How many days it had been since the sky opened up and began to pour water over the world? No one could remember. There was never a hint of blue overhead anymore, not even in the breaks where the rain relented and became merely a soaking drizzle that hovered between ground and sky, obscuring everything in a dark fog. The city had taken on a similarly dark cast, oppressed by the lengthening shadows of the gray buildings, the sky reflected in their black windows and the rain pounding against their wind-beaten stones. They were the marvels of modern, non-magical architecture, built to withstand the world rather than to reside within it. Wind whistled between their glass walls, whining eerily above the pound of the rain and the roar of idling car engines. The streets were slick with run-off and thick with cars. And above the noise screamed the warnings of instinct, warnings that something evil had come into the world – something powerful.

So people were running.

Even as they crowded the street corners and the roads, hurrying about their business with fearful glances to the heavens, hunched beneath raincoats and baggage and worldly worries, they were running from the inevitable. Those who would choose to accept their fate, refusing to leave the cities when the evacuation orders came, wandering the flood-ridden streets until either someone picked them up or they met their end…they were rare. The rest would make a more animal choice and give into their fears. They would flee the forces of nature to the farthest corners of the earth, never realizing that it was the very magic humans had banished from the world that now hounded their heels.

That was the nature of humanity. Or so thought the elderly gentleman who stood hunched against the weather in a coat as gray as the skies, his hat pulled low over his eyes as he waited to cross the road. The rain was currently so thick he could barely make out the pedestrian lights at the other end of the crosswalk. He was attempting to watch the swaying traffic lights instead, eyeing them with rapt intensity as the fingers of his free hand twitched impatiently at his side. He was impatient not because the light had yet to turn, but because he could not use magic to keep his clothing from absorbing the rainwater when others were watching – not that any of them would have noticed given their current state of mind.

People without magic were like that; they never looked too hard. They had no reason to.

A red umbrella weaved in and out of the peripheries of the man’s vision as people jostled behind him, and a woman’s voice explained quickly to some young boy that the two of them were going to make the short drive from Phoenix to stay with relatives in Kentucky. Her words echoed the opinions of newscasters nationwide. The coastal states were being hit hardest despite terrifying damage to inland cities, and the worst was still coming. In mere days, a storm would be sweeping in from the ocean, bidden by a recent string of earthquakes that had fallen like the aftershock of some deity’s stinging slap along the seaboard. The tremors had left entire cities scrambling simply to provide food, water, and shelter to their residents.

The government had stepped in. With this thought, the elderly man’s brows furrowed, accentuating the lines about his mouth and eyes. Even with the overtime deployment of every state and federal entity, the resources of charities of all kinds, and the aid of any other of the numerous organizations that non-magical humans could dream up, things were only going to get worse. Law enforcement was neck-deep in dealing with the scoundrels that saw disaster as an excuse to commit thievery and vandalism. Rallies against government policy – whether in regards to climate change or the more immediately concerning lack of power – locked down entire cities. They often ended in violence, and sometimes in murder. Despite the rain, fires had been eating away at the land with such frequency that every volunteer firefighter was out on the streets just to keep the regular staff rested. Dozens had been killed. The passes were closed in nearly every major mountain chain, the roads destroyed by rock shaken loose by the quakes, or more often coated in a layer of ice and snow several stories thick. Alarmists predicted shortages of every kind, everywhere, and other people disagreed only because, again, they were running. Running even from the truth.

Technology was failing mankind.

Power outages had left thousands without electricity or heat. People died of exposure daily now, most of them the young or the elderly. Hospitals and shelters with generators or alternative power sources were overburdened and their staff overworked.

Travel, too, was cut off. What had begun with a commercial airliner dropping like a rock from the sky over the ocean had burgeoned into something more sinister. Over the course of two days, nineteen more aircraft of various kinds had been destroyed, most with survivors, several with none, and all without apparent cause. Shocked into lockdown by the loss and the resultant public outcry, airlines had docked their planes and airports shuttered their doors. Although no news of the truth had been leaked on public channels, the man was well aware that several attempts had also been made to airlift aid into cities across the country. Each had failed as the skies became as treacherous on a whole as the Bermuda Triangle was rumored to be in the worst of seasons. There was no longer wreckage or hope for survivors; the aircraft that disappeared from the sky vanished without any trace.

