The Magus (One-Shot)

"It's quite a surprise you finally turned yourself in, Mister Nolan." said the lady in her suit as she opened the door for the young man. In the room there is a steel table screwed onto the steel floor, two chairs on the opposite sides of the table facing each other and on one wall there is a wide mirror.

The young man, who she called Nolan, paused and looked at her to the eyes then grunted. "Ugh! Shut up," he said, sickened by her rather proud tone. "I decided to turn myself in to you out of pity. You're worse than 'those' beings.."

He looked around as he entered the room and glided his hands across the concrete wall and said, "I kinda like the aesthetics of this wall. Do you think this will suit well in my living room, Miss Eva?"

The lady, Eva, closed the door and the heavy steel locks clanked inside the thick door. Locking both of them inside the room.

"You're not gonna hurt me aren't you?" Nolan asks.

"Do you think I can?" Eva asks back.

"I mean, technically I do get harmed physically. Probably mentally as well."

"Well, I suggest you to cooperate with me if you don't want to get those two. Shall we get started?"

Eva adjusts her posture and takes a short glance at the mirror. Nolan noticed these small body languages and he leaned his elbow on the table with a slight smirk on his face.

"You have been in this job for years and you get nervous now?" Nolan said, looking at Eva straight in the eyes.

"Cut the bullshit. I have been waiting for all these years trying to find and know more about you. I have everything prepared for this moment." Eva retorted.

"So, what do you want to know about me? I am pretty sure your great grandfather, grandfather and mother gave you a flood of pointers about me."

"Nolan Clarke Bennet. Are you involved in the experimentation of dead human beings turning them into the living dead during the second world war?"

Nolan rolled his eyes and let out a loud exhausted sigh and grunt.

"That's bullshit! A myth! Such a thing only came into existence because the soldiers described the horrors of the chemical and biochemical weapons where unlucky soldiers looked like zombies as they were suffering and slowly dying from it. Time goes on, it turns into a horror tale."

"Is that so? Then why on the day you disappeared from your home country is also the day such information started spreading throughout the world."

"Listen, young lady. One, I never disappeared, I decided to live in the alps only to be away from human contact. Two, Switzerland was never my home country. And three… there's no number three…"

Eva took out her phone and showed Nolan a photo of a unique bunker on top of the swiss alps. The bunker is perfectly fitted into the mountain as if it got fused in there and getting inside the bunker is absolutely impossible as there is no way inside it. And despite being called and considered as a bunker, it is suspected to be a secret research facility because of its advanced architectural design which is something unseen during the 1900s.

"In my great grandfather's diary he wrote about a fellow Englishman who saved his life after he got separated from his hiking team and got lost. He made a drawing of his point of view of the mountains while on the balcony of that bunker we found." Eva said and showed the photo of the drawing and an image taken in the present time on the same spot.

"It's a nice property, isn't it?" Nolan said with optimism. "Do you think that would sell in billions if a route or a helipad is added there?"

"You just thought about that now after all these years?" Eva said, a little dismayed.

"Nah. I was actually waiting for someone, anyone, to build a way inside and claim it."

"You really seem awfully uninterested in wealth… Why is that?"

Nolan paused and scratched his head. Already running out of patience. 'Seems I still suck at making my own choices independently.' he thought to himself. He looked at himself at the huge mirror and stared blankly for a minute. Eva somewhat felt she should be cautious but she remained looking calm and forcing her breathing to be at its normal pace.

"Calm down, Eva." Nolan said, "It's just you and me. No one else's judging you."

"What?" Eva asked. "What do you mean…?"

"Say, do you trust your colleagues?"

"Of course, they're my-"

"That would be an effective lie if they were behind that mirror right now."

"..."

"It's now just a young lady on her uniform and the eternally youthful man whom she has been chasing for years and years. Now, no need to be shy.~" Nolan said flirtatiously

Eva scoffs, crosses her arms and stood up from her chair and leaned on to the mirror. "...Just how old exactly are you, Mister Nolan?" She asked anxiously.

"Six hundred one years." Nolan answered, "The Era of witches." he added.

Eva took a deep breath and leaned the back of her head on the mirror.

"Hoping to feel a tap from the other side?" Nolan asked. "I told you, they won't come. When you opened the door for me in the room and tried to contact your colleagues through a speed dial. I prevented that by causing small interruptions making your phone unable to receive the slightest reception."

"Just what exactly are you?" Eva asked. When all of a sudden she started to fall backwards. In Eva's perspective, the concrete ceiling became hazy and everything turned blindingly bright and blue. Dismayed, Eva panted as she thought she's falling into the void for a brief moment but she landed on a pile of hay facing up the sky. Eva immediately got off from the pile of hay and looked around.

"Don't worry. Consider this as a virtual reality. But instead of technology it's through sorcery." Nolan said as he stood still next to her and advised her to listen closely. "This is gonna get very immersive for the likes of you."

Nolan told and showed the spot where they currently stood on is the exact same spot where he had done a certain invocation that made himself not only eternally young but also capable of wielding the dark magic and during the process it killed thousands of knights that had surrounded him.

"What kind of invocation?" Eva asked.

"I discovered it myself." Nolan said. "Its rules are absolute. It's unbreakable and unbendable. You can't take back what you gave away and you can't return what you received."

"What did you do?"

"It all started here. See for yourself."

Eva finds herself on the sidelines looking at Nolan's struggle. Nolan's house was set on fire and a portion of his back is burnt. Nolan tried fighting back but despite firepower after firepower the men in metal armor seem to get more motivated to kill him. Nolan somehow managed to lose them. He kept on running and running to the city where he could get some help from the witches who lived there. But to his surprise he encountered an army and from a distance he can see the hue of the fire that is burning down the whole city and thick smoke rising to the night sky. Little did he know the main army first invaded the city and killed everyone, even the elderly and young.

