Up in Smoke

James

Stanley remained silent as we escorted him out of the theater onto the bustling streets of our city’s nightlife. The crowd seemingly forgot about us amidst the panic and the three of us were able to get back to the Towncar without incident.

I got in first and we sandwiched Stanley, who was now essentially our hostage, tightly between the two of us.

“Get us back to the mansion immediately and be quick about it.” Madame Rend snapped at the chauffeur. He nodded eagerly and raised the divider. Rend quickly cast another sound-proofing spell and the trio were again able to speak freely.

“I’m almost disappointed that you didn’t try any of your usual shenanigans.” She said to Stanley coyly.

“Like I said, you are an agent of chaos.” He said back to her.

“This business suits you. The war, the kidnapping. Living like royalty while you stomp on anyone who gets in your way. Life must be like some sort of dream.”

“I’ll have you know, I *am* royalty. My grandfather—“ the throw away comment about her not being royalty seemingly offended her most and she was cut off when an SUV with a subwoofer pulled up next to them and started blasting reggae music.

The bass was loud enough to shake the champagne glasses sitting in a pocket on the leather door. Madame Rend took a displeased look.

“I hate this kind of music.” She spat. Stanley glanced over at me and then I noticed, to my surprise, I was tapping my right hand on my lap along to the beat of the music.

“It looks like he likes it. Maybe he’s not such a robot after all.” Stanley announced.

Rend paused for a moment and thought to herself. Surely she had noticed that something was off. If her soundproofing spell were still in effect, which it should still be since we hadn’t been in the car long enough to exceed the spell’s timelimit, we shouldn’t be able to hear anything going on outside of the car.

Stanley put his hands on his knees and looked at both of them. “Oh well, I’ve been found out.” And with that disappeared into a puff of black smoke.

“Damnit!” Rend exclaimed. “He tricked us. How could you not detect this?” She asked me in frustration.

Apparently, Stanley placed us under an illusion spell before we all got into the Towncar. He was able to trick us by trading places with a Spirit he conjured using his apparently considerable magical ability. A degree of magical skill that the Lando family scouting team had failed to report.

This Spirit was both Stanley’s clone and his slave and its only purpose was to distract us while Stanley made his escape. The quirk about this magic was that the illusion would only last so long as we remained unaware that we were being tricked. Once we knew it was an illusion, the illusion no longer worked and the Spirit was extinguished.

The divider between the front and back seat was lowered.

“Hey no smoking in here ‘Mam. Wait is that a fire? And what happened to the other guy?” The chauffeur asked Madame Rend in tones of increasing desperation.

“Don’t worry, it’s just a magic trick.” She smirked at him.

“Just stop the car, I need to discuss something with my associate.” She said to him. The driver looked relieved and obliged by stopping the car at the nearest sidewalk where it was safe to do so.

“You’re off for the rest of the night. And If any of this gets out, I will know it was you who blabbed.” She stared at him fiercely and the Towncar sped off.

“This is a disaster. How did you let him get away? What are you even here for?” Rend continued to berate me.

I was used to this kind of treatment at that point. I was frequently assigned on missions with Madame Rend and on the rare occasions something went wrong it was always her partner’s fault. I could tell she was working herself up to move to strike me, when I calmed her with something I knew she’d want to hear.

“I know where he is.” I told her flatly.

“Really? And how is that? You can’t sense his Astral Aegis from this far away, can you?” She asked me.

“No, it’s not that. I took the precaution to mark his Astral Register (a record system for information on various Astral bodies) on my Astral Matrix (a map that can locate and track these bodies in space) so I am able to find his precise location. It’s not too far from here.” I told her.

She looked at me seriously.

“I’m not sure what that means, but I’m impressed.” She said.

The two of us walked the half mile or so to the location that was being indicated on my Matrix.

“It is the scouting team’s fault really. They should have warned us that he was such a talented Illusionist, I had no idea. You had no idea. After we bring this piece of garbage in I’m going to—“ I interrupted her and pointed diagonally to the street on the right.

“It’s over here.” I told her.

“It’s amazing what you can do. Some times I wonder if there are any limits to your power.” She said to me in a calmer manner from before.

She looked up wistfully at the sky, let out a slight sigh and turned back to me again.

“Good thing we control you. The creation of Dr. Von and The Patriarch. Brought to life to bring victory to our clan. That is your oath, isn’t it?” She said proudly.

“I want nothing more than to bring victory to the glorious Lando family and bring an end to the other 12 traitorous families in the Hidden War.” I said robotically.

That had been a phrase that was throughly drilled into my head as one of the Loyalty Rituals I was forced to endure as a 2nd class member of the Lando family. They consisted of repeating the phrase I had been assigned at birth by the Patriarch to be my life’s work 100,000 times in a single sitting. It feels strange to say but the Loyalty Rituals were probably easier for me than you are thinking because of how sedated I always was.

We came up to the building indicated on my Matrix. It was a dilapidated old 10 story building in a rundown and mostly abandoned part of town.

“So this is where the little worm has been hiding? Fitting. Let’s crush him.” She said this and marched right up to the front door of the building. The old wooden frame had long since rotted out and there were multiple infestations that could be seen from outside.

“I see you’ve found yourself a trash dump to crawl under.” She yelled up at the building. It didn’t respond.

“Come out now, or we will drag you out.” There was still no response so Rend ordered me to kick in the door.

A blasted it with my right foot to the other side of a large space littered with what looked like broken antiques and boxes of old takeout food. I noticed probably 200 rats scurrying around in the dark in the first few minutes I was in the room.

“I’ve been waiting for you. Glad to see you let yourself in. What took you so long? Was traffic really that bad?” There was a disembodied voice coming from the ceiling that obviously belonged to Stanley.

“Just come out, we don’t have time to play your games!” Rend told Stanley. You could tell by the shift of tone in her voice that she was starting to lose patience.

“Enough with the cat and mouse BS.” She said.

“Just come along nicely so you can kill me? I can’t do that for you. We’re away from civilians now, so your pet vampire won’t be able to drain their Life Force. But there’s still no way I’m facing that thing in an open fight.” Stanley responded.

“So be it. The hard way it is.” Rend turned to look at me.

“James, I want you to go upstairs, find this little worm and bring him to my feet even if you have to drag him by his eyelids.” She commanded.

That was enough for me to hear. I powered up my Astral Aegis to provide a little more protection from his attacks. I then summoned my main weapon the Runi, a large wooden staff with metal blades sticking out of both ends.

Because this weapon came from the Astral Aegis and was therefore made from Astral Light, I was able to control every aspect of the weapon with my mind. My go-to move was to cause the blades to spin around like chainsaws.

I started my way up the stairs, not certain what I was about to run into.