Only the timely intervention of the MASO and – never to be outdone – the Juran, in their modern guise as Periballon Inc., in conjunction with the National Foundation for Magic in Science, the Society of Witches, and Otherworld Technologies, had salvaged air travel. Of course, there were rumors ENTrust had also been involved, but the who mattered much less than the what – magic was finally showing its worth to a rational world, and emergency air travel remained possible.

The man’s blue eyes glittered beneath fogged spectacles. It was only fitting that things should have turned out this way. After all, the skies belonged to the beasts. Mankind should have never trespassed there anyway.

His eyes switched back to the pedestrian signs as the lights turned. He started forward immediately, giving a wide berth to the nose of a silver Honda that had pulled over the crosswalk to turn, and ignoring it when the horn blasted behind him. His steps were sure as he skirted the deep, oil-stained puddles that had formed against the curb and then continued on down the street, leaving the red umbrella behind as he stepped into the thronging crowds. When he turned off the main boulevard and the passersby thinned, the snarl of car engines remained with him. It was an ever-present rumble in his life, following him even into his dreams. That was life in the city. Oil and grease, the smell of garbage, dilapidated buildings whose tenants rarely paid rent, all pressed up next to the most extravagant shopping centers and living spaces anyone could imagine.

He had lived in a great many cities, mostly in the less hospitable parts inhabited by the low-rent and down on their luck. He had seen sights that would turn the stomachs of most, and his stomach had been turned a good many times. Yet, just as he did with the rest of the world, he had managed to skirt only the fringes of the underworld. There he could pay in cash and disappear without worrying that anyone would look to see where he had gone, or that there would be anyone to affirm who he was. To the world, he was simply an old man with a thick, graying beard and a hat that he dutifully donned each day to hide the thinning line of his hair. Age had given him a bit of a stomach, and he had done nothing to fight it; he thought it made him look more amiable. Sixty-five years he had lived this life, and he liked to believe that he had it down to an art.

His thoughts were interrupted as the world flashed white in front of him and the sky roared, drowning out the roar of car engines. A nervous hush fell over the passersby. Then, they were fleeing for cover. Within seconds, the rain had become a downpour, drops the size of quarters that left his hair wet and limp around the brim of his hat and left dark stains on the shoulders of his jacket. He could dry it easily enough with magic in a moment, but not yet. He glanced upward as another fork of lightning split the roiling clouds, and then suddenly turned down an alley and disappeared into the grim darkness beyond. Here he kicked an old crate out of his way and brushed past a line of dented rubbish bins before taking another turn, admiring the ghostly graffiti on the walls that led him home.

He looked up again now, searchingly, gaze dark. Damn the dragons. Damn the MASO that had brought them back. No one ever learned. No one ever left well enough alone.

No amount of time would change that, he knew. Nothing that the Juran, who had slid into the cloak of modernity some time during the renaissance, or the MASO, who stolidly stood against the beasts whenever they trespassed into human territory, did could change that fact. Nothing that the Altians had known before they fled the changing world could have changed that fact. The fall of Atlantis, the extinction of dragons and the beginning of the dominion of humankind…none of it mattered. No one learned.

The man huffed grumpily to himself, clanging up the steps of a fire escape and stopping only when he reached the rusted, battered door of an apartment. He had no use for keys. He just lifted his hand to the lock and heard the bolt slide clear as the door swung open. He stepped in quickly and shut it behind him, hearing the bolt slide home once more despite the fact that he had already turned away. He removed the sodden jacket from his shoulders and threw it to the side as the water evaporated from it. He did the same with his hat, striding purposefully through the narrow hallway and ignoring the dingy light bulb that beamed into life overhead with a few faltering sparks, its glass broken.

The apartment was littered with trash that was not his own – the past result of too many break ins and night escapades and who knew what else. The apartment belonged to the man only for as long as he was physically present. Nonetheless, he took considerable pride in this acquisition. He had found it unoccupied years ago and never paid a cent to anyone to stay there. Beneath the trash and dust and dirt in the lounge there was a fine desk with a functional chair, and it was at the desk that he settled with a sigh, stretching his hands out before him.

