[6:22AM, January 7, UTC +02:00]
ADAM squirmed at the sensation of warm air blowing against his nape. He wriggled and his elbow connected with a firm body behind him. Cold hands stroked his bare upper arm and he felt cool wet lips on his shoulder.
"Amant?"
"Mmm?" he replied sleepily.
"Nous avons un problème."
He opened his eyes. The alarm clock was a blur, numbers and blinking dots glowing electric green.
"There better be at least a Braenian dragon burning down a downtown area."
A snort came from behind him. "I wish. We have company."
"Who? I didn't feel anyone come in."
"I'd be surprised if you did. That would mean I've gotten really rusty."
The new voice, coarse and jovial, came from the foot of the bed. Frowning, Adam sat up slowly, trying to make out the other figure in the near-darkness. He waved his hand and the lights flickered on, illuminating the casual intruder.
"Wynter? What the hell are you..."
"We set up the barrier together, remember?" the man replied, his frizzy grey-streaked brown hair shaking as he chuckled "I just made sure I had keys to the backdoor."
"I know that. What I wanted to say was 'what the hell are you wearing'?"
Wynter shrugged. His attire was a black and orange t-shirt worn under a green sweater-vest, brown desert camouflage pants tucked into weathered black cowboy boots, an oversized fur-lined grey coat that had clearly seen better days. His face showed discomfort as he pulled at the neck of the shirt.
"Did you get dressed in the dark?" Ecru murmured, hugging Adam's pillow and trying to be a big spoon.
"I was in a hurry," Wynter replied.
"It doesn't take more than a second to create a luminescence orb."
"I was also trying not to be noticed."
"Why?" Adam asked. "And how did you get out of Ameth anyway? I thought New Arcadia was on lockdown."
"It's kind of a long story," the other mage replied as the study chair levitated and landed behind him. He sat back with a flop. "One I'll be more inclined to tell over a stiff drink."
"It's barely 6:30," Adam said flatly.
"It's bound to be happy hour somewhere."
Ecru huffed and made a small moan of protest as Adam shoved off the duvet and pulled his feet out to sit over the side of the bed. He rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes and sighed tiredly. He had been suffering a migraine which flared and waned for the last three days, but thankfully it was now down to just a dull ache. The closet door suddenly swung open and his terrycloth robe sailed out and landed across his shoulder. He frowned at the item until Ecru mumbled incoherently behind him.
"What was that?"
"Don't say I never do anything nice for you."
"Aw, thanks," Adam replied with a drawl. "I couldn't possibly have summoned the strength to walk ten feet unassisted."
"You're naked."
Adam looked down. His hairy thighs stuck out from beneath the folded duvet which barely covered his crotch. He frowned again. It was unlike him to be so oblivious to his own physical state or environment. At the very least, he would have noticed the cold as the room air touched his bare skin. He realized then that the room wasn't cold - quite the opposite. It was almost uncomfortably warm, and he couldn't remember turning up the heat on the thermostat. He couldn't remember getting undressed either, as he usually wore a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms to bed.
Wait...how did I possibly fall asleep?
"You were shivering," Ecru said, sitting up slightly. "More of shaking. Started around 2AM. I thought you were cold, so I turned up the heat but you didn't stop. Then you started stripping off your clothes and I thought it was too hot, but you held on to me and stopped shaking and...I've never seen you sleep like that. It's almost like you were dead."
Wynter raised his eyebrows quizzically. "Are you falling ill, Adam?"
"Don't be ridiculous, I can't fall..."
Adam stopped and felt his own forehead. He was warm. Not warm enough to seem outright sickly, but definitely not normal temperature. Something was off. He had not fallen ill since he became Oberon's vassal, and strange as his current state was, he couldn't understand what it meant. He still retained his youthful visage and could feel the surge of the Fairy king's power, and though there was no clearly stated clause for what would happen should his role expire, he usually assumed all the privileges he'd been enjoying for the last thirty-five years would come to an abrupt end. Or he'd simply die.
