Chapter 1

A Kleftis is a Magick-User who goes in and steals Magickal things. And so, I’m here in Seattle’s best �" no not the coffee �" a random apartment building to steal the Scepter of a certain 19th Century occultist.

I finished typing that into my Twitter and turned my phone off. I placed it in the pocket of my coat and looked up.

The run-down apartment building had the works: fading paint, scrappy windows, and an alleyway that probably had some kind of random graffiti tagged onto it that most people would just glance over, but any respectable Magick-User would know that the graffiti was actually a magical ward of some sort.

Speaking of that.

I walked into the alleyway of the apartment building, bringing up the hood of my hoodie. The drizzle hadn’t let up, at all. I mean of course, this was Seattle. But still.

In the alleyway, I’d found a few, interesting vandalisms. Of course, none of them looked exactly any Magickal. I tried to look for the unusual geometries usually found in Hermetic workings �" kids these days love their Hermetic Magick �" but having failed that, I tried to look for workings more primal. Similar to Galdrastafir, or even Hieroglyphs to see if there were still any people who practiced Heka.

I couldn’t find anything much. I most of the time pride myself on my ability to seek out the details not a lot of other people could see, so when I didn’t see anything strange of any sort, I was discomfited. Annoyed. Pissed.

Of course, I had other ways to find Magickal Workings.

Gritting my teeth, I dug into my messenger bag and brought out a small dagger �" about a foot in length. It wasn’t adorned by anything, and featured a simple rubber handle. Still with my teeth grit, I pressed the blade lightly onto my palm. A few trickles of blood fell off. I cleaned the blade of the dagger on my sleeve and returned it into the messenger bag and dipped my fingers with blood.

I closed my eyes and smeared my blood onto my eyes. “Ipakita,” I said again and again, in a mantra. I opened my eyes once I’d stopped muttering.

The grimy, piss-smelling alleyway looked exactly the same and felt exactly the same. Almost, anyway. When I looked up at the wall, a faint, pulse of power emanated from the lower-right side.

A few random Occulted passed by, laughing, completely ignoring the Magickal Echoes all around them. They looked queerly at the strange dude with blood on his eyelids looking up at the wall in front of him, but the queer look only lasted a few seconds, before they rationalized it away as another guy high.

Seattle is the perfect place to perform Magick.

Once the Occulted have passed, I walked toward the cemented wall and ran my hands across the wall, moving it over the lower right where the Magickal Pulse was coming from. It had the resonance of some sort of spatial magick. An esoteric practice, even for Magick-users. Once my hands went over to the magickal ward, the hairs all over my body stood up on their ends, as if a current of electricity had run through me.

Whatever the ward was warding off, it didn’t want it inside. So obviously, I had to turn it off. Better safe than sorry.

Digging into my messenger bag once again; I brought out an aerosol spray paint can, and shook it a few times. I spray painted a circle around the ward sigil, which looked like a strange seven-pointed star which pulsed seven times every three seconds, sending out a faint magickal resonance that did what it was supposed to do.

I tried to discern what it actually did one more time before I went ahead with the Essence Spell, but couldn’t sense anything. Mind you, I wasn’t the most expert at general Magick Keys, although I wasn’t a specialized Magick-user myself. I examined a few more times before coming to the conclusion that it probably did what any plain-old vanilla ward would do �" keep out unwanted Magick-users. That means it was a Spatial Spell meshed with an Essence Spell. Perfect �" I wasn’t too bad at both those Keys.

I looked left to right, with a few more people crossing the alleyway and shooting me looks. I ignored them, dipped my fingers into my still open wound, and, using three fingers, I smeared blood onto the seven-pointed star, channeling my inner Essence to the blood. The blood sparkled with Essence, effectively turning it into Rime, and weakened the Magickal working of the seven-pointed star.

I dipped my fingers in blood again and smeared the star once more with my Essence blood. The second smearing did the job �" the magickal ward dispersed completely. I stood up, satisfied, and dug into the pocket of my messenger bag to fish out a bandage, which I applied onto the wound.

With the magickal ward down, I grabbed a towel from inside my bag as well and cleaned the blood from my eyelids. With that done, I went over to the front of the apartment, and since it was still drizzling, I decided to go inside and not to admire the chipping paint of the building.

I went inside the apartment building and arrived to a very small lobby. There was a counter where nobody was behind. The floors were marble, glossy, and surprisingly clean. I went over to the wall of small, rectangular mailboxes and looked for the name of the guy who had the Scepter �" a man called Jared. I swiped at a few mailboxes with my finger and it came up clouded with dust.

Jared's mailbox was to the right of the lot, with the number of his apartment underneath the gleaming metal box. Swiping a finger across it, my finger came up clean. Somebody/'s used this mailbox recently.

It needed a key to open, so I didn’t bother with it anymore. I walked past the counter, which actually did have a person on the other side �" a sleeping, lanky man in a guard uniform.

I walked up the stairs to the fourth floor, where the Jared’s apartment was. As I walked forward, the hairs on the nape of my neck began to rise once more, and an aching above my nose throbbed. One of my body’s favorite ways to react to Magick and Magick-Users being in the vicinity. I paused in my tracks as a random guy went out of his room. He looked at me from head to toe as he passed by me. I tried to play it cool by pulling out my smartphone.

Once he was past me, I’d hoped he would continue walking down the stairs, but his heavy, boot-clad footsteps paused, and a gruff, deep voice beckoned to me, “Hey, you.”

I fidgeted, but nevertheless turned and looked up at him. “Yeah?”

His skin was pale, and you could barely see his sharp smirk underneath the scraggly beard. “You from here? Haven’t seen you before.”

I debated on whether to shrug or not. I shook my head. “I’m just visiting a friend.”

