Dangerous, Diabolical

After the carnage caused by the impact of Leofstan’s magic interfering with my own, my house still contained a large opening to the outside world; so I was forced to share it with a few unwelcome wild visitors and the morning bird song was a little too close for comfort. Resting all the aches and pains, it was wonderful to catch up on sleep. Mostly I spent the slumber in dreamland, chasing the birds through the clouds.

Eventually, my imagination took me to a field, my toes catching pollen and the richness of fresh grass tickling my nose. Dandelion seeds floated overhead in the breeze and I swore I could feel the sun kissing my skin. From the distance, someone I knew shouted my name. The voice was familiar, but from so long ago I couldn’t recall...

“Celandine.” This time my name was much closer.

“Ms. Doukas.”

I snapped awake, to see two familiar golden brown eyes peering over me.

“GAH!” Surprised I dragged the covers into a makeshift shield, launching myself halfway up the bed. My heart hammered as I took some deep, calming breaths. Why was he in my room?

Lowering the duvet, Leofstan stood scowling at me. After a few more seconds of processing that I was no longer dreaming, I finally managed to talk. “You’re trespassing!” I accused. I didn’t care if he was council, this was my territory.

Muscles popped as he clenched his jaw. “The back of your house has a humongous hole.”

“There’s still a front door.” I pointed to where it was visible through the bedroom, clearly in the line of sight, in the living room.

Slowly, the man smiled as the air around him shimmered with summoned power, ”Veot’say.” He answered in response. Outside my bedroom, the unmistakable sound of splintering wood erupted with a defending crunch, shards blasting across the floor.

For the first time in my memorable history, I was lost for words. “My front door.” It was neither a statement nor a question.

He was still smiling. “Magic lesson one, expect the unexpected.”

My voice was calm but my mind reeled. Climbing from under the tangle of covers, and marching past him I peered around the bedroom door, seeing only useless wood shards.

Aghast I told him, “That was completely unnecessary.”

His smile never abated, “Did you want my ID number? You’re welcome to raise a complaint.” His eyes narrowed in a challenge.

“To the council?” I asked in disbelief.

“Of course. Maybe we could even stop by.” He was still smiling, but his tone was too matter-of-fact to match and it set alarm bells ringing. With a start, I realised he wanted me to contact the council.

“Forget it.” I snapped.

He raised a brow. “Why not?”

“It’s just a door, hardly worth the effort.”

His smile slipped. “Or your avoidance of the council is because you are more than aware of how much power you’re capable of holding, and for some reason, you want to hide it.”

I took a long, hard gulp.

He took a step closer, “Grahame informs me you were present again during another revenant attack.”

“So was he.” I pointed out.

He took another step closer. “Have you even an inkling how suspicious the council is of you presently?” He whispered.

Refusing to back down I argued, ”Well, I can assure you, I have better things to do than spend my time trying to raise the dead.”

He scoffed. ”Like trash a nightclub? Expose us to mortals?” He grew louder. “Do you realise how much beclouding has needed orchestrating because of you? I have been awake all forsaken morning. We have two teams trying to contain the news outbreak that could be investigating the sorcerer instead!” He ended in a shout, standing right in front of me.

I let out a snort. ”So you aren’t that suspicious of me then.”

“What?” He snapped, rant diffusing.

“If you’re still searching for him, then I’m obviously not a suspect.”

He began to puff up, turning red. I half expected to see him steaming like a kettle.

“You are impossible.” Leo threw up his hands. “How much of that damage was you?”

“None.” I was a complete bystander. Liar liar pants on fire.

“The pile of ashes in the club?”

“They don’t usually have a barbecue indoors but must be the season. Human customs escape me.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. ”This is exactly what I mean. Celandine Doukas, mark my words, as soon as this perpetrator is caught I will be taking you in for retesting.” We locked eyes. “And this time it will be thorough.”

The threat sent a spark of excitement through my spine.

“I’ll look forward to it. Now get the hell out of my house.” And as an afterthought, I added, “And fix the door.” I wasn’t sure if that was even possible, but it was worth a try.

The man didn’t move. “I’ve just spent the entire morning trying to conceal the chaos you caused, patch magic leaks you started and enacting memory blocks in mortals that should have never seen anything in the first place.” He shrugged off his blazer.

“We are getting your magic under control before you completely rip a hole between us and the Fae-lands.”

“What?”

“You can’t continue channelling all of this raw power without distributing it correctly, otherwise this;” he gestured to my shambles of a house, “is going to happen on a much larger scale.”

“Channeling raw power?”

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Where do you think magic comes from?”