He pulled on the robe and slid his feet into his slippers. Whatever was going on, he wasn't going to gain any better understanding of it by staying in bed. There was already so much on his plate. Kojiro had managed to get in contact with the god Bishamonten to discuss the state of affairs in the Shinto pantheon, but with the way he sounded on the phone, Adam wasn't expecting good news. From what he knew about situations like these, when gods took a while to show any sort of reaction to a perceived threat, it usually meant things were pretty serious. Adrianna's state was also a cause for concern. She had been fading in and out of awareness, often blanking out for several minutes at a time. He had been planning an intervention of sorts to see how he could delve into her mind and help her unravel her repressed and conflicting memories, but she had shut herself in her room and refused to emerge for the last two days. And if he wasn't mistaken, today was training day, though at the moment he couldn't quite recall which set of children he was supposed to be having a session with.
His stomach growled.
"Someone's hungry," Ecru murmured. "Besides me, that is."
"And I'm still itching for a drink," Wynter said. "So two birds, one stone, eh Adam?"
Adam leered. "How do you ever get any work done? I mean, you're drunk half the time."
"I need to be drunk half the time for the job I do," Wynter said with a smile. "And a word of warning, if you only have beer, I might get violent."
Ecru snorted and rolled over. Adam rolled his eyes, got up from the bed and shuffled out the door, with Wynter following closely behind. He absentmindedly made his way into the kitchen and opened the fridge as Wynter sat on one of the stools beside the kitchen island. Adam filled the kettle and switched it on with a thought as he moved towards the liquor cabinet.
"I suppose, since you let yourself in, you've already taken a tour of the premises."
"I can still find my way around. It's not like the place has changed...much."
"You entered the children's rooms, didn't you?"
Wynter paused for a moment. "Yes. In my defence, I wasn't expecting them to be there."
"I told you they'd be staying here until this stream of attacks gets sorted out."
"Huh. Must've skipped my mind."
Adam gave him a loaded glance. Wynter raised his eyebrows and returned the look with one of indignation before shrugging.
"I don't get why you're looking at me like that. I didn't do anything."
"Right..." Adam replied, pouring brandy into a shot glass. "And the fact that you just said that tells me all I need to know."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Wynter murmured, reaching eagerly for the glass.
"If you want to pretend, could you pretend not to be a complete sleazeball? You have a teenage daughter for Pete's sake."
"I only looked."
Adam responded with a dead stare and Wynter avoided his gaze and sipped at his drink. He turned away as the kettle started to hiss, grabbed a mug and threw in a bag of white tea.
"Can we get to the main reason you're here? Because I'm sure it wasn't to say 'hi' and ogle at sleeping underage girls."
Wynter knocked back his drink and slammed the glass on the table.
"I need a place to stay."
Adam turned sharply, spilling the hot water he was pouring into his mug. He cursed and waved his hand and the excess liquid levitated in droplets and landed in the sink. He grabbed a teaspoon from the rack and turned back to a vaguely amused Wynter.
"What?"
"It's only for a while," Wynter mumbled. "You were the only person I could think of with both the space and the security. Although, considering how easy it was for me to get in, we'll have to work on the security a bit..."
"What did you get yourself into? And don't try to bullshit me; I'm really not in the mood today."
Wynter poured himself another shot and swirled the brown liquid in his glass.
"Honestly, I don't know. I'll say mass hysteria."
Adam frowned. "I don't follow."
"New Arcadia is a madhouse right now. As you know, once the Prole workers went missing and productivity went down, the workload doubled for everyone, including the Plebeians, with no significant increase in remuneration. Of course, people got angry. At first, they were just asking questions and holding inquisitions and making demands from the Nobles and Royals. But then their demands turned into riots and inquisitions turned into - forgive the expression - a witch hunt, and once word got around that Nathan was the first to go missing and I had been harbouring him, I knew it would only be a matter of time before they came knocking. I had to send Foth home and tip some old friends at Immigration to let me out."
"And so you thought it wise to come here, to the home of the one person who can basically become their king at any moment."
Wynter leered and topped up his glass. "Well, I'm not afraid of that. I don't think Oberon sanctioned any of their actions. I would know; I'm practically Royal staff."
