230-V2

Nobody can hear you scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Between the two toddlers, and the travel kennel holding some contemptible furry thing that may or may not even have feet, Kain determined that was a lie. Packed into a week long labor class transport from Earth to Mars, the symphony of shrill, ear piercing sounds the trio next to him emitted were not lost on anyone in the cabin. Everyone in space could hear them scream.

He knew better than to travel on a labor class transport, but work had been scarce, leaving his account light. There was a point when he wasn’t sure that he could even make it back to Mars. He knew all he had to do was attach his title to a formal request and he would have more than enough credit to book a Diamond level trip, but he was never one to use his station simply to make his life more comfortable. He found those in his position that did so to be absolutely detestable. He had certainly been taught better than that.

Once the shuttle touched down, Kain could feel that he was back on red soil. Having been born on Earth, he always felt himself to be of two worlds. Having no anchor to either, yet a connection to both. It wasn’t until his early twenties that he first set foot on Mars. He then spent the following ten years of his life under the tutelage of his mentor Iya Asfa, learning the hidden power of the red planet. The rules were slightly different on Mars, and very different for Iya Asfa. Most young initiates spent their first few years buried in ancient texts and studying biochemical apothecary before they even glimpsed their first demon. Kain took pride whenever he could in telling any initiate from Earth that he slayed his first creature of the damned, died, was resurrected, and had his soul almost stolen, all in his first eight months. Iya Asfa firmly believed in the benefits of hands on learning experience.

After her death, Kain became the foremost authority on Mars and its place in the magical forces that bound the universe. This usually found him in high demand as companies expanded and colonies grew across the planet. There was always some demon, creature, or spirit standing in the way of progress, but as progress slowed, so did the need for Mars’ Prime Mage. Most companies had even gotten in the habit of hiring cheaper, and far inferior, warlocks to deal with imp infestations and lessor demons that would awaken whenever a colony wanted to expand their living habitat. They would come with their diluted potions and half prepared spells, and wipe the areas clean. Without fail, a month later, the imps would return. You really do get exactly what you pay for.

Since it was a labor class shuttle, there was no terminal for passengers to disembark to. The transport landed directly in a large hangar. Once inside it, they then had to wait for the hangar to pressurize. When the air was once again available, and the hatches were open, it was a free for all. Passengers, crew, engineers, and docking personnel all scrambled to get from one place to another. They immediately piled passenger baggage into a section near the front of the transport, so that lifters and smaller shuttles could retrieve the shipped cargo from the rear. Everything coming to Mars from Earth, intended for sale, was top priority. The Hermes Transport Company took passenger fares up front. Once the credits were transferred, they didn’t really care if you made it to Mars or not. They certainly didn’t care if you could find your luggage once you got there.

Kain made his way from the rear of the transport, where he hoped his trunk was waiting for him. The heat and exhaust of the engines created a must that sat in the back of his throat. He was sore from spending most of his week sitting in the same chair. Labor class transports didn’t come with many amenities to distract from a week long interplanetary flight. Save for the dining area, a bar, and the exercise section, your seat was essentially the only thing that the Hermes Transport Co guaranteed with ticket purchase.

Kain spent most of the week going through the spell books he brought with him while he was back at the temple on Earth. While it was necessary for him to return to earth to ground himself, he still needed to keep his pneuma rooted in Mars. When he traveled, he always made sure he had a few of his strongest talismans and a few books that were filled with the incant axioms of Mars. They were not full incantations, but by referring to and speaking life into them, these rudiments of Mars magic kept his connection to the 4th planet. Before she transcended, Iya Asfa anchored Kain to the soil of Mars. While his own corporal body needed to draw power from the Earth, it would forever bond his soul to Mars, and all of her unique magical properties. The red planet’s spells were not the same. Her alchemy, her air, even the talismans he carried with him were constantly in need of alignment to the spirit and vibrations of the 4th planet. They were all the things that kept him tied to Mars while he was back on Earth.

Had he been born to one of the colonies, his ties to the red planet wouldn’t take so much maintenance. It actually caused quite a stir in the community when Iya Asfa bonded him to the planet instead of someone born on Mars. It was especially scandalous since every temple on Earth had rejected Kain for basic entry into any of the academies that offered study in the occult. They all found his spirit to be far too weak to handle the strain of even becoming a practicing lesser warlock.

