2006, 28th January

Basrah, Iraq

“It isn’t them.” Magnus stated, coming to halt when the garrisons were still on the horizon.

“What?”

Anders halted beside him, nostrils flaring as they sampled the air, streaming towards them, downwind of the camp.”

“It’s blood but… not theirs… Something replaced their bodies.”

Then Anders’ eyes widened momentarily before he snarled.

“Apotheosis. This is their work.”

Magnus stared impassively at the horizon.

“You know why they had to do it.”

“Those were our comrades! They deserved a proper cremation!”

“Anders-”

“I know you disagreed with them, but are you really this callous about their deaths?”

The last word came out with a rumbling growl to back it up.

Magnus did not reply, and they stared at each other, Anders’ chest rising and falling with the rapidity of his breath.

The silence stretched on, till Anders’ breathing calmed.

“Are you finished?”

Anders did not reply.

“What were you going to do? Storm off to Dubai, pick a fight neither of us can win, for reasons we don’t even properly understand? When does it end, Anders?”

“You want it to end, here and now? Before we have avenged ourselves on their killer?”

“If vengeance is what you really want, then we’ll have it. If you can stop dashing off in random directions long enough to focus.”

They got closer, staying out of sight of the soldiers that had arrived to claim the place.

“Can you pick up a scent?” Magnus asked Anders.

Anders frowned, concentrating for several moments, before shaking his head in frustration.

Magnus sighed.

“I suspected as much. Then there’s only two places left to go.”

“Where.”

“We can either go to Dubai, and petition the magi for help. Obviously, the alliance between us doesn’t mean they are obligated to help us specifically, but this matter concerns an entire company.”

“I don’t really like that option.”

“The other option is us taking a trip to Denmark.”

“Whatever for? I’m not homesick quite yet.”

“To trace Victor’s footsteps. It’s a small chance, but there is a chance his tribe may know what his movements will be. Of course, it’s a very small chance, and there’s a chance, smaller still, that they’ll be involved in it, and we’ll have walked right into it.”

“I like that idea even less.”

Magnus turned and walked back to the edge of town, where the bleed they had exited through lay.

“Everything else is a dead end, I’m afraid, so you’re going to have to choose.”

Anders caught up with him before he had ventured very far, and they headed towards the bleed together.

“We should go to Dubai,” he said. “Maybe I’ll finally get to give them a proper sendoff.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s a shame you never got to know them better. You were always so.. distant, with everyone, but me.”

“You know why.”

“You were never really… there. For the entirety of our tour. Even now, I can’t get you to speak properly about it.”

“That kid I helped to cross the border through the river- she’s probably dead, you know.”

Anders fixed him with a curious look.

“This entire tour- I wasted my life killing people I don’t know and have no quarrel with, to a meaningless cause. That girl was the only thing I did that had any meaning- at least, that’s what I told myself.”

They got closer to the bleed.

Magi had often described visualising the bleed; perhaps as a bright scar across their field of view, or a ripple across the air, like heat-haze on the horizon.

Magnus was a creature innately tied to the horizon; he felt the presence of the bleed instinctively, in his bones.

And the two of them walked through, leaving Iraq behind.

“That girl was probably gunned down. Perhaps the child she carried was lucky enough to survive. But I doubt it. The only worthwhile thing I did with my time there, turned to shit.”

“Magnus.. I know the life you want. But surely, even you realise, you can’t live the same life as the people around you. Even back when I came to you, injured, and you were confused, stressed, you didn’t stay with me. You had to blow off steam, and it carried you straight into battle with that spirit.”

Magnus frowned, and averted his eyes.

He could not deny the truth of these words.

Anders put a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, look, I don’t blame you. You followed your instincts, Magnus. That’s all. This is what we are, and this is how we live. It’s useless to try and deny it.”

“I don’t want it to be the only way I live. I thought, for a while, you know, that it could be… better.”

“Back when you were in Seattle. That was when the battle-lust was siphoned from you.”

“It was a better time. A simpler time.”

“It came to an end, didn’t it? That’s what makes us different from the people around us. They are fragile. They all come to an end.”

Magnus retreated into silence once more.

Anders sighed, and decided he needed the time.

They did not shift, even though they would reach their destination faster by doing so, as it would destroy the clothes on their back.

Time was mostly meaningless in the spirit plane, anyway.

Michael had once told him that people could be whatever they chose to be.

Of course, Michael hadn’t known the truth about him then.