"So what's he doing about the situation?"
Wynter shrugged. "He's been MIA for at least three days. Wherever he is or whatever he's doing, the nobles of the Inner Circle are keeping things under wraps."
"And where's the Queen in all this?"
"Not sure. Last I heard, she was somewhere between making feeble attempts at damage control and generally staying out of the way. She's probably by his side or something."
Wynter sighed tiredly and spun the drinking glass around its base on the marble countertop as Adam stared into his cup. This new development wasn't welcome; there was already enough going on, and he wasn't keen on adding a lecherous old mage to his list of potential problems. But Adam knew he couldn't turn the man down, especially not in this situation. The issue of who was attacking them was yet to be resolved and he could not stand to lose an ally over something as simple as tenancy.
"So...is he going to stay upstairs or downstairs?"
The voice came from the doorway and Adam turned. Elisabeth dragged her feet into the room, rubbing her eye as she yawned, and climbed on the stool beside a wide-eyed Wynter. Wynter swallowed, looking strangely nervous, and made a move to top up his drink but then relented. The silence seemed even more uncomfortable now and he eyed the girl apprehensively. Elisabeth turned fully, giving him a quick inspection before her lips curled in a knowing smile.
"Hi, Dad."
)-(
Adam winced and rubbed at his temples. The migraine had returned, made even worse by the throb alerting him of a power intrusion from the basement. The fluttering chaotic pattern was characteristic of the Lawrence twins, and he huffed tiredly and closed his book. He was beginning to rethink his decision to continue with this whole teaching arrangement. It required a lot of time and patience, and he was quickly becoming deficient in both. A thought of passing some of the work to Wynter - at least the extra training with Elisabeth which robbed him of his Sundays - crossed his mind briefly, but making the mage have repeated encounters with his estranged daughter was going to drown the entire ordeal in awkwardness and unresolved issues. And that wasn't even considering that the man was more than a little unhinged.
Pain pulsed behind his eyes as he stood up and walked slowly towards the stairwell. He was hardly in the mood for any sort of activity, but he had since learned to put aside his personal comforts to do what had to be done. The children needed to be taught, and the more they knew, the better they would be at defending themselves from whomever or whatever was behind this current chain of attacks. Even the teenagers who lived with him still had to go out of the protected environs of the house for schooling, and he couldn't follow them around all day to fight on their behalf. He tried to come up with several other rational arguments to motivate himself as he opened the door to the training room in the basement, but then the view he met blew all logic and reasoning out of his brain.
"What is this?"
Agnes startled and hurriedly stepped away from the caramel-skinned teenage boy she had been fervently making out with moments ago. Her brother, Augustus, stood off to the side, smirking smugly.
"They refused to separate when it was time to go," he started "and I didn't want to keep you waiting, so I..."
He trailed off as Adam pinned him with a withering stare. The other boy slowly backed away with his hands held up defensively as Agnes made an expression that was a cross between embarrassment and defiance.
"I...I am..." the boy stuttered.
"Just leaving," Agnes said. "And don't worry about him telling anyone, he already knows about all the magic stuff."
"You think that because I've given you free rein to come and go as you please," Adam said sullenly as he descended the inclined slope into the training area. "You feel you can bring in whomever you want?"
Augustus stepped forward. "I'm sorry, I..."
Adam stretched out his hand and there was a whooshing sound as a whorl of dark purple engulfed the other boy. His short scream was cut off as he disappeared into a flat line. Adam disregarded the siblings' expressions of shock and moved to stand in the middle of the training ground.
"We'll be continuing from where we left off, but this time we'll working on using your time-field manipulation in combination with your sister's antimatter utilization."
"Where's Joshua?" Agnes said, dazed, her voice merely a whisper. Adam's brows furrowed, lips set in a grim line.
"If you ever want to see your little friend again..."
"What did you do to him?!" Agnes screamed.
"...You had better impress me in this session," Adam continued drolly. "I suggest you focus all that anger and energy into coordinating better with your brother."
