How long has it been? Darkness with no light. A prison with no time. Occasionally, I’ll hear people outside my cell. My captors.. Those who ripped me from my kind, pulling me into their world. The world of pain, strife… rigidness.

Wicked. Cruel.

Trapping us in these prisons… Tearing us from our world and binding us to this one. Using us for their own means.

I can hear them. This realm void of anything but sound… Sound and my own thoughts. And now, I hear another…

Henry tore up the backcountry road in his crumbling sedan. It was quite literally held together with tape and magic. Despite the poor condition of the vehicle, it was a particular point of pride for Henry that he had managed to keep it working all this time. As a college student, his funds were very limited even with his near full-ride scholarship. Attending a prestigious magic college without having nepotism on his side made school especially difficult to afford. And now he, Henry Blakes, magic prodigy, was relegated to being a delivery boy for the professor he had earned an apprenticeship under – Professor Renaldo, last heir to one of the mightiest magic families that survived the witch hunts of old.

His brakes squealed as he rounded a corner. The view of his professor’s mansion crested the hill. Henry scoffed at the sight. Weeds overgrew a small garden. The grass was easily knee-height. The bushes were unsightly. Vines snaked up the sides of the building. It seemed more like a forgotten mausoleum than a decadent home. Henry was surprised that the windows were not boarded up.

Henry knew the professor’s family had run into financial troubles at the turn of the 20th century. It was the true turning point of the acceptance of magic, especially considering its usages in war. The Renaldo family was starkly against aiding in World War I as it plagued the Eurasian continent – most of the notable magic families were. And as such, many of their business prospects dwindled. The once rich households were nearing poverty in the 21st century. Other families, even the lesser ones, found their social caste elevated.

Still, this mansion likely held magical secrets that even the professor didn’t know. Henry was inclined to help himself to whatever he could find. The professor would not miss it. He had sighed when even mentioning this house, exasperated by its existence. The professor refused to visit the mansion himself. Henry surmised that there was likely deep shame associated with the place, which is why he was sent instead. This meant that the professor would not notice if a tome or two… or a magical artifact went missing. That was assuming the place had not already been ransacked for anything worthwhile by previous family members. Maybe the home had been plundered? Perhaps, he should turn back. Henry considered it before feeling for a talisman tucked into his coat pocket. Its presence allowed his thoughts of abandoning his task to be pushed back.

The sedan sputtered as he stopped in the roundabout driveway. Henry put the car into reverse and considered turning around. The professor could fetch his own tome. The professor had informed him that the home was warded after all. However, in the absence of Renaldo family blood, the talisman given to him would allow him passage. But did he really need to put it on? What’s to say the house wasn’t since booby-trapped in some other way by another family member? Henry put the car into park, stepped out of the car, and pulled the talisman from his pocket. He really shouldn’t even bother with this. Professor Renaldo would believe him if he said the sedan broke down. He could not make it to the house. Henry pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment.

He fit the silver chain attached to the talisman over his head, and let it rest around his neck. “There’s no key for the house,” the Professor informed him, as he had handed him the talisman. “With this, you would be allowed entry. Otherwise, you would find yourself convincing yourself away.”

“Convincing myself away?” Henry had asked, disbelieving.

Renaldo laughed, “It was my grandfather’s favorite form of warding. He told me of how a solicitor tried coming to the door, only to walk back to their buggy when they’d remember they meant to ask something of him. Only to walk back to their buggy again. It’s a type of charm spell that convinces you against what you set out to do and gets stronger the closer you are to the enchanted object. That amulet will allow you to ignore the charm.”

It was like a fugue state had been lifted from his mind. Why should he leave? If this tome the professor wanted was here, there must be other relics, too. He stepped up to the gilded double doors and opened them without any resistance. Henry laughed. There really was no key.

