency. It filled me with ecstasy and pure unadulterated joy. 

Then, it gave me a choice. 

You could be mine today. Or, you can go back and be my voice to bring Light against the Darkness. Choose now.

I wasn’t afraid. I knew what the voice of the universe wanted for me. I knew what I wanted for myself. 

Without words or language, it was impossible to answer in English or Spanish or any other language I knew words in. But I didn’t want to die. Not without doing something with my life. And so, with my intention, I answered.

YOUR MISSION IS MUSIC!

I was thrust back into my body and suddenly I was aware of the paramedics and OG Barber speaking shamanic nonsense over my corpse. Only, I wasn’t a corpse any longer. I was alive. And… I knew things. 

So filled with power, I connected with all the minds in the world that were open. I touched the faerie, the dragons, and the avatars of many gods all throughout the world. And I could tell they were angry. Suddenly, powerful spirits were assaulting me from every direction that I had extended my mind. 

They crushed my understanding and left me a feeble shadow of what I had been only moments before. Much of the time I spent fighting them is lost to me. The mind can only take so much of a beating before the trauma needs to be covered by silence and the warm blanket of forgetting.

“Holy shit, OG… What the hell was that?”

“Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy… Will, you’re alive? Jesus, Mary and the saints. You’re back.”

“I’m alright. I’m alright now,” I said. 

“No you ain’t, Will. The hell… You’re a crazy mother f… Do you know what you were doing just now?”

“Hey, cut it out, Barber. I’m not dead. I’m alright. I’m just forgetting. I’m not sure what just happened. There was a lot of me out there just now. I can’t hold it. I think I just died.”

“You did, Will. That’s why you aren’t okay. You need to get some water. Get calmed down. That was a lot. A lot of people died just now because of whatever you just did. They’re going to come after you now.”

“Who’s going to come after me?”

“Everybody. You’re going to have a target on your back. The Darklings. They’re especially pissed.”

“Do they know where I am? Do they know who I am?”

The tension eased on OG’s face. He wiped his eyes under his sunglasses. He’s a cool cat, that guy, wearing sunglasses at night. A real OG gangster.

“Not exactly. You were like something else just now. Everybody felt it. But I think, maybe, only everybody at Jake’s knows it was you. But only because they’re right there.”

“What do you mean?”

Just then, we heard a knock at the window on my side of the car. It nearly stopped my heart again, but just jump started it and reminded me that I needed to take better care of it after what happened.

A wise looking older gentleman was at the window.

“Everyone alright in there?” the man asked.

I opened the door and stepped out into the cool Vegas air. I didn’t even realize I’d been sweating until I felt the back of my shirt stick against my skin.

“Yeah, we’re good. Thanks.” I answered. And I extended my mind to brush the older gentleman’s. I felt his energy. It was like a lake of warm soothing water. He was a well of pure concern and friendliness. A bit of apprehension. 

I shared peace. I posed no danger to anyone at Jake’s. Or anyone anywhere. I was too tired and already forgetting much of what I had seen and felt. 

The man took my mental handshake and then extended his hand and shook my hand. 

“Let’s get you water and then get you home.”

What I had done was put a target on my back, though I didn’t learn the extent of the damage or exactly what it meant to have the Dark looking for me until later. Though not much later. I’d have my first encounter with a darkling only a few weeks later on my first official mission. The reprieve was welcome. I had fourteen days to reflect on what the Source meant when it told me that my mission was music. 

They didn’t know where I was or who I was, exactly. But the Dark knew I existed. And in my world, that’s a whole lot of bad looking to aim its sights at you and bring you down.