I think I’m probably the best person to narrate this.
Afterall, It’s my story. Or at least it’s mostly mine. I know what happened, and saw things from a perspective that Abe won’t understand just yet. He may not ever, though I hope he will read this and understand it someday. But I’m never going to be able to tell this if I don’t know where to start it.
Probably best to start it where it truly began. A dark or stormy night would have carried more portent, but Earth has never been very receptive the demands of the universe in the creation of atmosphere. It’s actually probably one of the things I like most about it, it decided to give me a sunny and warm fall day when I came. I had come back to Earth seeking an old friend whose help I needed, even though I hadn’t seen him in over fifteen years, and I had never really been able to call him a friend. But I had need of Dorian Adricus, and I knew where to find him.
Most dark and powerful wizards have the unbearable tendency towards tall dark towers in the middle of nowhere. Dorian, it seems, had opted for the eight-digit mansion a mile outside of one of the largest cities in the most powerful nation of the world. But then, he had always been more of a Bond Villian type, even when he lived in a tower. I stood in front of Dorian’s house and started to knock on the door, but I noticed the buzzer beside the door before my knuckles hit the finely polished oak doors of this “Wizard’s Tower.” I looked up to one of the windows of the second floor, where I guessed Dorian would have his personal office. All the better to keep an eye on what may approach. By Nightmare, he had cleared most of two acres around the house of all the timber to leave it a clean view of approach.
It took three minutes for the first servant to come to the door. My guess is that they probably had to go check with the master of the household how to deal with the strange visitor. The servant was human and male, with a slight graying in his hair. “Mister Adricus would like to know who it is that you are, and what business you have with the CEO of AdriCorp.”
So. The bullshit game. Not a suprise, but not what I needed right now. I slipped into a British accent that I used when I needed it, “Let Dorian know that Nevin Chauser, an old college mate of his, has ran into a spot of trouble and was wondering if he could beg a favor off his old drinking buddy. And let him know that it’s of burning importance.” The servant nodded and closed the door in my face. Which means that I was being give the run around, and there was a decent chance I would have to carry through on my threat if Dorian didn’t agree to see me.
It seems my worries were over-blown as a few short minutes later I was ushered into a sitting room just inside off the main entrance two minutes later, with Dorian standing near a tall cabinet waiting for me. The years had been kind to him, he still didn’t look a day over his early thirties, with only the slightest touch of silver in his hair. Which is pretty good for someone I know to be in his mid-fifties at the earliest. “Nevin is it now, Spellchaser? I do hope you’ve come for a reason other then to offer pointless threats to my house and home.”
“When you sent the monkey to open the door pretending not to know me, I had to make sure you knew I wasn’t going to go away. I’m in need of your help, Dorian, and I can’t take no for an answer.”
“Truly? And what urgent need would lead you to come to me? And threaten my wife and child in our home?”
“Fuck. Dorian, I didn’t know there was anyone here but you and whatever servants you had in your... employ.” I was surprised, I had guessed that Dorian would be alone. That’s what I get for not double-checking, fuck it all. This wasn’t going to work if I could get his honest help. I dug a fist-sized chunk of onyx out of my pocket and tossed it at Dorian, where I stopped it short of him and had it hover a foot in front of him. “That’s why I need your help Dorian.”
Dorian reached out slowly and took the large black glass in his hands, turning it over and gazing at it. As he looked at it, I saw his eyes begin to glow as he examined the stone. “You’ve got something in here. This is a living person. Why turn them into a shard of glass?”
“Set it on the ground and let me show you.” Dorian moved and knelt down, placing the onyx on the carpet in the middle of the room. Once he did, I let him move back to the edge of the room before I removed the magic that bound the stone. As my power and will flooded out of the stone it began to grow in size, changing shape and color as the figure that I had carried here in my pocket returned to normal size. “I had to carry him through the Shadow-lands, that’s not good for any-one's sanity, and this one already has little enough of it.” The figure has finished its transformation. A small human figure lay on the carpet between me and Dorian. His hair was black as the onyx had been, his small frame covered in a tattered linen shirt. From where both Dorian and I stood, we could see, at the child’s wrists and ankles, the marks and scarring that comes from chains and shackles. Thankfully the shirt covered his back, or we would be able to see the pattern-work of scars that covered that surface as well. I had seen them when I had grabbed the child, but even now, even with all I had seen and done, it made me want to throw up.