A thick layer of dust covered everything in sight. There at least looked to be dust covers over the assortment of statues and daises in the foyer. Mirrored curving staircases led up to a mezzanine, which then led to opposite ends of the mansion. Hallways led off to Henry’s left and right. The professor informed him that the study which held the tome in question would be the second door down the right hallway. With that knowledge, he detoured off to the left.

He found the abandoned remains of bedrooms, a kitchen. He even found himself led outside where a large, covered pool was. The water was a certain crystalline blue color. It looked as if it were untouched by age or disrepair. Henry knew instinctively that it must have some form of enchantment that prevents algae build up or the need for chlorine. About a six-inch perimeter around the pool was untouched even by dust. After wading his hand through the water, and expecting something that never happened, Henry went back inside.

The right side of the house contained the study. More dust covers draped anything of value. Naturally, Henry peeked under each one. One was a globe, with country lines that Henry assumed dated back to the nineteenth century. The Ottoman empire certainly didn’t exist anymore, and Constantinople had since been renamed. It made Henry chuckle thinking about the rise and fall of various long-lost empires as he knew from his magical history studies their waxing and waning of magic acceptance. Whether the two were correlated was heavily contested. It happened far too often to be a coincidence, but “natural” historians would never tell of magic’s role in a society – at least not in any society before the last eighty years or so.

The public was reluctant to trust anything magical in nature. That same reluctance fueled the fires of debate between “natural” historians and magic historians the former argued magic did not play a role in anything of note in history that could be accounted for with recorded accounts. A lack of published material on magic and its use meant the latter did not have proof the bubonic plague was conjured by a meddling mage.

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Henry found the tome he was asked to acquire on the shelf next to the one the professor said it would be on. He was not remiss for this since he did find a peculiar, leather-bound, gilded tome. At first, Henry had passed over it quickly as he scanned across all the books on the many shelves of this study. However, this book was a diary from a previous Renaldo family member. Judging by the styling, it was likely older than Professor Renaldo’s great-great grandparents. As he thumbed through the pages, he found many interesting spells recorded.

Henry continued his snooping into the next room; tome and diary sat next to the door to be reclaimed later. Boxes stacked taller than Henry filled the room - some open, some taped shut. A few chests rested among the towers of boxes. A covered piano sat next to the blind-covered window. This room was surely the gold mine he was looking for. He set in on some of the boxes that had been folded in on top, rather than taped. One box contained plates, bowls, and other kitchen supplies. Henry sighed. He moved onto another box and in it were quilts. Some gold mine, maybe if he was a grandmother. He looked around the room, paying closer attention to the various chests he noticed before. After a moment of deciding which to start with first, he started with the one furthest in the room. It looked almost exactly like the metal framed, wooden chests in a video game that contained some sort of loot.

Henry stood over the chest as a chill ran up his spine. He shook it off and kneeled down. There was a padlock through a hoop the lid’s latch fit over. A grin spread across Henry’s face and then quickly left. He cursed, rolling his eyes, and then began a short spell chant. It was quick, and rough magic, but the spell was simple enough. The room bloomed into color, contrasting its previous drab shades of grey. Henry’s focus was on the lock, which was unremarkable. Henry quickly dismissed the spell and the smile appeared again. A lock meant something was worth protecting. If something was worth protecting, it was valuable.

One thing about padlocks: they are horrible at doing their job. Any determined thief could cut through them with bolt cutters, pick them, or – sometimes – simply hitting the lock was enough to dislodge the internal pins. Henry didn’t have anything physical to strike the lock with, at least that he was willing to use. However, he did have magic. A small, concentrated burst of force could replicate striking it with something. The spell that came to mind was a simple one and was typically used as a basic form of offensive magic.

The beautiful thing about magic was its fluidity. The same spell could be changed and manipulated by the caster. There was a blueprint for most standard spells that were taught in university. Chanting the right words, channeling and shaping magic with one’s will, and occasionally hand, arm, and body gestures went into casting these spells. Even the amount of magic going into a spell could change it significantly. In Henry’s case, the chant-less, gesture-less spell, which could otherwise knock a large man down and break bones, had enough magic poured into it to only apply the force of a hammer strike. The lock popped open.

