Chapter 13: A Series of Blurs
Someday You Will Be Loved, Death Cab for Cutie
Previous | Chapter Listing | Next
This was a little bit ridiculous. Morgyn didn’t believe in these kinds of things. They defied logic, at least the logic that Morgyn understood, but at this point, the blond had nothing else to turn to, either. Humans, after all, had a tendency to accept defiance of logic, if it made them feel better. It seemed, Morgyn would be no exception. If nothing else, the point of this sort of person, their role in society, was to guide people. And damned if Morgyn couldn’t use a little guidance.
The blond released a breath, looking up at the illuminated cross on the outside of the church. It seemed like a peaceful place. The building wasn’t small by any means, though it featured a centre courtyard, the building wrapping around the side. There was a short tower to one side, floor to ceiling windows. Morgyn distantly remembered the churches of 1700s France, and remembered them being far less impressive. The world had certainly changed over the years since Morgyn had been gone, but it wasn’t like Morgyn didn’t know that. The blond came out on occasion, for certain things.
There were still many things Morgyn didn’t tell Ezio, and there were reasons for that, of course.
For a long moment, Morgyn simply stared at the place. The sign out front of it called it Saint Mary’s. Distantly, Morgyn could hear the sound of children playing, but wasn’t sure where it was coming from. The blond drew a breath in, and then marched across the street, following the walkway to the door. Morgyn stopped outside it, looking up at the illuminated cross. Weren’t witches supposed to explode into flames upon entering a church? Then again, Morgyn thought that was evil beings, not really witches, but then the church always figured witches were evil, right? Whose morality did that go by?
Ugh, that was stupid. Morgyn shook slightly, deciding to ignore those thoughts, push them out of mind, and then the blond reached out, pushed the door open. Morgyn would never admit it, but the blond’s breath was held as Morgyn stepped across the doorway threshold into the church. There was a slight echoing tap as Morgyn’s heels touched the wood floor, and nothing. Morgyn released the breath, letting the door go. It silently closed behind the blond, as Morgyn wandered inside, looking around. Somehow, this place felt peaceful and inviting, not strict and cold like some of the churches Morgyn had ever seen.
Maybe this was stupid… there was another illuminated cross on the far back wall. Morgyn watched it for a moment, and then walked towards it, settling down in a seat towards the front. The blond never mastered how to pray. It’d always seemed like a waste of time and energy, when one could do something instead. Everyone always said you had to pray to get into heaven, but they never told you what to say when your life went to hell.
Morgyn’s arms wrapped around the blond’s frame, watching the candlelight flicker beneath the cross. Flowers and plants were scattered around, the pulpit’s Jacoban banner waving slightly in a breeze Morgyn couldn’t feel. And then, someone sat down next to the blond, watching the cross. Morgyn glanced to the side, finding the priest sitting there. The blond turned back to the cross. Neither said anything, for a long moment. Somehow, the priest managed to soothe some of Morgyn’s frayed nerves, just by being there.
“You seem conflicted about something,” the priest eventually said.
Morgyn snorted softly. “My brother’s dying,” the blond said. “A hundred years ago, they’d say it was Watcher’s will, that it was how things were meant to be and there was nothing to be done about it, but pray for his soul and have faith that it was enough. I’m not the praying type, I think.”
The priest smiled. “Some people aren’t,” he said. “Sometimes, I think Watcher is like a parent. The Watcher’s design and will is that we learn and progress, and we must face challenges that force us to think about things in a way that we begin to solve the unsolvable. Everything happens for a reason, after all. Many wonder, if Watcher loves everyone, then why is there suffering in the world? You don’t grow and learn by someone doing everything for you. There’s a saying, Watcher helps those that help themselves, and I think it says a lot about how much can be done when we stop wallowing and panicking, and do, instead. Watcher will help, but you must take those first steps yourself.”
Morgyn glanced at him, for a moment, and then turned back to the cross. The lights flickering gave the impression they knew something Morgyn didn’t. Morgyn wasn’t sure what to make of that impression. But maybe the priest was right. Maybe it was an obstacle that Morgyn was meant to overcome somehow. Certainly, Morgyn didn’t intend to mention the magic, but it was possible that the blond was intended to figure out how to fix it with magic.
Morgyn didn’t know where to start.