He was a child who could afford to make hopelessly optimistic statements like that, a wish more than a fact.

And then he had died.

That was what Anders had told him.

Humans were fragile.

They died easily.

Perhaps people did not get a say in their fates after all.

They walked for hours without tiring, knowing perhaps not even minutes had actually passed.

“Dubai’s most prominent bleed was claimed by Apotheosis. They’ve built an office right around it.” Anders told him.

“Of course they have.”

“We’ll be walking right into the thick of their territory.”

It was easily visible in the spirit plane, where their field of view seemed to stretch on forever; an artificial installation, illuminated, standing out in stark contrast against the inky blackness of the spirit plane.

The dots of starlight were missing for vast distances around, as if even dormant spirits were aware of some malicious force within their midst.

“Cheery,” Anders sighed.

The installation was perfectly symmetrical and painfully sterile; much like any construction of the magi of Apotheosis.

They were stopped well before they reached the installation.

Two men in black- well, perhaps calling them men would be inaccurate, given they smelled not of flesh, but steel- stood blocking the path forward, empty palms pointed at Magnus and Anders in a gesture that shouldn’t have been as threatening as it was.

Anders crouched instinctively, gathering himself to spring, while Magnus stood with his arms crossed in front of his chest.

A flesh and blood man approached them from the installation, in grey overalls, a specialised suit to facilitate his survival in the Spirit plane.

“Err… Can I help you? Not many visitors in these… parts.”

“We would like to pass through to Dubai.” Magnus said.

“Ah… are you from the London branch. I was expecting you next week.”

“We are not magi. We would, however, like to see them.”

The man fidgeted on his spot uncomfortably.

“I’m not sure I have the authorisation to-”

“We’re Ulfhednar. Unless our alliance with Apotheosis no longer stands, we’re not forbidden from setting foot in Dubai at least.”

The man grew even more fidgety, if that were possible.

“Ahh… er.. Werewolves… I-”

“We will not hurt you- without reason. All we ask is that you let us pass.”

The man sighed, which sounded like a hiss of air in his suit, and waved for them to pass by.

The two of them passed through the bleed from the inky black expanse of the spirit realm out into a structure of steel and glass.

More grey uniformed people awaited them on the other side.

They gently but insistently ushered them to their seats, assuring them that someone would be by to see them very soon.

“Rather.. barebones, for an installation by an organisation like this.” Anders mused.

“They’re gradually leaving this world behind. Eventually, even this will all be stripped away, and the mages will completely wash their hands of this world.”

“Astute observation, wolf.”

Magnus immediately sprung to his feet.

An older man, bald and brown skinned, in white robes, had appeared in front of them.

And neither Magnus nor Anders had sensed his approach.

The grey suits scrambled to their feet, standing at attention.

Magnus sensed a palpable sense of power emanate from the man; Whoever this was, he was special, even among the magi.

“I expected you much earlier, wolves.”

“S-Sir? These people are your guests?” One of the grey uniforms approached them hesitantly from behind.

“No. But I require their services all the same.”

“We aren’t here to serve anyone. You took our comrades’ corpses from Iraq. We want to give them a proper sendoff.” Anders interjected.

“I fixed your mistake, wolves. This is my way of offering you a chance to make reparations. I suggest you take it, and you will have your corpses back shortly. Or leave, while I still allow it.”

Magnus could feel Anders' temper boil, and before he had a chance to restrain him, he began to lunge- only to halt in his tracks, utterly paralysed.

The man’s power made manifest was a terrible thing to behold, his temple throbbing in his presence.

The people around them reacted with even greater dismay, some even falling to their knees, uttering strangled shrieks.

Magnus swiftly stepped forward in front of Anders.

“We’ll hear you out. Release him.”

With a yelp, Anders was free to move again.

Before he could further react, Magnus pressed a hand down on his shoulder, giving him a forbidding look.

“Follow.” The man said, not turning to look back.

And follow they did, finding themselves in what must be an office of some kind, seating themselves around a central glass table.

“I am Abas Khan. I have worked with several of the wolf soldiers before, and I am aware of how… efficient, they can be. I believe we can help each other.”

Magnus straightened in his seat, having heard that name before.

Abas Khan was the commanding lord of Apotheosis’ military arm, and as such, had closely worked with the Ulfhednar on many occasions, even if Magnus had never personally worked with the man.

And like all the High Lords of Apotheosis, the man was powerful beyond comprehension.

“This must be quite the assignment, if you yourself have been waiting here to deliver it.”