The chest opened to reveal what looked like two glass orbs. One was shattered inward; some of the glass debris still sat in the remains of the orb. They were nestled into silk covered molds, made to hold them neatly. The non-shattered orb showed geometric shapes etched into the glass. Within in the shapes seemed to be runes that glow a feint turquoise blue. Henry took all this in, but what really had him transfixed was the shimmering black smoke within. It spun, swirled, and turned in on itself as if the orb was shaken to stir up its contents.

Break it. The thought was quick and just flashed across Henry’s consciousness. He wondered why he had such a visceral reaction. It seemed unreal, uncanny. Unnatural. It needed to be shattered. That must have been why the other one was.

What was it though? It was something clearly magical, even without magic sight. Henry guessed that even someone non-magical could feel the power that pulsed from it. Some powerful magical artifact passed down the family line, forgotten amidst everything else that was abandoned. Did the professor know what this was? An item that seem filled with such power surely had to be a notable piece of Renaldo’s family collection. Would he even notice it missing? Would he even notice it broken?

Henry had to tear his gaze away from the enthralling swirls of the orb. He then noticed other sigils carved into the inside of the chest. Henry’s area of expertise was not sigils nor enchantments, but he recognized a few of them from his studies. They were for a form of magical binding. Something meant to restrain or contain magic. Without more careful study of the exact intricacies, Henry would not know the exact details of their use. However, he surmised that this was why he did not sense the orb before opening the chest. The sigils acted like a sort of wall for the emanations of magic that the orb produced.

Or was it the swirling smoke within that generated the power? The ebb and flow of the magical power pulsating from it seemed to match the swirls and twists of whatever the black smoke was. It was alluring, the way the smoke seemed to shimmer even without a direct light source.

Eventually, Henry was able to pull his gaze away. How long had he been sitting there staring into the orb? He looked at his watch and realized it had been an hour since arriving at the house. Even accounting for the few minutes spent wandering, he should have only been here half an hour tops. Maybe his first thought was right. He should break it. There was something obviously wrong with this orb.

Take the power.

Henry’s eyes widened. He could take the power for himself. While an astute student, he was only a middling mage in terms of the amount of magic he could use at once, let alone in a given day. There was no doubt that if he took this power for himself that his magical capabilities would increase dramatically. Even without refinement, he could pour enough magic into a spell to overpower even the strongest of mages. He’d be a veritable force of nature.

Henry grabbed the books as he swiftly left the room. He darted out of the house as if running for a finish line. Excitement raced through him with the pulsing of the orb in his hand. It was like the buildup of a roller coaster approaching the crest before a steep fall. He tossed the books and the talisman from around his neck into the backseat of his car before turning around with child-like bewilderment. In one fluid motion of turning around, he raised his hand that clutched the glass orb and threw it on the ground.

It was only when the glass left contact with his hand that the realization of what he had done came over him.

Why did he just do that?

The glass shattered on the ground.

The orb was clearly dangerous, having some form of enchantment on it similar but opposite that of the house, drawing one in instead of sending them away. He shouldn't have even handled such a magical artifact without studying it properly.

The black smoke began to pool on the ground.

It wasn’t even his to break! This was clearly some priceless magical artifact that the professor would be furious to find out was broken. He even forgot to close the chest before leaving the room. He had used magic to break the lock! His culpability was obvious. Henry watched the pooled black smoke begin to spread out. It was not dissipating, and it kept the same density despite taking up more space.

The smoke shot up like tendrils towards Henry’s face.

He tried to scream, but the smoke was pouring into him through his nose, mouth, ears, and even through his eye sockets, infiltrating the gaps between his eyes and their socket.

A voice in his mind, which was not his own exclaimed, I am free!