“What if you don’t know where to begin?” Morgyn asked.
The priest was quiet, for a moment, and then tilted his head slightly. “Follow your heart,” he said. “That’s where Watcher speaks to us, often so quiet we have to be still to hear it.”
Morgyn snorted softly, one leg crossing over the other. “You know, I have a friend teaching me how to listen to my heart,” the blond said. “I’m not very good at it.”
“Humans are potential,” the priest said. “Sometimes you need to do something for a long time before you get good at it, but you can do it.”
Morgyn was quiet again. Then, the blond’s head tilted slightly. “My heart tells me something strange, sometimes,” the blond said.
“How strange?” the priest asked.
“I feel, sometimes, like there are expectations, because I’m female. But I don’t feel like I’m female, or that I can meet those expectations,” Morgyn answered.
“I see,” the priest said. “Do you feel like you’re male?”
“Sometimes,” Morgyn said. “Other times, I don’t really feel like either one.”
The priest leaned forward in his seat, resting his arms on his legs. He was quiet for a long time, gazing at the cross on the wall, and then said, “I know what I’m supposed to tell you, but I don’t feel like that’s the right answer. The teachings don’t talk about the complexities of gender identity directly, but it is clear enough that your biological sex is meant to indicate your gender identity. But I believe that the Watcher doesn’t make mistakes. Mistakes are something people do. In believing that, I have to figure that there’s a reason that you are this way. There’s a reason that you feel like that, and it is part of the grand design, even if it seems counter-intuitive to it for some. I’m not Watcher, so I don’t know. No one really understands Watcher’s design and I think no one is meant to. But if I had to guess, maybe you’re meant to learn something. Or maybe, you’re meant to teach something.”
Morgyn was quiet, for a long moment, considering that. It sounded much better than anything Morgyn had ever come up with, and maybe the priest was right. What it was that Morgyn was supposed to teach, that Morgyn didn’t know. But he was right about the notion that maybe no one was meant to understand, either, just trust that Watcher understood.
“Thank you,” Morgyn said. “That makes more sense than what’s been in my head the last few weeks.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” the priest responded. “If you’re interested, we have mass every Sunday and Wednesday at nine. You’re welcome here.”
“Am I?” Morgyn asked, looking at him. He was kind of cute, if you were into priests. Morgyn couldn’t say the blond was.
“Of course,” the priest answered. “Watcher loves all of us, and perhaps Watcher gave you a journey that I don’t understand, but it doesn’t mean anything. We can get along, even if we walk very different paths. I think that’s the best way to honour Watcher. To just spread love and compassion, and this world so desperately needs more of it. We are not here to judge, I feel. We are here to grow, and create love.”
Morgyn smiled. “Maybe I will come.” Yeah, maybe Morgyn would.
He was trying not to think about it. Jackson was gone now, hadn’t come back since Drake had growled at him, and Ezio had waffled on his conclusions multiple times. Jackson made a mistake, Jackson didn’t make a mistake, Jackson loved him, Jackson didn’t love him, Ezio should let him go, Ezio should go talk things out. It went on and on and somehow, nothing that came to mind felt right. Ezio was confused, probably. But Ezio wasn’t good at dealing with things like this, because he didn’t know if anything was his own fault, or if, perhaps, Drake was right, and he just happened to be there.
As it was, Morgyn wasn’t here today, and Drake let him end up in his pile of books on the floor. He’d brought up some more of his books from storage, because he thought he may have some books that would help. He was, of course, sitting down with the leather-bound mystery book, trying, once again, to unravel its secrets. They were not terribly forthcoming. It wasn’t like Ezio expected them to be.
The things Keisha had said in that dream the other night, he wondered what it meant. Some of it was difficult to make sense of for him, but he still didn’t fully understand what a destroyer was. Nor did he have the faintest idea how to make Morgyn do anything. Actually, if Ezio got too insistent about it, Morgyn might become more stubborn. Morgyn was a shining example of how force merely inspired more force. Ezio may not like it, but trying to control Morgyn too directly would never in a thousand years work. Then again, Ezio had a hard enough time living already. He didn’t exactly want to end up living for Morgyn, too. The blond needed to maintain autonomy, or one or both of them was going to go insane, and Ezio figured they didn’t have very far to go.
