by dominicwatson58

Power is nothing more than a possession of ego.

Some have it. Others yearn for its sweet tingly touch, a primal force that predates history. A wavelength that permeates the ether and as easy to tune into as a radio signal. If you have the wares, naturally.

I did, have. Others, most of humanity, do not. You are, to quote my late mentor "disabled in your mental prowess". Charming, I know.

But Mages are not immortal. Even the hand of death delights in snuffing us out. But today, in this land of technological wonder we seem redundant. Where before we counseled kings and emperors, government and the church, we now loiter with our magics on the cusp of a new age.

You devote your time to your devices and the majesty of the internet thanks you for it. She grows in power – a transaction of money and a song downloaded from her loins. All good succour. You have paid your dues, through blood, sweat and money. Cause and effect, quid pro quo. The Lady Web is thankful for your nourishment.

She tolerates us, like a bothersome wasp we pluck at her sweet nectar.

We have been reduced to street entertainers and peeping toms. Plucking emails from the ether and scrutinizing your internet histories – for fun. Transforming our bodies into crow or raven, watching from rooftops – our only outlet, save alcohol – observing a young nubile woman entertain a smitten and sexually charged man with prosecco and silk lingerie. We loiter, and watch – she has more magic than I. Not digital magic, proper old school stuff, magic of the soul. She controls her surroundings, her magic woven in scent and promiscuous touch. She can trap a soul with one dainty touch and to him it is electric. This woman has power.

My mentor was so wrong.

I fall from the church spire and let the wind catch my wings. I am unsteady at first, those four pints of East Coast IPA and the whiskey chaser hampering my balance. I'd forgotten to eat, which is a bugbear of mine.

The breeze was astonishing - refreshing. A cool bath of liquid air that coursed through my onyx feathers. I felt at one with the energies of the world and closed my eyes and for one second I felt them both: the deep furious energy that flowed from earth to Mage and the new neon electric of the digital age. My magic, my lore. Like the humans themselves magic is evolutionary. For eons passed we were plugged into the earth, the sky, the sea. There are now new lands, forged in the endless portals of our hand-held devices. All of us are plugged in. Mobiles and tablets; our bibles, minds constantly attuned – if you have the ware to see it – to touch the digital continent and the static that resides: mould it, form it, use it. I glided through electric rain, its static a sensation like no other; cool breeze on bare skin.

I reached, stretched my wings in the buffering surf.

And then my neck snapped.

Shit.

I felt the sheer pressure of the reinforced window braking the gossamer bones in my petite neck. I fell. Black wings became green coat tails as I tumbled and spiralled down into the concrete abyss – trying to stave off the damage by reinforcing with the sturdier bone of a human thorax. For an iota it worked, I had stemmed the break but then the hard ground of capitalist Canada Square embraced my body.

There was darkness. And blood. I felt it in my throat. The metallic tinge that spoke to the brain in volumes, of finite flesh.

I could move, thankfully, my magics had bolstered me, for what it was worth. I picked myself up, unsteady and yet eager to move, bones clicked and cracked, my spine a jagged mess. I walked lop-sided and fell into a flowerbed of roses. Picking up a handful of petals, sugar-coated in neon flame and digital detritus, I took magic from the ether and they burned in my hand into a red liquid where I lapped up their remains. Mage medicine. It wouldn't cure the hurt but it would get me home. Back to the Isle of Dogs and my bed.

Shit.

Talk about drink driving.

Good job there wasn't a Mage police.

I pulled the ripped and bloodied coat from my shoulders and tossed it onto the floor, falling onto the bed, my body a broken bag of meat. Brittle bones now bleeding magic.

It wouldn't be long.

I could feel it! The magic leaving my body like steam. The scent of a dying Mage would attract the predators that lurked in the deep divides. It wouldn't be long before one appeared. Unlike humans, who passed and slipped into the deep abyss, lost souls of song and yearning, the death of a Mage brought an altogether different kettle of fish. Mages are of a different belief. We have taken from the world so much: energy, harnessed spirits and demons to causes that have gone unjustified. Our debts outweigh that of any human. We take. We use. The soul of a Mage is desired eating to the nefarious creatures in the dark spaces.

I was new magic, they say when they split the atom decades ago the world fractured and things seeped through the cracks. Mages say nature couldn't stop the rise of science. Once Hiroshima cracked the world like an egg there was nothing to stop the contents from seeping out.

