When I was a kid, my mom left me at my cousin’s house for a day. I think she was going to an event. Funeral, wedding, something at work, I can’t remember. But I remember his dingy little apartment in the Bronx. Mom had to shuttle me through the door, promising ice cream on the way back if I was good and didn’t make any trouble. All I remember is looking over my shoulder as my mom made her way down the wide but empty road leading down to the nearest station. As my cousin closed the doors behind me, I could hear the rumbling of the trains in the distance. Not the subway, but the metro north.

My cousin was a taxi driver. A perpetually tired, happy go lucky sort, who spent most of his free time with his butt planted in his couch, sipping watery beer and watching bootleg DVDs he’d bought at the gas station. On the day I was to spend with him, he dug out one of his favorites from his collection and played it on his TV. And then he promptly settled into his couch, crushed a few cans of beer, and fell asleep snoring loudly. Incidentally, this was when I snuck a taste of beer from an unopened can, which was the first time I had any alcohol.

The movie was playing on a crappy CRT screen, with terrible audio and washed out colors. I had no idea where the remote was and couldn’t find it in all the mess, so sometimes the dialogue was too quiet, and sometimes I wouldn’t understand what was going on at all. I don’t remember how old I had been at the time, so perhaps some of my inability to understand was because of my age. But a lot of it had to do with the movie.

By the time I was in college, and especially by the time I had been thrown out of my Earth, The Matrix was a celebrated movie, a prominent part of pop culture and easily recognizable for its many motifs, themes, and artistic choices. People remembered the blue pill and the red pill, people remembered the political allegories, the metaphysical commentary, and the experimental narrative, but as my mind zoomed back into the still frozen moment outside the gates of the capital of the Lux Republic, it was something else that I remembered from that day with my cousin, spent watching The Matrix on a crappy screen while sitting on a floor littered with beer cans.

The special effects in The Matrix had been revolutionary for their time, according to my cousin before he fell asleep. And my young self could see why. Flying through the air, moving in slow or quick motion, and doing cool things in cool shades and cool suits, all of that absolutely blew my mind. And of course, there were the scenes when bullets froze in the air in front of the characters, transfixed by sheer force of will and the rule of cool.

The Ikon caught my bullet inches from their face with what looked to be a soap bubble. A soap bubble that seemed like it would pop with the slightest breeze or the tip of my pinky. And yet, that bubble had stopped a bullet propelled from my prototype, magic assisted railgun.

The sun hid behind the clouds again, and a drab gray overcast hue blanketed the battlefield yet again. The Ikon breathed. The bubble popped. My bullet fell to the ground at the Ikon’s feet, a tiny clink proclaiming the defeat of my greatest weapon.

Or was it a defeat? I grit my teeth. Surely the Ikon had expended a great deal of energy to use a magic like that. To stop something that was moving with such speed, such power, it must have exhausted the Ikon to the limits. The only problem was, I did not have another bullet, and the railgun was too damaged to use again anyway. I also did not have any iron balls anymore, and there were no exploding arrows either.

But that was okay. I gathered a bunch of energy and shot out a dozen magic hands. The magic hands grabbed a bunch of rocks and stones and fallen logs. All of this hurtled through the air towards the Ikon, not as fast as the iron balls, but still fast enough to blow a hole through an ordinary person’s body. The Ikon didn’t have to bring out another one of those strange bubbles, but they couldn’t dodge so many projectiles at once either. In the end, they burned the logs into ash with fire, and sidestepped the stones with their silver glow. But unlike before, I alternated my magic hands, making sure that when one went to grab a projectile another replaced it. A constant bombardment of rocks and detritus fell on the Ikon, slowing their speed to a crawl and forcing them to expend even more energy. And although the Ikon was definitely getting more tired, it was clear that it wasn’t going to be enough. The Ikon finally approached a few feet in front of me. He was too close for me to throw more objects at him, and the people on the city walls had stopped for fear of hitting me.

I stared at the Ikon, who was breathing heavily, and clearly tired. I stretched a little bit. It was time for a close combat battle. I was looking forward to it with my motion and air magic, coupled with the short range electric magic that I was ready to pull out as a trump card in a few moments. As far as I was concerned, the only thing I had to worry about was the bubble from before, but as long as I didn’t get right up next to their face, the Ikon shouldn’t be able to get me with that.

A soft crackle went up my arm. I bent down, putting force in my legs, preparing to lunge. Dust fell into my eyes. I blinked.

There was another bubble in front of the Ikons’ face. Soapy, with a tinge of rainbow. My eyes widened. The Ikon’s chest wasn’t heaving as much anymore. In fact, they seemed to have the same ethereal calm that they had when I had first seen them. This was more than a second wind. It was as if they had gone back in time. For some reason, the image of reloading a save in a video game came to mind.

More bubbles appeared. Each with a gravity that seemed to suck the air out of the surroundings. How many were there? Perhaps a dozen. They had appeared without theatrics with my eye unblinking. One moment there was nothing there, the next, terror. The Ikon raised both hands up above my head, making a v-shape with their hands. It took me a moment to react. I hurriedly yelled over my shoulder, trying to use air magic to amplify my desperate message, but by the time the first words left my mouth, the bubbles were racing through the air over my head.

Kelser reacted instantly, grabbing Bain Rusta and Taoc as he fell back, possibly off the edge of the walls and down to the ground below. The other humans reacted a step later, most of them ducking behind the palisades with a few jumping away like Kelser. The demon and fairy guards, particularly the ones who had been refilling the exploding arrows, only reacted when the bubbles were near the top of the city walls. A few of them were whisked back by what I presumed were magic hands, with a few still being whisked away when the bubbles struck.

The bubbles seemed to drift through the air like regular soap bubbles, the kind I’d seen at state fairs coming out of cheap plastic rings being doled out to kids for a quick buck. Yet, they traveled faster than bullets, the strange incongruity of their motion and speed giving them an unnatural feeling.

The bubbles seemed to drift onto the bodies of the demons and fairies and straggling humans. As if with bated breath, the people on the city walls stared at the bubbles, their eyes reflecting wildly in their soapy exterior, showing their fear, their dread.

The bubbles popped.

The people disappeared.