Morgyn was, and had always been a free spirit. It was thanks to him, probably. Their parents, Ezio barely remembered them, but he did remember that they had expectations, and at the time, Morgyn was much better at following them. Ezio could always tell, though, that Morgyn was utterly miserable that way, and had made a notable effort to give Morgyn whatever freedom he could. It was nice, watching Morgyn blossom and grow outside the little confines everyone always tried to keep Morgyn in. Morgyn was a square peg, and those confines were a rounded hole.
Ezio didn’t mind the sudden changes. Morgyn started thinking independently more frequently, and proved to have a rather brilliant mind, when the blond had the space to apply it. And the best part of that realisation was watching Morgyn have the same one, start testing boundaries and seeing just how intelligent the blond was. It really was like watching a flower bloom, or a tree grow.
He didn’t understand Morgyn’s destiny. But to be fair about it, he hardly understood his own, either.
Ezio released a sigh, shoving the book out of his lap and onto the floor, falling backward onto the wood. Grey eyes stared up at the ceiling. Maybe he was looking for answers in the wrong places. Maybe he wasn’t meant to understand it at all. Then again, he had a hard time believing that this book didn’t have something it wanted to tell him. Simply, it seemed to have its own rules to this game they were inadvertently playing.
That was the hardest thing, with these enchanted books. They played games with rules they most likely made up on the spot.
“I don’t get it,” he said, speaking mostly to the air. “What is it you want to tell me, anyway?” He seemed to be having no luck in figuring out what this silly book wanted with him. And yet, neither would it leave him alone.
Something flashed across from him, and Ezio sat up, catching sight of the mystery book’s cover shimmering with weird designs it didn’t have on it before. Then, the book opened on its own, the pages flying by, to land on a specific one. Ezio made a face, but he sat up the rest of the way, taking the book into his lap. The pages it’d stopped on were in Simlish.
The Council of Elders, the page began, on which one from each of the five great magic families sat, acted as the ruling body for witches in ancient times, when the people began to come together in larger and larger groups, and tribal settings were no longer the human way of life. From the Council of Elders was born magic realm, and the realm’s Sages, tasked with protecting magic realm, witches, and protecting the All, from which magic realm draws its strength. The five great magic families each originated in one of the world’s major civilisations. Lee, of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty; Eisenstern, of the Nordic Vikings; Crowley, of the Goidelic Celts; Goth, of the northern European Germanic tribes; and Bachelor, rooted in Egypt.
As magic began to grow in infamy, and witches rose in number, the number of those that used magic for ill also grew, and in time, the people began to fear that which they did not know. Witches, once beloved, were becoming hated and ostracised, and, eventually, were rejected violently. The Council of Elders, in desperation to find somewhere safe for witches to practise and preserve magic, combined their magic together to create the All, which became the centrepoint of magic realm, the core that holds it together.
Descendants of these five bloodlines have a stronger connection to the All than others, and when a destroyer awakens that is also a spellcaster, often, they enjoy a similar stronger connection to the All, knowledge of things that they should not know, and a gift at inspiring and uniting people.
Fear that destroyer who is born of the families, and commands magic with great skill, for the chaos will call their blood, and the pull is difficult to resist. Fear that destroyer born of the families who resists the pull of chaos even more.
The bruising was worse. Ezio wasn’t surprised by that, or by the fact it hurt more than it had the day before. He did his best to minimise its appearance, thanks to help from Morgyn’s sixty thousand bottles of foundation and concealer, and then spent another three hours messing with his hair and deciding on what to wear. It wasn’t like it mattered, and if he took too long, then he’d miss Jackson before he left for Sulani.
Ezio quickly fixed his hair, and then scurried out the door, and down the stairs. Drake was busy doing something else, so as long as nothing went terribly wrong, he shouldn’t even notice Ezio was gone. He made his way out the door, down the pathway that led to the portal that would send him to Caster’s Alley. Jackson’s favourite place to hang out was Caster’s Alley. He had a lot of friends that spent time there, and until he could leave, Ezio thought it was most likely that he’d go there.
As he stepped out into the Alley, he was a bit relieved to see that Caleb was working the stands, again. He wouldn’t admit, even in his own head, that he was worried how this would go, but he was. He paused, a moment, looking around. He deliberately ignored Caleb trying to catch his attention, and focused on finding Jackson. Soon enough, he caught sight of a shimmer of gold. He fiddled with his hair one more time, took a deep breath in, and walked over.
