Lost in the Crowd

James

I followed Rend into the dark and well-populated theater. On the big screen was the hottest new Carvel movie, The Revengers.

I had been educated in Pop Culture during my upbringing and it was still my responsibility to keep up with the biggest trends. This was because on occasion my assignments would require me to actually talk to people. Having knowledge of that kind of thing was enough to fool whoever I wanted that I was normal like them. Lando family had the ability to program me to talk to people whenever they wanted, although they rarely did that.

I stopped for a second to watch the hero on-screen and Rend grabbed me by the cuff of my shirt and pulled me along as she approached Stanley. Because Madame Rend was a fully awakened Adept, a trained and seasoned magical Client, she was she was able to see the emanations of the magical field of Astral Light flowing from Stanley.

Most people’s attunement with the magical part of themselves is so weak that the emanations are barely noticeable by even an Adept.

However, the trained Adept, a magical Client who has achieved mastery of his or her craft, has achieved such a state of focus that his body is generating the maximum amount of Astral Light at all times.

This field, known in the Astral sciences as the Astral Aegis, provides the Client with protection from subtle and low-power magical attacks. Use of the Astral Aegis is basically universal to the participants of the Hidden War. This is due to the constant psychological and other attacks constantly being waged against their life-forces by the Enchanters and Casters of the rival families.

Unfortunately for Stanley however, it also made the Client easily identifiable by anyone within eye range, and that proved a greater disadvantage in this instance. I followed Rend into a row and sat down as she took a seat right behind Stanley. She crept up to him and gently wrapped her slender arms, in what could’ve been mistaken for a lover’s embrace, around his chest and neck. He seemingly did not react at all. She then crept up even closer and whisper gently in his ear.

“Come with us quickly. Don’t make me activate the boy. You know what he can do. Look at all these people.” With that Rend lifted her right arm up from Stanley’s body for a moment and pointed a finger at one of the onlookers, making a gun symbol and playfully shooting.

“You’re sick, you know that?” Stanley snapped at her, wrestling himself away from her arms in disgust. The look of indignation was ill-fitting for a man that looked as ragged as he did.

While I was performing my own analysis of Stanley’s strength with my enhanced analytical abilities, I took a good look at Stanley’s appearance. It looked like he hadn’t showered in days. He was at least several days unshaven and his hair was greasy and unkempt. The bags under his eyes had sunken in and his breath reeked of tequila.

Nevertheless, Stanley was ahead of Madame Rend in that he had some degree of decency and took the opportunity to remind her.

“I almost envy you.” Stanley started at Rend in a low voice. “Your brain works in away that you can enjoy this chaos. The pointless killing. The torturing each other every hour of the day for a resource that we don’t even understand. You feed off of it. Why else would you choose a movie theater to do this?”. He paused for a moment and looked over at me, then back at Rend. “Oh I already know actually. He needs it.” Stanley stood-up and started speaking more loudly. “This is like fodder for him. Or just gasoline for his diesel engine because he really is little more than a robot.”

He looked over at me again and I had no reaction. I was too busy analyzing abilities to try to respond. Besides since I wasn’t ordered to respond, I wouldn’t have. Stanley shook his head, but Rend stopped him before he got the chance to speak again.

“That was a beautiful monologue. Really, you are like a regular Meryl Streep.” She laughed briefly at her own cleverness. “But let me remind you that it was that you, not me and certainly not the Lando family, who humiliated one of The Patriarch’s associates within his own establishment. The rules say we get to punish you.” Madame Rend grinned.

“Do the rules say we get to do this in a —“ he was interrupted by one of the on-lookers he was trying to protect.

“Hey can you two lovebirds shut the hell up?” Heckled a portly man in a blue baseball cap from behind us. He managed to get off a few more words before Madame Rend stood up forcefully. “Shut your mouth or I will shut it for you!” She commanded.

And with that command visible Astral Light began to emanate from her eyes. This was a tactic she used frequently on the uninitiated (those who were not familiar with magic) and it had a perfect record of inspiring terror in any on looker. The man screamed and fell backwards out of his seat. The people behind him stood up and began to scramble frantically for the door.

“This is the perfect amount of terror. Let’s keep it like this.” Madame Rend said. And with a flick of her finger she locked the doors of the movie theater, making everyone in the room her prisoner. I knew this was for me. She gave me a nod and I began to take advantage of the situation. One of the abilities granted to me by my Astral Attachment is the ability to feed off to the Life Forces of those around me. Life Forces are the four human elements (Blood, Anima, Astral Light and Daemon) that support all of life. While Astral Light provides the energy for magical uses, the other forces support everything else and can be often found in high amounts among normal humans.

The driving force behind a person’s psychologically, the Daemon tends to be extra potent. And at that moment there was sheer terror pouring from the huddled masses as they clawed uselessly at the doors of the theater.

“No don’t. Please stop. I’ll go with you. I can’t take anymore of this. Let them go, please.” Stanley pleaded with Madame Rend. She hesitated for a moment, savoring the feeling of forcing a rival to beg.

Stanley started again and Rend immediately gave me the single to stop the spell I was casting, which would have drained extra Life Forces from the crowd. I had already collected a decent amount of Daemon that had been pouring from the masses. But I had been preparing another spell that I’m grateful Stanley prevented that from happening.

Madame Rend then unlocked the doors of the theater, allowing the masses to pour through the doors as they trampled each other. Madame Rend saw and old woman and the ground who had been knocked over by the crowd panicked to escape. She gave a hearty, audible laugh at the pathetic sight.