Eva felt Nolan's despair just by watching that it made her knees weak and fell onto the ground. She gagged and threw up her stomach fluids. Yet Nolan on the other hand, who's in a very tight situation, stood still despite his` tired shaking legs. The army cornered him with wide grins on their faces and their eyes locked on. Nolan bit and ripped off his wrist cutting his vein open and blood ooze out. He drank his own blood as he was about to perform an invocation. Though drinking his own blood has nothing to do with it, he just did it to quench his thirst and lubricate his dry throat. The army charged all at once with their spears and swords pointing at him.

"Ic bēodan! Ic æfteronfónd!" He shouted with his raspy voice and snapped his finger. Then a bright magic circle appeared over Nolan along with a deafening screech, a burst of wind and sparks of lightning. It is so bright that Eva can see the bones in her hands. She braced herself by curling like a turtle with her face sticking onto the muddy ground.

Nolan uttered a couple words and the magic circle slowly shrinks as if it is sucked into space until everything went into silence for only a split second. Just as Eva raised her head an explosion emerged on the same spot where the magic circle appeared blinding her again and blew her away from the ground where she curled herself.

Nolan caught Eva and carried her in his arms floating midair. "The explosion was a 'recoil' due to an 'imbalance'." Nolan said. "And at that point I lost consciousness."

Eva slowly opened her teary eyes and blinked for a couple times. As she looked around everything became empty, only herself and Nolan were in the space of emptiness. They slowly descended and Eva stood on to the ground. Although they are in what is an empty space Eva can feel the rocky texture of the ground.

"So, what happened after you collapsed?" Eva asked.

"In real time, I was unconscious for ten hours." Nolan answered. "But, if we fast-forward…"

A landscape slowly fades in filling in the emptiness. Before, there were grass, water puddles, mud and trees. Now, it's all but rubble. Everything within the blast is vaporized and destroyed except for Nolan. The ground remained as what it was where his back touched when he was unconscious. When Nolan regained consciousness, he felt something heavy. On top of him is a lifeless body of a woman. She is pale white and her skin is cold as ice, yet her muscles haven't stiffened yet. Nolan's mind is awfully hazy and he can't think straight. He instinctively attempted to revive the dead woman but he didn't persist after his first attempt. He then digs a grave with his bare hands enough to fit the unknown dead woman.

"Where did that woman come from?" Eva asked.

"I don't know." Nolan answered. "But I believe it has something to do about the invocation. Maybe it created her to compensate."

"For what?"

"If what you receive is less valuable than your offer, it will create an 'imbalance'. That's the cause of the explosion. And I believe its capability to compensate is just its own attempt. Maybe that's why the woman came in dead but hasn't entered rigor mortis."

"...Wait… You aren't even sure about it yourself!"

"Oh come on. Even some of the greatest inventors get killed by their own inventions."

"Then why not do it again to know more about it?"

"Then you wouldn't mind a possibility of over a thousand megatons of explosion to collapse the earth?" Nolan retorted. "Mind you that explosion just now was only three hundred kilotons."

Eva immediately looked around and realized that they are in the middle of a crater. She thought it was a burst of sea of flames that burnt everything to ashes.

"This still doesn't explain how you-"

"It's almost noon. Time to wake up.

"...What...?"

"You still have an investigation to work on."

"What are you talking-"

Nolan waved his hands to Eva goodbye then Eva began falling backwards. Just like what happened to her earlier. Eva tried to resist and counter the fall before impact but she felt that her body is frozen stiff and the fall isn't slowing down. She holds her breath preparing to hit the ground. But before she did she felt free and at ease then she sat up straight and found herself in her bedroom. Ray of sunlight shines through the gaps of the window blinds, the bed sheets are oddly loosened and full of creases, condoms all over the bed, some areas of the sheets are oddly wet, and some of the pillows are on the floor. A young gentleman in a robe entered her room, he didn't even knock. On his hand is a tray of freshly brewed coffee and a typical full English breakfast.

"Good morning, Miss Smith." Said the young gentleman. "I made breakfast."

"To think I've been provided by mister newbie over here… Congratulations on your promotion to rank two." Eva said as she sat next to the young gentleman. Still completely naked but it seems the young gentleman doesn't mind at all.

"This isn't much different from my duty brewing you fresh coffee everyday. And I owe you a lot. You are a great Captain." He said and kissed Eva on the lip then lit up her cigarette as he gestured for a light.

"...I had a dream… You waved goodbye to me and everything became empty." Eva said as she leaned on his shoulders. "I thought you're gonna leave me, Nolan…"

There was a pause for a moment between the two while they both nibbled on their bacons.

"Let's-"

[Somewhere in Scotland]

"Do you really need this much coffee?" He asked as he entered into someone's room. "I Bought some McDonalds along the way though." He added.

"Took ye so lang?" Said the girl with her thick Scottish accent.

"Had to deal with that lady investigator who's been tailing me for years. Your accent's getting good by the way."

"Did you kill her?"

"Fuck no. But she mistook my name. She named me after her lover."

"What's her lover's name?"

"Nolan."

"'now·luhn'… 'nuh·waar'… It doesn't even rhyme with yours!"

"Obviously. But I just went along with it."

"Am borrowin' your hoodie by the way."

"I can see that."

Just as he was about to leave her room she called him by his name.

"Noir…!" She called.

"Yes?" Noir said as he turned around.

"Wanna go surfing a day after tomorrow?"

"Sure. Only if you'll wake up early, Fifi."

E N D