"If anything happens to him, I'll-"
Adam waved his hand again and she stopped, her scowling face and tensely poised body frozen in a pocket of time. He turned back to her much taller brother who seemed to be losing the struggle to keep his fear at bay and maintain a neutral face. Adam realized that he was still scowling, and tried for a more placid expression. He didn't want the element of fear hampering what already promised to be a difficult training exercise.
"This would be particularly challenging," he said softly "but the aim is to help you master the art of manipulating your globus."
"Globus?"
"Sorry, I've been reading the old books again. I meant your Sphere, your magical area of influence. You need to know how to maintain it even under adverse conditions. So for this session, I'll set up and maintain a time-arrest field within which we would engage in combat. You are responsible for negating its effects on both yourself and your sister. Is this clear?"
"Yes sir."
"To make things a little easier, I'll try to limit myself to water-based attacks. Don't forget your proxy. We can't afford to have you looking any older."
Augustus blushed slightly and nodded. In their last training session, he had forgotten this for about two minutes and ended up looking like he had gone through another growth spurt. In times like this, Adam was grateful for the longevity spell that kept him young and cancelled out the side-effects of using time magic. He was all too familiar with the consequences of working without a transference proxy; the amount of time distorted by thr magic was taken out from the mage's lifespan. That's why his favourite nephew was currently going through a midlife crisis at the age of thirty-two.
He shook his head and exhaled.
"Alright, we begin."
Augustus nodded and pulled something out of his pocket and strapped it to the inside of his wrist. Adam narrowed his eyes for a moment before realising what it was. A dense bar of plastic. Clever, he thought. Compared to the previous metal proxies Augustus used, it was much lighter, and with degradation time of at least four hundred years, it was enough to fuel his magic to a significant extent. Augustus turned to look anxiously at his sister who was still trapped, but before he could turn back, Adam's sphere exploded into the room, slowing down time to the point that everything appeared to have stopped moving. Augustus was rigid for a few seconds but then his arm began to move - slowly at first, but then enough to be equivalent with normal time. Adam felt a swell at the inclusion of another negating sphere around Agnes as she lurched forward.
"-make sure you get a tribunal with..." she said, and then stopped to look at her brother before taking in her environment. "What the hell just happened?"
"We begin now."
"We what...holy shi-"
She dove sideways as four icicle spears flew past her head, spinning and curving in the air towards Augustus. Augustus vanished in a wisp of green and appeared behind Adam, who rapidly forged a shell of ice to trap his swinging arm. Augustus grunted and flared a ring of fire around himself to break free and Adam moved his hand in a sharp slashing motion, pooling the melted ice into the shape of a scimitar that froze instantly into his palm. He swung rapidly and Augustus ducked in time to avoid the attack and teleported out of the way. Adam smirked and spun sharply on his heel, catching the boy in a punch to the solar plexus just as he appeared behind him. Augustus flew back and crashed on the rocky ground as Agnes charged forward, but then the second swell of magical energy dissipated from around her and her movements slowed to a stop, freezing her mid-stride. Adam flicked his wrist quickly, sending three jagged blocks of ice shooting towards her.
"Shit," Augustus cursed as he teleported again, flashing momentarily beside his sister and vanishing along with her as the icy projectiles zoomed through where they had stood moments before. He appeared on the far end of the training field, as far beyond Adam's reach as he could be without getting outside the time shell.
"What the..." Agnes gasped. "How did I...? How do you guys keep speeding up like that?"
"Augustus, you need to maintain the counter-effects on her as well," Adam said, loosening a crick in his neck as all the icy formations floated back towards him and slowly melted into a single massive blob. "It would be impossible for her to keep up if her subjectivity to time is constantly fluctuating."
"I'm having a hard time just trying to control myself," Augustus said, gasping. He threw away the crumbling plastic bar and replaced it. "And you're not making this as easy as you said you would."
"I only said I'll limit myself to water-based magic, not that I'll go easy on you. Besides, I've said this to you a hundred times before: when one path to your goal fails -"
"Either change the path, or the goal," Augustus said, exhaling sharply. "I know."
"We'll start again," Adam said. "Watch yourselves."