Dorian had always been of more spare stuff, but it seems that the past decade and a half had soften some of those edges, I could see him holding back his bile the same as I was. Or maybe it hit deeper. Something else was glittering in Dorian’s eyes as he looked up to me. “Why do you bring this slave into my house? What’s so special about him?”
I could see the child begin to awaken from the non-aware state that the transmutation had locked him into. “Dorian, is your house shielded?”
Dorian looked at me speculatively. “Why would I need it in this supposedly magic-dead world?” I glare at him. “Lightly shielded. Even I have trouble using most of my resources and the continued expenditure of defensive magics was considered mostly unnecessary. Why, and is the problem you or the child?”
“The kid, he’s a natural.” That’s the start of an explanation, but I’m not sure we were going to have time for the full one just now. Abridged it was then. “When he’s awake, he calls something. I’ve looked to try and break the link, but I can’t find it.” As I said the words “something” I could begin to feel the presence of something else start to emerge, its presence like an slimy ooze that dripped over the tips of your fingers. Whatever it was that had followed us here, it was going to come through in about 3 seconds. I looked to Dorian and shouted, “Like old times!” before I wheeled towards the window in the front of the house and the thing that was using it as a door. The window, almost a dozen feet across and half that in height was covered with a black film that ate away at the definition of the window, until it hung in the air like a hole in the universe. Before the portal had even finished forming, the thing had begun to reach out through the portal, its claws scratching the wall around the window and the floor in front of the window. First one claw as large a medium-sized dog clawed into the floor of Dorian’s house, then another as the thing began to pull itself through. It hunched itself over double as it finished pulling its wide black form into the room. Its skin was covered in scales, its form a mixture of a frog and a man the color of dying coals. It was easily the size of a sports utility vehicle. It looked at Dorian, the child and myself and smiled a toothy grin three feet wide.
I moved to place myself between the child and the fiend. “Creature. I give you one chance. Leave this place now and tell your master to desist in this hunt.” Let’s hope this idiot was a talker, that was the perfect straight line for a talker.
Thank goodness for small mercies and great arrogances. “The child belongs to the Dark Powers, Tenjin. Our masters have marked him. We will find him no matter how far you run from us. Every hole that you run to, we will wrench from the earth and cast into the fire. We will raze to the ground every hut that offers you shelter, and visit such foul visitations upon the inhabitants that none will let you touch their front stoop ever again.” At which point the portal behind the creature snapped shut with a sound like a crack of thunder.
As the creature looked back at its closed exit, Dorian responded with a much simpler threat. “You will not threaten my household.” Dorian’s words rang with a level of finality and conviction. He held his hand out, palm up. A small red onion appeared in his outstretched hand, and a paring knife in his other. He took the knife and slipped it briefly into the skin of the onion. The creature suddenly shuddered as a trickle of smoking blood began to roll down the side of the fright mask it called a face and its eyes bulged in its sockets.
“Dorian, you seem to have this well in hand.” I made a brief motion with my hand and a shimmering long and slender dagger flew. That should make sure that big and ugly didn’t get a chance to do anything really stupid. “The house isn’t guarded enough, but you’ve got a safe room, right? Where’s your lab?” I felt a familiar tingle at the back of my mind and let Dorian in.
The floorplan of the entire house flowed into my mind, with each room labeled. “Get my family down there. Hyacinth is in the library on the second floor, and my daughter Lucita is in her bedroom. Get them, then get yourself and the child to the safe room.” I bent down to sling the child over my shoulder and started heading for the stairs.
Just as I was about to leave the room, I turned and looked at Dorian, “Try not to enjoy this too much.”