Abas tilted his head to a side.

“It is true the matter is pressing, but there are pressing matters throughout the universe. What makes you think I can only be here, and nowhere else at the same time?"

After a period of silence, Abas continued.

"I want you to have a look at this, and tell me what you think."

Magnus frowned as an image of what appeared to be a highly malnourished man, stood in what appeared to be the battered, dusty remains of a medical ward.

The man appeared as unmoving as a mannequin, and Magnus was nearly convinced he was seeing a still image, before more figures appeared on the screen, both men, one moving unnaturally, with no wasted movements.

And the emaciated man exploded in a flurry of movement Magnus wouldn't have thought was physically possible from him.

The man that Magnus had guessed to be an Android by now, moved in front of the other, and even though they were watching nothing more than a documentation, the force of the clash was evident to all watching.

The other man had darted away, presumably out of the camera's field.

The android violently pushed their assailant back to the corner, and retreated a few steps on it’s own, barely visible at the borders of the screen.

For a split second, the subject of the video was back to the eerie, suspended animation he had been under at the beginning of the video-

Before the android's pseudo- flesh and blood hand morphed into a volley gun, shredding the man in front of them with an impossible number of projectiles fired in a single breath, leaving scarcely more than a dark crimson smear behind, and taking out a sizable chunk from the wall behind him as well.

There, the video ended.

"Thoughts?" Abas turned the two of them.

"What was that creature?" Anders asked. "It was clearly supernatural. Nothing that thin should have that much strength."

Magnus, meanwhile, had worried his lower lip with his teeth in contemplation, before speaking.

"That strength is all it has, isn't it?"

Abas merely faced him wordlessly, a signal to elaborate.

"It's not capable of thought. It doesn't move unprompted. It may not even be able to sense things beyond a certain distance, because it immediately went still when those two moved away from it, right before your android tore it apart. The unnatural power for violence it had… was compensated by not leaving much for anything else."

"Yes. Verdict?"

"On it’s effectiveness? Not very."

After a pause, Magnus amended his statement.

"Not yet, anyway."

"What, is this your project?" Anders asked. "Did you ask us here for a consultation?"

Before Magnus could explain, Abas cut in.

"Obviously not. The creature, according to what we have found out, is a human, given a treated infusion of vampire blood. This one is the least obvious mutant, but there has been documentation of others, with far more obvious physical mutations."

"Those were earlier cases, weren’t they? That means whoever is responsible for this was actively improving their work. And since we're here, you want us to track this person down." Magnus guessed.

Abas' silence was confirmation enough.

"Listen, not that we don’t relish the prospect at being dragged into… this whole horror show," Anders waved his hand broadly at the screen, "But we have obligations of our own. Starting with-"

"Hunting the one who slaughtered your company?"

Anders sat back in his seat with a frown, crossing his arms in front of him.

Abas continued.

"Whatever was responsible for that massacre was also responsible for a near breach in the non interference clause. If you were to aid the men in finding this genetic tinkered, not only would I see it as reparations for a mistake your kind made, but might even be inclined to put forward resources to help with your own search."

"We still have the cremation to see to."

"Anders," Magnus interrupted them. "You should stay here, and see to the company's last rites. I will go ahead and investigate on my end."

Anders gave him a look that promised a discussion later.

“You should use the portal network to Paris, then. My people there will be told to expect you, and will point you in the right direction once you get there.”

Magnus nodded and rose to leave the office they were sat in, followed by Anders close on his heels.

As they began to pull the door open, Abas spoke with an air of finality.

“Succeed in this, wolf warriors, and you will have the aid you require from my people present on site. If you fail, you need not bother reporting back to me; in fact, that would be an… error.”

And then he was simply gone.

Anders caught up with Magnus outside.

“What was that about? You’re not even going to stay for the funeral?”

“You heard the man. The only way this funeral happens is if one of us gets started on his assignment right away.”

“You weren’t very reluctant about it either.”

“No. I wasn’t. Look, if you want me to stay, I’ll stay. But only for you. Those people didn’t mean anything to me.”

Anders’ expression softened at that.

“You’ve got a lot of anger in your own way, you know? Alright, fine, I won’t press you to stay.”

He pulled Magnus closer and kissed him.

“But be careful out there.”

“And you stay on your guard. These people are clearly very dangerous. Don’t stay here any longer than you have to. Get the cremations over with, then join me in Paris.”

“I will. Fight well, Magnus.”

“Fight well, Anders.”

And saying so, they were off.