Before Ezio had a chance to say anything, Jackson looked up at him, and loosed a groan. “Somehow, I knew this was going to happen.”
“I just want to talk,” Ezio said.
“I know,” Jackson answered, “and that’s the problem. Ezio, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“There’s a lot to talk about,” Ezio argued. “Look, I don’t want to just give up on you. On us.”
Jackson stared at him for a moment, and then released a sigh, closing his eyes. His head tilted downward, and his weight shifted from one leg to the other. How was he supposed to get Ezio to understand? No, that was a stupid question, wasn’t it? Maybe the only way was the one thing Jackson had never been able to bring himself to use their entire relationship.
Honesty.
Jackson looked back up at Ezio. “You need to go,” he said.
Ezio blinked, and then shook his head. “I’m not going. I came to fix this, and I intend to.”
“No. Ezio, no. Look, as much as I wish, more than anything, that I had you back, that I could do this over again and do it right this time, I know that is a pointless wish. I love you, Ezio. And in loving you, I realise that I need to let you go.”
Ezio’s eyebrows furrowed. “Jackson, that doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “It was just a couple times, some misunderstandings, you just lost your temper -“
“Damn it Ezio, no,” Jackson interrupted. “No, I… I get it now, what I’ve been running from this whole time. That feeling that I’m going to lose you, before I’m ready to, no matter what I do, to something I can’t control, can barely understand. I can’t… Ezio you’re dying. I can’t ask you not to be dying anymore, you can’t stop it anymore than I can, that’s not how it works. And every time this happens, you have an episode and we start talking about it, I get frustrated, and angry, and it has nowhere to go but at you. Maybe somewhere in there, I started acting out because I just wanted to control something in all this, and that’s not fair, to you or me. I can’t keep doing this, Ezio, please understand, I can’t keep hurting you, and I will, if I stay.”
Ezio’s eyes narrowed, and despite how hard he tried to fight them, the tears welled up and blurred his vision anyway. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it. Maybe he’d thought they’d just have a talk, and everything would blow over. Ezio would have to fuss with Drake and Morgyn a little, but everything would work out in the end.
“I – I don’t -” Ezio blinked a few times, looking down. “It doesn’t matter, Jackson, I just -“
Jackson reached over, gently pressing a finger against Ezio’s lips. “Ezio, please,” he said. “I wish I didn’t know you were going to say that. You don’t have forever. You can’t keep settling for what’s good enough, okay? You can’t keep accepting what’s merely not as bad as it might have been. Out there, somewhere, is someone that’ll love you the way I know now that I can’t, until you don’t know what to do with it all, and then love you even more. Someone that can set aside the frustration and the pain and the fear, and keep holding your hand even as things get harder. I am not that someone, Ezio. And you’ll never see that someone if I’m blocking your view.”
“Jackson, please don’t -“
“Hey,” Jackson whispered. “Someday, you’ll hardly even remember me. I’ll be just a bunch of blurry memories, faint words, and vague feelings that don’t make any sense anymore, and honestly, I want that for you. I want you to forget me. You’ll be happier for it, I think. I’ve not been very good at this boyfriend thing.” No, he hadn’t.
Ezio didn’t answer, right away, turning away and pressing the heel of one hand to his head. Jackson sighed, softly, reaching over and wrapping his arms around him. It seemed strange to be comforting the guy he was breaking up with, but Ezio was awfully emotional. Jackson didn’t say anything, right away, simply held him. He was going to miss Ezio, but then, he’d been gone so much, it wasn’t like that was new. He’d get used to it. Ezio would, too.
He leaned back slightly, pressing his lips to Ezio’s hair.
“Why can’t I ever do this right?” Ezio asked, in between crying.
“No,” Jackson said, “no, don’t think that, Ezio. It isn’t you, really it isn’t. This? This was all me. I’m the one that can’t control my own anger. I’m the one that can’t figure out how to put you before my own selfishness. It’s not you.”
Ezio was quiet for a long moment, Jackson just holding him. And for that long moment, Ezio wondered if this was what Jackson should’ve been with him, and wasn’t.