“He threatened what is mine. There is no such thing as too much.” And he cupped the onion in one hand and slowly began to slice a piece of the skin off the onion. I started running, and was halfway up the stairs before I heard the creature’s screams really start.
I had barely reached the top of the stairs and the hallway where Dorian’s wife and daughter were before I almost ran into them coming the other way, both mother and daughter about to run headfirst into danger. I held up a hand and Hyacinth stopped in her tracks, grabbing the teenager by her shoulder. “Nerick? What’s going on? Where’s Dorian? Who’s the boy?” I think she was trying to conceal it from her daughter, but I could see the slender white gun in her right hand. It seems after the kind of life we lead, noone every really loses their edge.
“He’s taking care of business. And he would very much like us to head to the kitchen.” I motioned down the hallway that would take us to a stairway that lead to the dining room.
“And he’ll join us in his saferoom after he’s finished dealing with whatever it is that’s screaming. You will explain this monster in my household Mister Spellchaser.” The girl’s face, which was already a study in confusion, began to push to new heights of not knowing what was going on. Her mother grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her down the hallway and towards the kitchen. She tried to resist once, only to be re-inspired by the terrible screams that echoed through the house. We reached the stairs quickly, and I let both women go ahead of me. They were more agile then I was, especially carrying a child. Into the dining room, which I would later see in several prominent photographs of political figures and into a kitchen that looked like it belonged in a restaurant, steel surfaces and clean white tile. Hyacinth was ahead of me and halfway across the kitchen towards the fusebox on the back wall. She threw the door open and flicked a series of breakers, causing half the lights in the kitchen to go out. And in the side of the kitchen that was now covered in darkness I could see a new stairway opening, leading down to the basement level. Hyacinth closed the metal door to the fusebox and started hustling her daughter towards the new stair-well. “He thinks he has secrets from me.”
“Well, I’m sure he does. That was part of what attracted you to him in the first place. Just not stupid things like where the safe-room is in case of a supernatural attack.” We moved quickly down the stairs to a concrete box two stories down, the walls polished smooth and a heavy iron ring in the floor, encompassing most of the room. There was a recess near the ceiling of the room from which track lighting issued, suffusing the room in a slight blue glow. And folding chairs. Black, metal folding chairs. I’m not sure what I expected, but for some reason, that wasn’t it. I started laughing at the strange juxtaposition, though a look from mother convinced me that a laughing madman wasn’t what her daughter needed right now. We waited there in the safe room for only a quarter-hour or so before Dorian came down the stairs, carrying enough blankets over a shoulder it looked like he carried another child.
He reached the center of the ring and tossed the bedding on the ground. “They’ve worked the bindings into the child’s mind. Every day of his life they’ve worked it into his mind and soul. They’re going to have to go. I can do that, it’s what you came here for after all.” He’s right. I don’t have the skill to separate that kind of link, Dorian does. He organized the blankets in the room, making a bed for his wife, his daughter and the child. “We’re going to have to stay down here until this has been done. But. Spellchaser, you have to make a decision. I’m going to replace this child’s entire memory. It will kill him unless I give him an anchor. It has to be you, you’ve put my family at enough risk already. We will be there to help, but replacing those memories is your job.” He began to walk paces around the child, and I could feel the magic begin to coalesce in the air. I began to feel the magic seep into the air and work its way into our minds. “What is the child to you? Your servant? Your page? A nephew perhaps, that you come to see from time to time.”
I could feel it, the magic tighten around us. The next words out of my mouth would determine the shape of the spell. And its strength. I looked around me, at the family Dorian had built. I knew there was only one right answer, but did I want to give it? By Twilight and Nightmare, I did this for a reason didn’t I? I looked at the child, whose was names by the cultists I had stolen him from for a Demon to call and bind him to their dark will. I would subvert their magics. I had to. “His name is Abraxas Spellchaser, and I adopt him as my son.”
I felt the magic snap shut around us as we all fell into the spell.
Word Count: 2812
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