“That I just made it?” He sighed again. “This is why I need to train you; now. We all possess the ability to pull power from other realms, albeit some of us are better conduits than others.” He kicked off his shoes. “You are distributing pure, unfiltered power through from the realm of the Fae at a rate I can’t even comprehend.”

I was? Cool. “So how many of these ‘realms’,” I air quoted the word, “are there?“.

He shrugged. “The Fae realm is the biggest influence. But of course, there’s the Spiritual and Chaos. They’ve always bordered earth closely, we think.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You didn’t get told any of this growing up?” Blatantly not, captain obvious. “Then where do you draw yours from?”

Leofstan sat on the end of my bed with a creak of protest from the springs, drawing his legs under him, to be crossed-leg. He gazed into the distance, unfocused, ” This one,” waving a hand to indicate the space around us.

“Then why can’t I draw from this one?”

“If it doesn’t match your affinity it would be pretty pointless. It would be like trying to pull a brick through a cheese grater.”

“Okay, so which one would I use to raise the dead?”

Fixing me with a glare, he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Seriously?”

I nodded eagerly.

“This one or the Chaos.” Then he groaned, leaning back. “Or the most straightforward; the Realm of the Dead.”

“So essentially, I’d be terrible at it?” It was my turn to glare at him. “Turns out I’m not the most suspicious character around here then.” I narrowed my eyes at Leofstan, who in theory, could be reanimating corpses.

If the land of the Fae was where my magic came from, I’d essentially been closer to it all this time than I’d ever thought. Did Willow know? Besides, the Chaos option sounded more like me. ”How do I change my affinity?”

“You don’t. It would cognately alter your entire existence.”

“But humans can become werewolves, vampires and zombies,” I argued.

He nodded in agreement with a grimace. ”Yes, but afflicting a human with traits from other planes causes unstable reactions.”

That wasn’t a no. ”So technically I could, I’d just be unstable?”

He scowled at me, arms crossed. ”Don’t even think about it.” He warned. “It’s palpable that whatever is already mixing in your bloodstream doesn’t need another factor to contribute to it. We’re affiliated with what we’re given for a reason, too much and the scales tip.”

There go my vampire-dragon dreams. It did answer why when different species mixed the offspring was frequently borderline crazy. Luck of the realm draw.

“Celandine, I am being clear as to why you must stabilise your casting?”

“Because two different realms equal bad?”

“And?”

“Too much power brings them closer.”

“Exactly.”

“So what happens if they touch?” Was that even possible?

He shrugged. “This is what we do not want to find out. The best outcome would be a magic overload, crossings of beings from the wrong planes. Many humans and others might die.”

“And the worst?”

“We might cease to exist at all.”

I gave a dramatic whistle. He patted the bed next to him. Feeling the weight of the world I slumped into the space with a thunk.

“Show me how you summon your energy, just before you are about to cast. Think of plugging in an electrical appliance without turning it on.”

Heat thrummed into my limbs as I did just that.

“Wrong.” He snapped. I let the power go.

“Eh?”

“You’re leaking.”

I clenched my eyes shut, this time only pulling enough to feel a warm throb in my chest.

“Wrong. Don’t use it, just pull and hold.”

“That’s what I’m doing!”

“You’re like a microwave with the door open!” He chided.

I snorted picturing it, unable to suppress a laugh. “Well, that would be a bit useless.” I agreed.

He gave me a knowing smile.

Oh. OH! he was hinting I was useless? I’d show him! I tried again.

“No.” Gah!

And again.

“Stop!”

Once more.

“You’re just using less now. Just stop using it.”

I groaned, falling back onto the bed. “I don’t understand!” I complained. My fish from their tank seemed to be observing with judgemental unblinking eyes.

“It’s the moment you search for the plane before you pull magic from it. Just hold it, right at that moment.” He answered calmly.

I pulled my hands down my face with a louder groan. ”You’re not making any sense. Search for a plane?” Feeling completely stupid, and much like a microwave with the door open, I crossed my arms and pouted.

“Magic has to come from somewhere. Where do you find yours?”

“It’s just there.”

“Okay, when it’s not just there when you have no energy and you’re empty of any reserves. What about then?”

“I...” Wait. “That...” No that wasn’t right. “It...” Stumbling around for words, I stopped talking. Sometimes I’d take a nap but in terms of never having any power? “It’s just always there.” I sat back up, shaking my head.

Leofstan was quiet, regarding me with a quirked brow. “Even after you discharged all that magic at me yesterday.”

“I’ve never been this low on reserves before. Although now I’ve slept I wouldn’t say I’m low.”

He just sat in silence, staring at me. In his chest, his heartbeat sped up. After a moment of contemplation, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, clasping his hands and leaning on his knees. He still said nothing. Just began staring silently at my fish tank.

