I peeked out from underneath the crook in my elbow. Percival, if that even was his name, was staring at me, gun still smoking.

“Pity though, about Tobflin. I really thought I wasn’t going to need to do that. I had just assumed he was going to kill himself after murdering the couple. Did you by chance convince him otherwise? Or perhaps was it through a god’s touch?” He paused and his unnervingly electric eyes wandered up and down me. Then he released a cool breath. “Yes, perhaps it was divine intervention. How fortunate.” A hint of sarcasm seeped through. “Looks like I’ll have to find out which hand thought it best to meddle.”

The gun wasn’t pointed at me anymore. It had dropped to his side, the cold steel glinting in the low light. Was he going to shoot me right after? I could try getting the jump on him but I was currently too far away, a distance of five or six paces separating us. I snuck a glance at Tobflin, who was lying face first on the ground, hands and legs sprawled out, a sickening pool of blood growing steadily.

He took a few steps in my direction and I snapped my attention back to him.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a while now. Heard quite a bit about you, in fact.” A pause.

His voice. It sounded so familiar. Where had I heard it?

The only place that could have been was the apartment room. He was the man who threatened Tobflin. That was the only explanation. He was bending down over me now, sitting on his haunches.

“How did you bring me here?” There was a quiver in my voice that I didn’t wish was there.

“You’re important to the events that are unfolding.”

That turned my blood to ice. “Wha-what? What are you saying?”

He took a deep breath and looked out over the room, like he was a hunter surveying a safari begrudgingly. “There are a great many people who have worked towards a great… wrong.” He took his time with the last word, as if it were carefully selected. “I plan to change that.”

His hand grazed the side of my face and his head turned back to me, our eyes locking.

“I have a real request for you.” He pulled his hand back to his lap. It scared me, in a way that was profoundly different than all my previous experiences, like I was gazing into the abyss itself. “I want you to come on this journey with me.”

“To help you?” Was all I could muster.

“Yes.” He stood up, straightening out the folds in his jacket with his hands. “Not now, but in due time.”

Even though I felt like I was choking on my words, so thick in my throat, I somehow was able to get out one last question. “Why did you kill the couple?”

“So you understand the kind of person I am.” He turned around. “If you want to escape, I suggest leaving through the third door on your right.”

I watched him walk to the door and open it. He pivoted back to me. “Until we meet again.” And with that, he was gone.

Suddenly, air filled the room again. I felt like I could breathe. His presence was so intense, so dominating, so singularly encapsulating. I clutched at my chest, heaving, gulping in air. I was brought here? By a serial killer?

That, ladies and gentleman, was the conclusion to my first day in this horrible new world.

♠

Instead of exiting, I ran to what looked like the front desk and told them everything. The place quickly flew into a panic. Officers running to check on the body, guards drawing their weapons, people yelling. I couldn’t pick up much but one thing I did catch was that there was no Captain Percival that worked here. A fake identity.

No one pulled me aside, no one questioned me. Instead, I got in the way of all those panicking bodies so I decided it was time to leave and I simply walked out. I needed air.

It was dark outside by now. Night had settled over the city like a blanket. Gas lamps kept the darkness at bay on the streets but they did nothing for the many alleyways throughout the city.

I just walked and walked, nowhere to go and no idea about what to do.

Twenty four hours ago, I was a philosophy student, reading Foucault’s History of Sexuality alone in my apartment. I had always loved his work, its systematic and penetrating nature. Yet there was always something so deeply personal in it. In a way, his history of sexuality was also a tale of a man coming to understand who he was and the powers that sought to shape him. Through understanding, he was able to take a stand, to undercut the machinations of power and develop his own way of living as a gay man. I, on the other hand, was no Foucault.

I checked out in an alleyway, back sore, laying against the cold, hard cobblestone. It was terrifying to sleep out in the open like this. I had no knowledge of the prevalence of violent crime except for my experiences today, which did nothing to leave me feeling safe.

It was hard to believe that I was here, lying in the streets. I had often passed homeless people on the way to school or work, doing my best to avoid making eye contact with them, so that I wouldn’t have to recognize their humanity. A horrible thing it was but it was even worse to acknowledge them, their existence. It meant I would have to do something and I couldn’t do anything. Or wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell. All I could say is that, at this point, I was willing to give my left leg for a pillow.

My thoughts drifted to the morrow. I needed a plan. Who was that mage the couple had referenced? Blecklin? Zecklin? Zeckmas? I couldn’t remember, so long ago it seemed now.

How was I supposed to find him? I didn’t have a contact anymore and that was a significant loss. Could I even hope of finding him in a city this large? Would a high mage even talk to me? The position sounded important. Perhaps he wouldn’t even think twice about rejecting a nobody like me. Too busy with matters that are far beyond my single little problem.

A noise drew me from my thoughts. I immediately rolled over and found myself staring at an amethyst robe. I immediately scrambled away, spooked by how this person was able to sneak up on me so silently.

The robed individual made no move towards me. If I were still on Earth, I would have made some joke that he looked like a wizard, wild white beard and all but this wasn’t Earth and the possibility was quite real.

His face was lined deep with aged wrinkles, one’s that betrayed years of hardship. But the real eye-catcher was the liquid fire that dripped off the ends of his sleeves, falling to the ground like fiery scarlet droplets and splashing lightly against the cobblestone. It was almost as if he had dipped his arms into a cauldron of lava.

“Boy,” he hissed and his voice grated like two blades screeching against each other. “Fear me not. I am no foe.” He paused. “As of yet.”

The quiver in my voice returned and it most definitely showed on my face. “What do you want?” My heart thumped loudly.

“I am a priest of our Twin gods, the all-powerful mistresses of the sky and masters of all that which the great light touches.” His speech lacked any gesture, any movement even. His face, for whatever reason, now was featureless, caught in a glint of light that made him unviewable.

I shielded my eyes as I spoke. “I-I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

He ignored both what I said and my obvious discomfort. “Think this an invitation to enter into the game and seek their protection.”

“Protection from what?”

“A rose without any thorns is no rose. Heed their call and become their Sword, for they will make your life plentiful and death painless.”

The utterance of that word, that horrible, twisted, evil word, death, conjured up in my mind the horrors of the day and every life lost that I was witness to. With a sudden violence that caused me to twitch physically, the reality, or better perhaps, the unreality of it all settled on me. I was here, on another planet, in another universe, where magic existed, where people were executed in front of my very eyes.

With an unexpected flash of light, the man set on fire before me. The heat roared to life and I threw myself back even more, afraid that I too would catch aflame. Instead, he collapsed to the ground like a ragdoll and the fire burned silently amidst the darkness of the alleyway.

I continued to stare at it in horror. It blocked my only exit out and the heat was too intense to move around it so I stayed put, watching it for a time. There was no way to tell how long passed but it certainly felt like a while.

Eventually, the need for sleep overtook my worries and anxieties about safety.

Dreams of murder and blood and slaughter followed shortly after.