But it was on Mars that he found Iya Asfa, and through her, found a connection to the mystic arts he had been told was impossible. She told him that his soul was too strong for Earth. His was a spirit so powerful, it lay dormant without a path of significant challenge. A defiant soul that needed seemingly insurmountable confrontation to ever truly be alive.

“Your soul is bored. That’s why it’s so lazy.”, she told him. To ease this boredom, she rooted him to a world he was not born of. She told him something destined him to be pulled between two worlds. Only there, constantly stretched to his limit, would he be able to realize his true power. Then, on her deathbed, she granted him the title of Mars’ Prime Mage. On his first trip back to Earth, he traveled to the first temple that rejected him, got drunk on the way, and urinated on the main steps.

Moving through the must and mist of the hangar, he arrived at the pile of luggage, and marveled at the free for all taking place. Many times on these cheaper transports, passengers would just grab as many bags as they could, whether or not they belonged to them. There were two security officers stationed at the baggage pile, but there were too many bags and too many people to check every single claim slip. Kain was also confident, by the lifeless looks on both their faces, that they were not compensated nearly enough to care.

He waited patiently for the crowd to dissipate. He wasn’t at all worried about his trunk being stolen by anyone. He could have placed some sort of spell on it that made anyone violently ill the moment they touched it, but he found the best deterrent to be the trunks lack of hover pads. The second anyone saw wheels on the bottom and realized the amount of effort involved in stealing it, they would immediately move on.

By the time enough people had cleared and he found his trunk, he had a nice headache from the ship’s exhaust. It didn’t help that he always had a hard time focusing his energy when in large crowds of people. The chaos and constant shifts in energy and attention were soul sucking. If everyone could just collectively calm down and focus, it wouldn’t be so bad, but the larger the crowd, the more chaotic. Chaos thrives the closer you get to infinity, and the hangar certainly felt as if it held an infinite number of people at that moment.

He went to his trunk and placed his shoulder bag on top. As Kain headed toward the shuttle platforms, the sight of him pushing a state-of-the-art titanium travel trunk on wheels drew more than a few stares. Through all the chaos, it was one demonstrative voice that cut through the crowd that stopped him.

“Baba Washington!” Kain stopped and turned toward the sound. Celia stood tall in the crowd, with the posture of someone that had just slain a Kayt Mollusk. She was confident, firm, and at stern attention. Having just spent a week on the cheapest interplanetary transport he could find, Kain’s hunched posture and dejected demeanor were a stark contrast. They were going to need to find a middle ground quick, at least until he could shake his headache.

“Celia, please. Can you call me Kain? We’ve been over this a thousand times. Just call me Kain.”

“You may not have respect for the great tradition of our line, but I do, Baba Washington.”

“I have respect for the line, just not the title.” Kain began pushing his trunk to the shuttle platforms. He knew Celia would be eager to get straight to work, but there were more important things, like food and a change of clothes, that had to come first. Celia kept stride to the left of him. Kain could tell that she was eager to pick up the pace. She never lost her formal gait, holding her posture as she walked alongside him. Her chin in the air seemed higher than she was tall.

“You had respect for the title when my grandmother held it.”

“Your Grandmother was perhaps the greatest Mage on Mars or Earth. I’m not your Grandmother.”

“You say that even after she has passed the line to you. After all that you have accomplished to bring honor to the line, wear the title with pride.”

“I do. I’m just still not used to it, even after all these years. Besides, you are my contemporary, not my assistant. You call me Kain. Those fuckers at the temple on Earth, they call me Baba Washington.” Kain felt he held a healthy resentment for the Mages on Earth that rejected him in his youth, but he would never let it distract him from their shared mission to protect the planets from interdimensional incursion. He would answer the call without hesitation should any of them need help, but it was never lost on him that they looked him over simply because he didn’t fit their image of an ideal Mage. Iya Asfa saw him for who and what he was from the moment they met, and since that day, he was constantly proving how wrong they were. Kain would never forget this, less for his ego’s sake, but more for the true nature of how shortsighted they could be. Kain had solved many problems over the years by simply seeing what their egos could not.

“Oh, you mean the temple whose steps you micturated on?!”

“Damn right! And I’d piss on them again if I had enough water in me!”

“Well, be sure to put it on your to do list for your next trip back to Earth. For now, we have important business with the Roxx corporation.”

“I thought after the whole to do with the interdimensional warlord we had to save them from, the company agreed to slow their plans for colonial expansion.” Kain stopped and leaned over his trunk.