“Hey,” Jackson said, looking at his wrist watch. “I have to go, okay?”
“Okay,” Ezio answered, letting him go.
“I’ll probably never see you again,” Jackson said, smiling sadly. “So, for what it’s worth, I hope you get a lot more out of life than you expect you will, and that what is left treats you kind.” Jackson shifted slightly, catching Ezio’s lips for just a brief second. Ezio kissed him back, for that split second. “And maybe pay a little more attention to how Drake looks at you.”
Then Jackson turned, heading for the portal, and then he was gone. Ezio breathed for a moment, trying to get control over the tears. He looked up, finding Caleb watching him. The vampire gestured to ask if he should come out, and Ezio shook his head. He’d be going back to headquarters in a moment, anyway. It was only a few more moments, before he raised his hands, wiped away the tears, and followed Jackson back to the other island. He sniffled as he trudged his way back to headquarters. No one was there to see it, so it didn’t matter.
At least, he didn’t think there was, until he saw the black shoes. He paused in his movement, grey eyes raising to meet faintly glowing, icy blue. Drake didn’t ask anything. Ezio didn’t offer anything. Instead, Drake looked at him with concern, and Ezio moved over and clung to him. In the end, Jackson would go his own way, if that was what he wanted, and Ezio couldn’t fairly stop him. All he could do was try and pick up the pieces, and move forward.
Ezio was in his room, now. Undoubtedly, he’d probably spend some time alone for a while. That was how he dealt with hurt; he pulled inward, and shoved the world out for a while. Drake wasn’t unlike him, and understood it, even if he wished, in a sense, that Ezio wouldn’t do that. It was hard to help when Ezio shoved him out, but Drake also recognised that it was a necessary part of Ezio’s healing process. Ezio was every bit as much a solitary creature as Morgyn was not.
Speaking of Morgyn, the blond was missing sometime after noon today, and it took Drake some time to remember Morgyn had mentioned going to the normal world. Drake looked up from his book at the clock on the wall. It was relatively late, and Drake was starting to get concerned about it. Perhaps it was for the best, though. Morgyn’s absence meant that Ezio had some time to recover before Morgyn was asking a thousand questions. Drake wondered what Ezio would tell the blond, but probably just enough to answer the questions without giving anything away.
Drake looked back down at the book. Something felt wrong, though, but he wasn’t sure what he was picking up on. Once in a grand while, he’d find that someone practicing magic in the realm would go slightly awry, enough for him to sense that something was off. He wondered if that was what was happening. L was covering Morgyn’s students today, until the blond came back from the other world, and Drake could see a few things being set on fire that L couldn’t handle.
He’d wait until he heard screaming to go looking around for the source of the disturbance he was sensing. That in mind, he looked back down at the book, relocated his place in it, and went back to reading.
The candles in the centre courtyard flickered strangely. The soft, constant gentle breeze outside strangely stopped here and there. The sounds drowned out and dimmed. Drake stopped reading, eyes glancing up toward the doorway. Something was definitely wrong.
And then he heard it, the loudest, most piercing scream of agony he’d heard in a long time. Drake’s head snapped up. It sounded like Morgyn.
Drake set a bookmark into his book, closed it and then immediately stood up and burst into blackened mist. As he reformed nearer to the sound, he found Morgyn fallen over in front of the portal that led to Glimmerbrook, screaming incessantly in pain. Drake, immediately, wasn’t sure what was wrong. Obviously Morgyn was in pain somehow, but he didn’t scent anything wrong. There was the notable electric tang of magic, and there was stray frost on one of Morgyn’s sleeves, but that shouldn’t be enough to cause this sort of a reaction.
“Morgyn,” he said, kneeling down. He dared not touch the sage. “What happened?”
Morgyn’s expression attempted to level out, and Morgyn started trying to make noises that were not screams. Unfortunately, these sounds didn’t make it to being fully formed words, let alone sentences, and Drake was still at a complete loss as Morgyn lost it again and went back to screaming. The blond curled up in a ball on the ground, streaks of purple and blue energy shooting everywhere in completely random patterns around the sage.
“What the fuck?” came a feminine voice behind him.
Drake turned to look at L. “I don’t know,” he said. “Morgyn doesn’t seem to be able to tell me. Do you have any ideas?”