Already, his thoughts were turning to his work. He had failed once more to get his hands on the last research subject of Sendelphon; the ebony box of Alti. Missing for nearly a thousand years, he had heard word it was recently removed from the ruins of a house into MASO hands – something he had fully expected to happen, eventually. He had expected it would be easy enough to get his hands on, but so far, it was proving otherwise. As long as the thing was not dangerous, the agents at the MASO generally sold off items that went unclaimed long enough. They rarely realized what they had stumbled across, and more rarely cared. What use was it to them, after all? A fancy box. A fancy box with history.

“Bah,” he grumbled aloud. Someone must have known what the box was. That was the only explanation for the fact that it had no official record with the MASO at all. Someone was manipulating the unwieldy machinery of the agency – enemy to his predecessors since the days of Atlantis – and they had finally learned how to keep a secret. Or they were simply keeping the only secret worth anything.

“Damn them all,” the man cursed, slamming his fist on the table. It shuddered, a few stray pieces of paper fluttering to the grimy floor.

Once more, in his mind he roved over the inked images of the object from the records; flawless black wood, silver inlay, unusually calm for a magical item. It exuded no magic. It could possess no magic. In itself, it was an interesting item, but its legendary contents were the objects of his attention. Surely, the box must still hold at least one of the Stones of Alti. Why else would they have kept it?

In the end, the MASO was an agency filled with hopeless fools. They must have realized that humanity required at least one of the Stones if they had any hope of saving themselves from the destruction that would result from Alti’s forceful reunion with the Earth. What they did not seem to realize was that only when he held at least one of the Stones could the danger be averted, since he alone, as steward of Sendelphon’s research, knew how to use it properly. Of course, all four of the Stones would be better…but they had eluded his grasp for twelve years, already.

“You all did this,” he muttered, staring at the peeling wallpaper on the wall opposite him, “you all did this to yourselves. I warned you the ancient dragon would come. I warned you what it would mean for all of us. You should have at least entrusted the box to me. Then we wouldn’t be in this situation. And what about your daughter, eh?”

He stood and gestured at the mess in front of him, glaring into the empty room.

“The MASO has her. And what do you think I can do about it? Nothing, of course. Not unless I tell them who she really is, and risk my neck against an agency that’s hunted me for sixty years.”

The truth was, he would not do anything even if he could. If he thought he alone could survive the ancient dragon’s schemes, he would wash his hands of the whole affair. But he had realized a long time ago that was impossible. If the ancient dragon decided to rid the world of humanity, he would die like any other fool. If there was one thing that bothered him, it was how slowly the dragon had destroyed the spell circuit maintaining the Divide. It was as if Hess had been waiting for something…

Until now.

The elderly man’s gaze turned briefly to the sloppily boarded window on his right as he listened to the hiss and rattle of rain against its smashed panes. Everything, from the weather patterns to the dangers to be found in the skies, were as Sendelphon had once described. The power of the Stones was wreaking havoc on the world. Hess had disrupted the delicate balance between Alti and earth, and soon, the lost continent would return.

An unearthly wail broke through the man’s ruminations. He ducked his head to stare out the cracked and fogged remnants of glass in the windows, seeing only bleary images through the thick rain. There was no one left in the world who did not know what those sirens meant.

Evacuation.

He looked down at his empty hands once more, and with an angry grunt, stood and again retrieved his coat and hat. His ears were ringing with the sound of the evacuation sirens. He heard muffled words after several seconds, words spoken over a loudspeaker giving instruction to the masses. There were no precise details as to what was really occurring in the world, and that was clever; it would only cause panic to tell the truth – this city would be gone come dawn tomorrow.

The moment the man touched the doorknob to leave, the earth pitched beneath his feet and the magically lit light bulb swayed overhead. He caught himself on the doorframe, watching the light until the tremor had subsided and the building began to settle with a throaty growl. Then the light flickered and died as he ducked out the door, lost in the downpour.