New magic, formed in the maelstrom of human darkness.

The beams and foundation of the flat creaked. The room seemed to lurch as if it were at sea. Something was burrowing inward! It smelt my decay.

I shook my head solemnly. Death by plate glass window; slightly inebriated. Not the best signing off for London's principal go-to Mage.

I had seen wonders and fought demons and spirits. Took battle against necromancers and rogue mages. I once fought a Nazi necromancer in the climes of the Swiss alps and bound him with salt and lilies. Plucked the still beating black heart from his chest and placed it into the confines of a radio. Deadlocked against spells and nefarious ideologies. A gift for mediums and ghost whisperers. In death the human soul spoke in sound – song. The heart of a necromancer opened the doorway to the abyss.

My lower back spasmed. The muscles tightened – breathing slight. A deeper darkness permeated the air, a veil of grey that brought with it the sound of wet shuffling.

I breathed.

And farted.

And then laughed, albeit fleetingly as the muscles in my back became taut and jolted me with pain.

There was a rasp. A long-elongated rasp that carried along the floor and behind it the smell of ammonia. Something wet and slick was at the foot of the bed.

Magic leaked into my sheets, sweet magic that failed to ignite. The pain subsided somehow and I turned onto my back.

'Christ,' I said. 'Didn't realise it was so dangerous going for a beer.'

The ridiculous prospect made me laugh. I, who had dined with the aristocracy and offered courtship advice to Byron. Nothing was said and done. In the end, no future can be pre-determined. I had lived longer than most and payed my dues.

'What a bloody waste.'

What had changed? As a young Mage I had been dutiful, if a little overzealous. Relationships were scattered throughout the ages, but nothing had ever come to betrothal. The life of a Mage was a solitary one. One of duty and books. One of death.

I remembered the girl in the flat, that young woman who had wielded her own brand of personal magic. Perhaps that was why I had watched! The loneliness tore at me from the inside. Perhaps the thought of watching such coupling would stem the tide of my own isolation.

No. I was just an old pervert. A drunk Mage who took solace in a few pints of beer. I had taken liberties with my power. Misused it to peek into a young woman's bedroom and in my egotistical mind had decided to take flight inebriated.

I should have just watched the whole show and caught the bus home. Phoned for a special shish from Just Eat and settled down with a bit of Newsnight.

You had to do it, didn't you? Just like a run-of-the-mill idiot with a sports car? Defying the law. The big I am!

Prick.

There was movement. My bed jolted, and a dark wet membrane hunched over the bottom of the sheet. Its head moved and expanded, as if a thousand souls reached out from within, trying to severe the gelatinous tissue with nothing but finger and nail. Its head and body, speckled with faint white freckles, giving off the impression of moving night.

It lurched over the bed, the slug-like physique leaving only slime and its signature deep rasp. Elasticated mandibles lapped at my feet and pulled me a foot down the bed, lower legs swallowed by wet night.

It was enveloping me, slowly – yet lovingly, as if it had been an age since it had tasted sweet Mage.

I looked up and across and to the bedside cabinet where my mobile sat. Stretching with my arm and pulling with leg I reached for the mobile as the slug-man enveloped my knees. With forefinger and thumb I picked up the phone and reached out with the last vestiges of magic. I lit the spark, bare sentient Mage mind met with the colossal intelligence of the Lady Web and my body burned. (I'm sure she winked at me! Ya know, like "See ya later" wink). The slug-man recoiled; living flame kindled by torrents of data met its slimy membrane and its rasp became a death-like shrill as it became privy to a unified magic of unparalleled stature. Night had become burning day as it scurried back into the bore hole it had come from, its raspy death rattle still heard as the veil closed.

I couldn't tell you how long I laid there! Night turned into day and dusk flirted with night and then night took dawn to breakfast.

It felt an age. I was sore and yet I could move, move everything. No bones broken, the flame that had shrouded me and scolded now nothing more than an itchy blemish. I pulled my bloodied jacket from the floor and laid it over the bed.

I was alive. How the hell? Sunlight caught the screen of my phone and I picked it up. No battery and yet I felt the hum of the world through it.

I pulled the curtain open and saw London by sunlight. My heart lifted and I opened the bay doors ready to take flight, the visage of crow subverting my human features and then I thought better of it.

'No. No, I think . . . I think I'll take the bus.'