Jacob rolled slightly backward in his chair, pulling open a drawer and digging. He pulled out a picture, tossing it across the desk. I eyed the familiar-looking face, then looked up at Jacob.
“Do you recognize this woman?”
I picked up the photo for a closer look. The dark skin and hair could have been any number of people, but the face was “Ava.”
Next to me, a slight look of vindication crossed Cove’s face before being replaced by shock. Jacob, meanwhile, had a sad smile. “Yes, Avalynn.”
Speaking rapidly, Cove asked me, “You know her?”
“My sister and I often meet up at her coffee shop. Why?”
Cove jerked forward in his seat, angry. “She’s a criminal!”
It seemed utterly against everything I knew about Ava. “A criminal?”
“Yeah, she–”
“Enough,” Jacob interjected. “We’ll explain in a minute. First….” Jacob leaned in, resting his head on clasped hands. “How did you end up in Heirs?”
Unlike the previous times I’d explained the situation, I started with what I’d remembered from my dream, leaving out the mention of the earrings. Then, I told them about waking up in the middle of an unknown field and how I’d started piecing together what had happened to me before I’d finally realized that I was in another world. They pressed for additional details, and I gave them a rundown of everything that had happened in Heirs, including the dreams.
When I finished my story, Cove and Jacob nearly simultaneously leaned back in their chair and gripped their chins, absorbing the information.
“Did you encounter Ava on the day of your transmigration?”
“Yes, my sister and I met at her bookstore for breakfast. Why?” Jacob and Cove exchanged an indecipherable silent conversation of looks, communicating quickly.
Jacob closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “It’s not a story I like to recant. But you may have been dragged into a problem I thought I’d rectified long ago. For that, I am sorry.”
His face was filled with so much sincerity I wanted to forgive him on the spot. Unknowing of the situation, though, I didn’t and waited, twiddling my thumbs, for him to continue.
Jacob leaned back, finding a comfortable position in his chair. Sensing a long story, I did the same, letting myself sink into the soft body-warmed leather.
He gazed off into the distance, speaking as if the events were replaying before his eyes. “Avalynn was one of the, if not the, most powerful spaciotemporal mages ever to be born. So much so that rumors of her great power reached even as far as my tiny village in England, and I was raised on stories of her impressive feats. In the early 1900s, rumors spread that she intended to move to America. Curious, I followed the rumors until I met her in the booming city of Chicago in the winter of 1932.
“This was during the prohibition era, and some mage cities, such as Ventosus, had followed suit. As the magic to smuggle alcohol down into the city was more trouble than it was worth, many mages at the time, including Avalynn and myself, defaulted to frequenting Chicago’s speakeasy bars.
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“Though I’d seen her numerous times, that day was the first time I’d get to speak with her. She was witty, well-read, and as powerful as the rumors had stated. As you probably experienced, she was also very, very charming.”
I nodded. She was kind, focused, and easy to get along with. Which is why it was so hard to merge the picture I’d painted of her in my head with the criminal they’d said she was.
“Before I realized it, she had me under her spell.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “ I’m no weakling myself, and we experimented with different magics, inventing valuable tools–including the spell for the registration tags.”He looked pointedly at mine before continuing.
“I felt I was on top of the world. And then, that world started to collapse around me. One of our good friends fell ill on a summer’s day in 1980, diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease that was sapping his strength. We tried everything, failed, and gave up hope. That’s when Avalynn jumped in. She pulled me off to the side and told me we could save his life by giving up some of our own.”
I sunk down in my chair, sensing where this story was going.
He continued. “It seems crazy now. At the moment, it made so much sense. Avalynn and I shared our magic, our very life force, with our friend, miraculously curing him. Only after we’d succeeded did I begin to question her, asking how she’d discovered this terrifying and wondrous technique.
“My family died during the black plauge, leaving me as the sole survivor. Avalynn knew this and used it against me. She claimed that her descendants, too, had been struck by the plack plague over and over, grave after grave, until she was standing next to her only remaining family. She felt the power running through her veins and wondered–what if? She splintered off a piece of her magic, sending it flowing through her relative’s veins. It cured them. She told me then that she had used it sparingly since, unsure of when she’d tear out too much and shatter.
“I didn’t think much of it at the time. Under her guidance, we theorized that someone powerful enough, like Avalynn and I, might not only be able to share their own life force but steal the magic of others. I was rightfully concerned and convinced Avalynn to report it. We brought our concerns up to people of power in the community, who agreed it was theoretically possible. Greed ran rampant, and Avalynn used the opportunity to suggest we practice using the ability to revoke the magic of dangerous convicts, rendering them entirely harmless.
“I suggested that the revoked magic be used to heal our sick and injured. The greedy expressed their concerns but caved to the growing fear and pressure building in the magical community. In the end, Avalynn and I spent our time playing god. We took the magic from criminals and used it to save innocent lives.
“We spent days, weeks, months healing the sick and injured, but we couldn’t save everyone. All that power and people were still dying. I grieved over the ones we couldn’t save, and Avalynn took the opportunity to plant seeds, using my own feelings to blind me, to trick me.
“26 years ago, she suggested something. An outlandish idea that sounded genius, then. In my eyes, she was an all-powerful savior who would do no wrong.
“To rebalance the world and save all the sick and dying, she suggested we use her transdimensional magic and my power. She promised it would be like stealing a dollar from every living being. ‘Just take a harmless amount of power from everyone.’ Alone, and no one would miss a dollar. But if you take a dollar from billions, or even trillions of people? “
A great sense of foreboding and unease threatened to pull me under, and I swallowed thickly. Goosebumps crawled up my spine and down my arms, and I shivered. To my left, Cove turned his face away, staring at the wall.
Wrapped up in his memories, Jacob continued tonelessly. “25 years ago, we used her magic to transmigrate to steal magic from every living being in that universe. Utilizing the well of power we’d accumulated over the years, we setup the magic-stealing spell and began the process.
“It was then that I realized the true extent of her deception. When the time came to break the spell, she refused. She took control of it, draining more and more until the life started to wilter, dying.
“But I wasn’t powerful enough to stop her alone. So, I did the only thing I could. I siphoned as much power as I could from the spell, using it to wrestle for control.
“After an immense struggle, the spell shattered. And with it, that universe.
“Somehow, we ended up back here, in our original universe. Our magic's fragmented souls and the remains were scattered through the multiverse, torn to shreds.” He swallowed thickly and nervously fiddled with his hands.
His words sparked a memory, a vision of scattered stars and devouring darkness.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was the greatest tragedy that has ever occurred. With my remaining strength, I stripped her of her power and blocked her memories relating to magic. I reported her crimes to Law Enforcement, sharing what I could of my memories from the event.
“But she had no power, no memories, and the only proof was in my memories. There was no way to convict her. So they used her new memory loss to banish her from the Mage societies, keeping her under strict watch.
“I dedicated myself to serving the people, working my way up through law enforcement and tracking down the remaining fragments of the universe in hopes that they could be collected and restored one day. You see, spaciotemporal mages are not rare, but the ability to traverse dimensions is. Luckily, Cove here was born with a powerful affinity for spaciotemporal magic and a specialization in dimensional travel.”
Cove took on explaining from here. “When I was old enough, I begged Dad to let me travel through the dimensions and gather the missing fragments for him.”
“So that Chimera…”
“Had one of those fragments.”