The twins separated to stand a few feet from each other and Augustus gave his sister a peculiar look. Agnes smiled as she popped her knuckles.
"Alright, professor," she said, "Show us what you got."
Adam felt an unusual surge of anger at her cocky demeanour, and lashed out his arm, sending the blob of water forward in an elongated whip. Agnes held up both hands and quickly forged a wind shield, grunting as she was pushed back by the impact. Adam spread his fingers, splitting the water into several smaller tendrils that curled behind the barrier to her unprotected side.
"Spitfire," she hissed.
A blast of air mixed with green flames erupted from behind her, vaporising the liquid tendrils and shooting her forward. Adam jumped out of her flight path and clenched his fist, instantly pulling and solidifying the vapour around him to surround himself in a transparent ice dome. She attacked the sphere repeatedly, pounding at its dense wall with fists flaring with antimatter. Adam grunted and intensified the bonds between the water molecules to counter her disintegrative magic. He waited until she attempted an attack from above and sent the dome flying upwards, knocking her into the stone ceiling. He shattered the ice into blocks, leaving her to plummet to the ground, before rushing towards Augustus. The boy teleported to the opposite end of the training sphere and Adam hissed.
So predictable.
His blocks of ice broke further, melted and refroze into spheres, each about as large as a golf ball. They shot out in all directions, dispersing within the training sphere before he eliminated his influence on their movements, leaving them trapped by the effects of the time-arrest spell. Agnes twisted in mid-air, breaking her fall, and flew forward, propelled by her mix of wind and fire. She screamed as she brought her hands out and sent a burst of green fire roaring towards Adam. Adam sidestepped her attack and reached his influence to the three closest spheres of ice, firing them with bullet-like speed. She narrowly evaded the shots but the spheres flitted past, continuing towards Augustus. The boy's eyes widened, but before he could react, the spheres collided with his chest. He coughed out blood as he flew back, initially fast but then slowly as his control over his magic faltered. The spheres separated and flew beneath his slowly moving body, knocking him upwards before two more spheres descended from above and drove him into the ground. Agnes twisted to look but then her movements became sluggish as Augustus's influence around her also disappeared. Six spheres from around her shot down, but then there was a blur of movement and she vanished, leaving the spheres to crack the ground on impact.
Adam blinked and turned to see Ecru, who stood over the frightened and confused girl. Adam frowned, sucking his sphere back into himself and allowing the flow of time resume. Sounds rushed back and the cold draughty air of the basement made his skin flush with goose bumps. The spheres of ice dropped to the ground and quickly melted, and Augustus moaned from somewhere behind him as he folded his arms and locked gazes with the vampire.
"Why did you interrupt?"
"Because I couldn't just stand back and watch anymore," Ecru replied stiffly.
"Really. It's not like you to get worked up over something like this."
"I know. And it's not like you to get so worked up over something like this. You were willing to give them rib fractures over a training session."
Adam blinked slowly. He hated to admit it, but Ecru was right. He thought about why was acting so forceful. Maybe he was simply irritable from the migraine, which was still throbbing relentlessly. Or maybe it was all tied to the strange feelings he'd been getting lately. He closed his eyes and sighed.
"Alright, class dismissed."
He turned and walked out of the room, not sparing a glance at either of the teenagers. He needed to clear his head, and there was something about staying in the basement that made him tense and uncomfortable. Also, he felt like he had somehow failed himself by losing composure. As he rushed up the stairs, his mind filled with an unnatural hum as the migraine increased in intensity. There was a gust of air and someone appeared in front of him, casting a shadow into his path. He looked up to meet Ecru's worried silvery eyes.
"Adam? Are you okay?"
Ecru's voice came like a distorted underwater sound, every syllable echoing, intensifying the throb in Adam's head. He hissed in pain and pressed his hands to his temples, pressing as though hoping to squeeze out the pain.
"Adam?"
The world tilted and white flashes interrupted his vision. Strong hands held him and he perceived familiar scent of Ecru, but trying to focus on anything else seemed impossible.
"Adam!"
Colours seeped into each other.
And plunged into black.