“Let’s go outside.” He finally broke the silence. He didn’t wait, marching out of the room.

Curiously, throwing on a long jumper to cover the majority of my pyjamas I followed him. When we got past the shattered glass to where the back door used to be, he stepped out into my grassy lawn with his bare feet. “Come.” He gestured under an old tree which had not yet lost all of its autumn leaves and bore a halo of gold.

Despite the cold, he rolled his sleeves up, followed by the bottom of his trouser legs. Wet globules hung on his toes, as did the droplets from the mist in the air. “Can you feel it?” He whispered, gently against the morning air, holding his hands parallel to the ground.

I flapped my arms about, not exactly sure what I was hoping to feel.

With a sigh, he held his hands out towards me. When I didn’t take them straight away he beckoned me closer with a soft twitch of his fingers.

A fleeting emptiness lodged into my stomach as his hands remained empty. I couldn’t remember holding the hand voluntarily of anyone. With a deep inhale I held my own out, but didn’t close the gap between us. I waited for him to take them instead. He did, lightly cupping them underneath.

And then we stood. At first, I found it hard to stay still, rocking from foot to foot and trying to scratch an annoying itch on my nose with my shoulder. But every time I tried to move my hands away, Leofstan gave an affirmative squeeze to remain where I was. Eventually, unable to do anything else except mirror his stance and close my eyes, a quiet serenity washed over me.

“It’s calm.” My voice was oddly distant.

“Why?” Despite still holding my hands he sounded further away. The wind was soft, and the cold air crisp. The dampness of the air clung to us, and birds called in the distance. They weren’t the reason for its serenity, it was something else. Listening harder, reaching further, I could hear the distant pounding of drums. Further than that, the trickle of streams in the woodland, the grinding of earthworms in the ground.

Reaching further was the creaking of the tree’s roots growing into the darkness, and the thrum of each blade of grass reaching for the sun.

“Now, can you feel it?” He repeated the question seamlessly drifting on the breeze. For every movement of the land, and each creature’s desire to live, there was something else. No matter how much I tried to touch it, it remained undisturbed. Existing in only the places it was meant to.

Leofstan gave a soft chuckle. “That, Celandine, is the rock you are trying to pull through a grater.”

I could barely hold back a squeak of surprise. “Your realm of magic.”

“Yes,” he affirmed, giving my hands a small squeeze. “The magic of the realm which we currently exist in.”

Opening my eyes, my stomach erupted into butterflies. Leofstans eyes remained closed and power radiated to and from him into the world around us effortlessly. The speed at which it traversed made my knees quiver and my heart speed at a tempo I’d never experienced before.

Upon seeing his shadow any other thoughts I had fled my brain. It stretched tall across the grassy moss, and the shoulders bared wider than his own. In the breeze, the shadow shuffled with a breeze of a robe that Leofstan did not wear and a staff hung slung over the shoulders of the shape on the floor. A purple gem flickered in the sunlight, catching the light across the fallen leaves. Yet Leofstan stood before me in his shirt with rolled sleeves.

From the head of his shadow stretched two giant antlers, forest debris still hanging from them. Breath caught in my throat I lifted my hand to reach above the soft strands of his hair. On the ground, my hand blocked out the sun and I could see myself reaching for antlers that my eyes could not see.

The gem embedded in my palm let out a piercing scream.

With a gasp, I pulled away, stumbling over my own feet, only to look up, and with a jolt realising were no longer alone. My house was gone, replaced with a scattering of unfamiliar trees. The light of the morning had shifted to the dark of night, a full moon laughing from above.

Darkened clouds hung low, and I shuddered a breath as lightning chased across the chasms. The gargantuan explosions of thunder pursued the illumination as the soft dampness gave way to large raindrops clattering down, soaking quickly into my clothes.

Leofstan no longer had a shadow. He stood, dressed in a long cape, surrounded by other figures. He reached to pull a hood over a shaved head. Around him, those who stood in a circular formation around him mirrored the gesture. Trying not to be out of place I pulled up the hoodie over my head, eyes wide, feeling underdressed in my pyjama shorts.

Twelve towering stones mapped a circular dome, set to a backdrop of dense forest. Oil lanterns offered a dimly lit alcove, catching the reflective eyes of woodland creatures who watched eerily from the outskirts. Unmoving they were silent witnesses as to what was about to unfold.

Clenching my fist I went to rub my thumb over the gem there, only to feel smooth skin where it should be. Just like at the hospital, it happened again.

I was trapped in a memory that belonged to the bothersome Leofstan Ortwin.

----

A/N - for my ‘Dangerous, Diabolical - best kept secrets’ readers, you should read Leo’s POV - chapter 3 now

-----