“Are you okay?” Celia asked.

“This thing is heavy. Pushing it and talking at the same time kinda sucks.”

“Why don’t you install hover pads?”

“Security.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” Kain said as he pulled a bottle of water from his shoulder bag. “So, how did we get back to digging for demons?”

“Roxx wasn’t breaking ground on a new colony. New Haven mining subcontracted them to survey the area they were going to build on. New Haven convinced them that if they weren’t going to put businesses and living quarters on the land, they could at least find out if there was anything valuable to extract from it.”

“What part of ‘Do not break this ground’ did I not make clear?!” he said, offering her his bottle.

“No, thank you. Apparently, the entire instruction sailed right over their heads. They followed the map that you gave them at first, but initial surveys showed that a large ore deposit was in one of the ‘off limits’ areas.”

“Let me guess, they tore the bands.”

“Worse. It looks like they shattered the 3rd seal.” Kains face tightened. Breaking the seal meant that, at best, they would have to recast the protection incantation in its entirety. The seals would have to be rebuilt, and they would have to search a completely different dimension for all new bands to bind. At worst, an interdimensional rift would widen enough for a hoard of dark forces to pass through and conquer the entire planet, devouring all life in the process.

“I’m sorry. You would think if I tell you that there might be the personification of true evil behind that door, most people would leave it the fuck closed. I swear, sometimes it’s like trying to keep a child from touching fire… for the third time! They do know that this will take more work than the last time!?” Kain snapped.

“I informed them. I also quoted them double.”

“Good! I’m sorry I’m yelling, I’m just frustrated. If they had just done what the hell I told them.”

“Well, they didn’t. They also tried to use three lesser warlocks to solve the problem before they finally gave in and called me. Two new ones I had never heard of, and Cam.”

“Aw, no. I like Cam. Any sign of him?”

“They, of course, have him listed as deceased. I’ve moved his body to our mausoleum and encased him in a preservation cocoon. When I went to investigate the rupture, there was too much energy for me to tell if he, or anyone else, was still present.”

“Which means either we’ve lost him, or whatever is trying to tear through the other four seals is huge. This shitshow gets more spectacular by the minute.” As they talked, two small children approached them, offering candy for sale. Celia could see Kains frustration double. She smiled as she offered them the change in her pocket and shooed them away before they could hand her any candy.

“I marvel that the threat of an interplanetary apocalypse caused by the greed of humanity annoys you to the same degree as a few harmless children.”

“I have found hundreds of incantations and rituals for fertility. Still haven’t found one that can make me sterile.”

“Oh, stop that!” Celia said, laughing.

“This is going to take a lot of fucking work. You said you quoted them double?”

“I did.”

“Call them back and make it triple. Tell them we need the extra money to purchase some specialty items that are very rare and very expensive. Then let’s make a list of what we actually need. I’m pretty sure we have everything we need in all that junk I left in storage. We’ll see if we can’t get Cam, and then see how many dimensions we have to hop through to rebuild this incantation and sew the thing up.”

“Excellent. I’ll call them while we’re on the shuttle. Will you be needing to realign any of your crystals or talismans?”

“All of them. Tell them we can walk the grounds in three days. After the last thing that came out of the rift, I am not going anywhere without protection.”

“Fantastic. Dinner?”

“I’ve been thinking about the fish at Frankie’s cafe for the last month.”

“That works. We can drop off your ancient trunk of prehistoric wonders and then eat.”

“That’s all well and good, but I just got off of a week long transport. Guess what comes first?”

“My first inclination is to say a shower, but we can stop at the bar on the way.”

“Damn right we can!”

“Then let’s go. Do you need help to push that thing?”

“No, I think…”

“Good.” she said, spinning on her heels and bounding toward the shuttle platform before he could finish his sentence.

He was the most powerful Mage on the planet, and he had to push his own trunk. Celia swore by the title, but that’s about as far as her adherence to tradition went. She was like the little sister that he never asked for, but she was perhaps the most powerful being on Mars. At times, he was almost sure she was more powerful than he was. They were going to need every ounce of their combined strength on this one. The last time, they almost didn’t seal the rift. No one on the planet knew how close it had come to descending into the rule of a high demon from the dark dimension. And now they had to do it again because somewhere, some idiot in a suit decided to see if there was any ore that could be mined in that area next to the sealed portal to Hell.

Definitely bourbon first, then shower.