Joshua's voice calling my name grew thinner...
"Magnus…"
"Magnus!!"
...Until there was nothing.
Just wind moving through leaves.
The big wooden doors, the masks, the press of bodies and perfume were gone. Instead, tall pines stood shoulder to shoulder, their needles soft under my feet. The air tasted cold and clean, like snow that hadn't fallen yet. Each breath felt easy, and full.
I was standing in the middle of a forest.
For a while there was silence. Then laughter drifted through the trees, bright, unguarded, the kind that only happens when no one was watching. It pulled me forward, almost like it was calling and I moved toward it, answering,my boots silent on the wet ground.
I eased around a thicket of hazel and stopped. A family of four stood before a fire, the light flickering across their faces.
A man crouched, feeding sticks to the flames, sleeves rolled to the elbow and his forearms streaked with soot. Beside him blonde haired woman sat cross-legged, mending a torn cuff. Two boys, maybe nine and six, leaned into each other, sharing a blanket, their cheeks red from the heat. Their clothes were patched, mud-stained, worn almost threadbare. None of it mattered. They were laughing at something small and something private.
The sound filled me with warmth.
The man suddenly turned his head and our
eyes met. His intense brown eyes stared back at mine, his slightly crooked nose catching the light of the fire. I recognised him with so much force it forced me out of the vision.
My knees buckled as I fell to the ground.
The smell of woodsmoke vanished.
Polished brickwork returned under my palms. Murmuring voices, suffocating perfume and the faint smell of cigar smoke.
Joshua's boots slapped the floor as he reached me.
"Magnus."
His hands were on my shoulders, pulling urgently.
"Brother, what's wrong?" he asked, his voice thick with concern.
Father's face still burned in my head. Why the hell was the countdown showing me visions of father? Why..who was that woman?
Her features kept slipping. Her dark hair pinned back. The light in her green eyes. The way she tilted her head when one of the children spoke. The way she laughed.
I knew that laugh. I should know it.
My skull throbbed with pain. My mind screamed at the blank space where her name belonged. It was a memory… I was certain of it.
"Brother, this is not the place to show weakness," Joshua urged, his voice low and urgent, behind the frozen clown mask his eyes stared forward in concern.
I looked up to find a hundred masks staring.
Lions, deer and doves. Gold, silver and diamonds. Their eyes were filled with curiosity but no concern, or no real one in the sense of it. These were the elites. The real elites.
"I'm fine," I whispered, slowly pushing Joshua's hand away. The countdown, Layla and now this vision. It felt like I was being torn apart from within.
"I'm fine." I whispered again to assure my brother as I pushed his still lingering hand away.
We made our way into the castle. A makeshift, custom-made decontamination chamber was erected just behind the door. That was new, I had never seen one in a castle before.
A group of guards stood at the far end.
"What's wrong, Magnus?" Joshua asked we stepped into the chamber. "You're vibrating. More than usual."
I didn't answer. Mist sprayed from the ports at top, killing germs in their billions. The chambers doors opened to four muscular guards armed with heavy duty weapons.
"Invitations, please," a guard asked the moment we stepped out of the chamber.
He was a seven-foot muscular man, his skin a rich ivory colour. A semi-automatic rifle hung from his hip. Behind him, the others shifted, their hands hovering near their belts.
"Your invitations, sir," he repeated. His voice somewhat more serious than it had been before. We didn't have invitations. The plan had been to do a simple mind wipe, a telepathic technique that wiped a person's memory for a few seconds. We would slip in and the guards would forget we ever came in.
But at that moment, my mind was racing with questions that threatened to destroy my skull. I had no memories of my childhood before my family's Ascension to godhood. Why?
No memory of my mother. Neither did Joshua, and it had never bothered us.
"Sir produce your invitations or leave the line!" The guard ordered.
I did not have time for a charade. The temperature around us plummeted so low people's breathes evaporated into fine mist the moment it left their mouths.
I reached out and grapped the guard's shoulder. His eyes widened, then glazed over as a film of frost crept across his irises. His neurons slowed, his mind clogged, his very atoms came to a sudden halt. The frost spread to the other guards, slowing them down as well.
Then silence followed. Not a particularly long one, but one it was long all the same
The guard's eyes cleared, but the light behind them was gone.
"You may go in," he droned. He stepped aside, his movements slow and fluid like a sleepwalker. I nodded and made my way past them, immediately forgetting the encounter myself. That was the price of a mind wipe.
The great hall was as lavish as expected.
Giant chandeliers dripped with enough crystal to buy a city block, their light flickering against the Elizabethan stonework.
From the shadows of the vaulted ceiling, massive drapes fell in heavy velvet folds. Waiters drifted through the mass of bodies like ghosts, balancing trays of vintage champagne on their fingertips. The air was a thick, suffocating mess of expensive perfume and the low drone of rich people gossip.
"You killed them," Joshua said. His voice was flat, devoid of its usual playfulness.
"What?"
"The guards, Magnus. You just killed those men."
He turned his head, his gaze fixed on the glass chamber behind us. Through the transparency, the guards stood like statues. A crowd of guests was already beginning to pile up at the exit of the decontamination chamber, their muffled murmurs of discontent rising.
"You froze their brains over," Joshua whispered. "They're brain-dead before they even hit the floor."
"I did what?" I whispered in confusion. The memory of the mind wipe itself was gone, but i could still remember it being my plan.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my overcoat, hiding my shaking hands. My powers, my mind. These visions were fucking me up. I almost broke down at that instant when a voice called my name.
"Magnus?"
I looked up.
A woman was coming down the grand staircase, her red evening gown trailing over the marble behind her. She had a beautiful jade fox mask, but I could see her blue eyes from behind it. Catherine.
"I told you you'd recognise us," I said, grateful for the intrusion. She walked over to us and grabbed a bottle of champagne from a waiter. She turned to Joshua. "Why exactly do you have a clown mask on?"
"It's a form of poetry."
"Poetry," she tilted her head. "Or you just enjoy making people uncomfortable."
"Both can be true, darling," Joshua replied with a mocking bow.
"Ahh," she replied. "And how is your mask a form of poetry?"
Joshua smiled and lifted his hands dramatically, his legs parting slightly.
"The fool. The jester.
Heads forward with a lie,
But the scoffer lowers with a smile.
But beware the jingling of my bells,
For from behind them
The devil dwells."
He adjusted his cuffs, no doubt very pleased with himself.
"Did you just make that?" Catherine asked, a hint of admiration in her voice.
"Yes," he shamelessly lied but I knew the truth. That was a piece from my father's jester a few centuries ago.
"It's the story…" he began but was cut off by the heavy ringing of a bell, the sound echoing through the hall, interrupting my brother's false tale. At the top of the stairs a man appeared. Old, regal and dressed in a soldier's suit.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the Derony… I present Sir Marticc Altican."
A tall figure stepped forward, his face covered in a jade fox mask, identical to Catherine's.
"His son, Luis Altican. And his daughter…"
A young man step forward beside the tall figure, his blonde hair shining in the light of the chandeliers, his royal suit covered in war medals. He too sported a fox mask.
But he was not the star of the night. The lady in the red flowing ball dress was.
"Layla Altican."