L knelt down beside him, holding one hand out towards Morgyn. Her hand alighted with a soft blue glow. As she did so, the purple and blue streaks, which smelled strongly of magic, reached for L’s hand. L snapped her hand back, and then held it out again, this time further away. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she looked confused. “Morgyn’s dying from magic overload,” she said. “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know, that makes sense to me,” Drake said.
“No, Morgyn’s not in charge state,” L explained. “By all logical right, if Morgyn’s not in charge state, then the idiot shouldn’t be dying from overload.”
Drake arched an eyebrow. “Okay, you’re right, that doesn’t make sense.” It didn’t help them figure out how to fix it, however.
“What’s even more confusing is, this feels like it’s been ongoing for a while,” L went on. “How is Morgyn still dying and not already dead? It doesn’t take long to die from overload, maybe a minute if you’re unlucky.”
That was a good question, too. Drake frowned slightly, thinking about it. He reached for Morgyn, too, cautiously, but the streaks of purple and blue weren’t as drawn to him as they’d been to L. That did act like magic overload. It was drawn to magic, and humans. It was more strongly attracted to him than the Vatores, as the magic in his blood was active, but it was still notably less interested in him than non-vampiric spellcasters.
Kassander and Sandalio would know what to do, here, but they didn’t have the time to find them. Instead, Drake shook his head, and turned to look at L.
“Go get Ezio,” he said. “Ezio might be able to figure out what to do. If nothing else, Ezio’s Morgyn’s twin, might be able to make more sense of Morgyn’s stunted communication than we can. And make any serious decisions on Morgyn’s behalf.” If they had to do something drastic to fix this, Drake wanted Ezio to know what they were doing.
L pulled a face at him, but she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I guess that’s the most logical thing to do, sure. Just… stay here I guess, I’ll be back.”
L stood up, turning on one heel and scurrying as quickly as she could without tripping back into headquarters, and presumably up the stairs to Ezio’s room. Morgyn’s screaming was so loud, Drake expected Ezio to meet her out in the courtyard, perhaps. And then they could figure out what to do with this mess.
What was that sound? Ezio jerked awake from his nap, stretched out slightly, and then sat up. Someone was screaming, and his sleep-hazed mind wasn’t quite registering it entirely. Sometimes people exploded a potion or blew themselves into a wall doing magic the wrong way. Screaming wasn’t anything to be too alarmed about, around here, but the screaming sound didn’t stop. Actually, it was quite persistent, and that was a bit over-dramatic for a simple potion explosion.
Ezio ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. Then, listening to it, he realised why it made his heart drop.
The screaming was Morgyn.
Immediately, Ezio got up, scrambling out of bed. In his hurry to make it into the hallway and down the stairs, he slammed into the door, fumbled with the doorknob for a moment, and then left the door open as he shot to the staircase. Halfway down, he met L.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” L replied. “Drake doesn’t understand it either, and Morgyn’s in too much pain to answer. Ezio, I think you’d better come see this.”
She didn’t say it, but Ezio could sense the insinuation he’d need to figure out what to do. Ezio didn’t like that, but neither was there anything for it. Instead of arguing, he simply nodded, and headed out the door. L turned and followed him as he passed her.
“Morgyn just showed up and started screaming then?” Ezio asked.
“As far as we can tell,” L said.
Ezio nodded once, pulling the door open. Morgyn was lying outside the portal, Drake not far away, screaming off and on. Ezio’s heart hurt just seeing Morgyn in that much pain, but he stayed quiet, his eyebrows drawing together, and stepped closer. He started to reach for the blond, but Drake grabbed his hand.
“Don’t,” he said. “The energy will be drawn to you.”
Ezio glanced at him, and then back to Morgyn.
“M-m-mag… Magic…” Morgyn whispered.
Magic? Ezio looked confused for a moment, and then held a hand out. A snowflake formed above his palm, and at the spark of magic in his hand, the energy streaks shifted and moved for his hand. Ezio sucked in a startled breath, his other hand raising and trapping the streak in a spherical barrier. The other streaks of energy were drawn to it, as well. Ezio tilted his head at it. If it was so interested in magical energy, then it was presumably doing what magical overload would do?
Morgyn’s screaming stopped; that had clearly made the pain dim, but it was still doing something. Ezio frowned.
“It still hurts?” he asked.
Morgyn nodded.
“If it’s attracted to magic, I presume it’s burning through it,” Ezio said, holding his hand out. It began to glow blue. “Morgyn, what happened?”
“Ff… vampire…” Morgyn said. “Potion.”
Ezio looked confused again, but that was an answer, he supposed. Vampire and potion; Ezio supposed that meant Morgyn had come across a vampire that had a potion. Had that potion done this? That would make logical sense, but on the other hand, vampires didn’t create potions. Either this was a hybrid, like Drake was, and there were a number of those in the world, as Ezio understood, or there was a spellcaster doing something they shouldn’t be.
The semantics of why this vampire had a potion didn’t terribly matter. The important part was that this was a prolonged type of magic overload, and it was, presumably, burning through all of Morgyn’s magic. As a sage, Morgyn had a good deal of magical energy. If Ezio was guessing rightly, it could take hours, if not days, for it to finally burn through it all, and then what? Ezio wasn’t sure. A spellcaster was intrinsically tied to their magic, of course. If the magic energy in them depleted entirely, it was safe to assume they could very well die.
But the only way he could think of to stop it was death.
Ezio loosed a frustrated shriek. “You stupid shitnugget, why’d you have to do this to me?” And today of all times? It wasn’t Morgyn’s fault. He knew that. Of course, he may be very interested in finding a certain potion-toting vampire about now, but he had to deal with this first. If the only way to make this stop was Morgyn dying, and Morgyn was dying anyway… Of course, there were ways of undoing it with magic, but Ezio wasn’t sure if he could do them.
It wasn’t like he had a choice, though, and he had to believe the spirits wouldn’t be so upset about this destroyer situation if Morgyn was merely meant to die from a stupid potion two days later.
“Mm… Mm’sorry…” Morgyn said.
Ezio reached over, pulling Morgyn into his lap. “I didn’t mean that,” he said quietly. “I don’t know how else to fix this, Morgs, but one way, and I can’t promise that if I do that, it’ll be okay.”
Morgyn didn’t answer, right away, shaking incessantly in pain, and then the blond reached up and took one of Ezio’s hands. “… you… I trust you…”
Ezio really wished he trusted himself. But if nothing else, he could trust the Morgyn that trusted him. Instead of answering, he simply squeezed Morgyn’s hand, leaning down to tap his forehead against the blond’s. “I’ll try and make it okay as quickly as I can, I promise,” he whispered.
Then, Ezio freed his other hand, brushed his fingers against Morgyn’s cheek, and then fired an energy bolt into Morgyn’s heart.
L loosed a strangled squeaking sound. Morgyn loosed one last, shuddering breath, blood slipping out of the blond’s mouth, and then stopped breathing. Ezio squeezed his eyes closed, leaning over Morgyn, and rocking for a moment. That hurt. That hurt enough, he almost started crying all over again, but now wasn’t the time for that.
When a person died, their soul was temporarily anchored to their body by the same thing that astral forms were, this being the astral chain. If that chain was severed, then that was true death; they could no longer be restored to their physical form. The resurrection potion and spell merely repaired damage to the body, but it was limited to repairing unnatural, sudden things. Such issues as Ezio’s, where the individual had some kind of a disease, genetic defects, and old age, were all irreparable. Something like this, however, magic should be able to fix just fine.
It didn’t make Ezio enjoy firing an energy bolt into his twin any more.
He drew a breath in, standing up, and taking Morgyn’s body with him. He’d need that, so he intended to preserve it while he worked on making this potion. As he stood up, he caught Morgyn’s eyes. The blond was an odd colour.
“Hi,” Morgyn said, voice echoing slightly as only the voices of ghosts did.
“Hi,” Ezio replied. “I need a death flower.”
“You’re going to try making the resurrection potion?” L asked.
“Yes,” Ezio answered. “The only way it was going to stop was if Morgyn died and Morgyn was steadily dying anyway. I decided to embrace it, rather than try fighting it with limited time on my hands.”
“You have limited time for that potion,” L said, “and you’ve only ever made it successfully once. You may not be able to do it again.”
“I guess I’d better figure it out then, huh?” Ezio said. He turned, then, heading back for the door, Morgyn’s ghost trailing behind.
Previous | Chapter Listing | Next