He crossed his arms. “Who?”

I exhaled. “Just a friend man. Get off my back.”

He raised his eyebrows and his mouth curled in offense. “Hey man I was just asking.”

“And I’d had a long day,” I replied.

“It’s nine in the morning!” Scraggly beard man replied, chuckling.

“Days and nights kind of mesh together after some time,” I said, smiling. I turned around and began to walk to Jared’s room once again. The man didn’t move. When he saw that I stopped in front of Jared’s room, he spoke again. “You going to see Jared?”

I debated whether to shrug. I liked shrugging. “What’s it to you?” I shrugged. Gotta flex those shoulder muscles, you know?

“You a Magick-user?”

The question caught me off-guard. I turned to look at him, smartphone still on and loading my Twitter feed. “Why? You?”

When he smiled, it reminded me of a wolf. “Why do so many Magick-users want to find Jared these days?” He asked. “He’s not very popular or well-known in the Occulta Mundus.”

I shrugged. “It’s some, uh, personal matters. Better not foil with it. Magick-users can get pretty personal, right?”

He smiled. It was an amiable smile. “You got that right,” he said. “Watch your back, brother.”

“Ditto,” I said. He dipped his head in a nod and vanished down the flight of stairs. I let out a breath. I thought for sure he was going to jump at me and call on some magickal fire or some s**t like that. Some Magick-users weren’t subtle at all. I like to keep my own magick subtle, just so I could keep the unravelling effect of Occultation from hitting me too much. You never know when an Occulted was watching.

I smirked a bit at the man who had just vanished down the stairs, and then I turned to Jared’s room. I was just about to try the doorknob when heavy footsteps lumbered up the stairs again, and here returned Mr. Scraggly Beard, who winked at me as he passed by. He said, “Forgot my wallet,” and he walked inside his room. He didn’t lock it.

It was at this point that my paranoia levels turned up the dials. Cautious, I took a step from Jared’s apartment, and I dug out a roll, along with a zippo lighter, and lit up the end of the roll. Closing my eyes, I placed the roll in between my lips and inhaled.

Now some people say that cannabis isn’t good for you, and it increases your heart rate and what not. I found that it works differently for me. At least, it did when my Magister taught me the way of Time Magick. Apparently, Time Magick is just a shifting of preconceptions and perceptions, and the only way to access the fourth dimension of time is to go beyond it by, well, getting high. I found that drugs don’t really work well on me, and I could go smoke a few joints only to find the next day that I’m back loving milkshakes.

My vision blurred as the precognition came along. I shut my eyes, waited for the effects to kick in, and then Slipped.

When I opened my eyes, I was right where I was standing. I had tunnel vision, of sorts, in that my periphery was blurred and hazy. My phone was still on, so I looked down at it and saw the digital clock on it say, “9:37”.

I turned to look at the door Mr. Scraggly Beard went into and he opened it wide as he burst out, his left hand was in a strange hand gesture, and chaotic energy seemed to be building up within it. In his right hand, he was holding a dirty, beat up revolver. I was no gun expert, but I knew my way around firearms, considering that I use them most of the time. The revolver had a six inch black barrel, and looked like it had the capacity for six rounds. It also looked like one of those .38 Smith & Wesson specials.

I’m not saying firearms could smart, but they could smart. Especially those.

I still had tight control over my body, so I could still move as limber as I could. Scraggly man raised his right hand, now fizzing and arcing with chaotic energy. He uttered a word, flicked his hand, and a wave of invisible chaotic energy unleashed in front of him, and my body took the full brunt of the magickal onslaught. This caused my body to go haywire, arms and legs fidgeting and twitching out of control. I couldn’t move my hands and legs.

With me disarmed and unable to move. Mr. Scraggly went up to me, slowly, raising the .38 to my eye level and placing the barrel right between my eyes. He growled out, “You stay out of Master Jared’s business. The Diastrofi will return.”

I tried my best to move my fidgeting, useless appendages, only to fail miserably. I felt tears dripping from my eyes as Mr. Scraggly pulled back the hammer of the revolver, clicking with a satisfying thump, and he laid a hand on the trigger.

Through sheer force of will, I was able to move my lips and my tongue in the direction I wanted it to go. “Wh-wh-what’s your n-n-name?”

He grinned, showcasing wickedly sharp canines, but not sharp enough to be fangs. “I’m one of Master Jared’s Prentices. Call me Andre.”

And with that, he pulled back the trigger, and black consumed me.

The bullet shot echoed through the halls of my soul, and ringed in my ears as I was pulled out of the precognition. Breathing heavily, and with heavy puffs of smoke bellowing from my mouth, I was pulled back to reality and waking. I shook my head a few times, staving off the effects of the lucid spell. Temporal Spells had always been my favorite.

I dropped the roll of cannabis onto the floor and smashed it underneath my feet. I wasn’t a well-trained of the Elemental Keys, so I didn’t exactly know how to conjure a fireball with a few wisps of smoke like you see in the movies. I knew the theory behind it and everything, but I never got down to the Practices, and so, I never learned how to do it.

I quickly looked down at my phone, which was open, with the digital clock saying “9:37”. I kept my composure, and tried to think of a plan.

First things first, this guy knew how to blast things with chaotic energy. That’s some edgy stuff right there, and I had no idea how to counterspell it, because I never learned the theories of Chaos Magick.

And so, I decided to do it the old fashioned way.

I wasn’t a very athletic person, and although I’ve tried to learn some martial arts, I couldn’t pull off a Batman anytime soon. This is why I stuck to using sawed-off shotguns and semi-autos. That being said, though, I still knew where to punch, and those martial arts training weren’t entirely in vain.

I quickly moved to the other side of the hall, right beside Mr. Scraggly’s room. I tried to remember some of the details of what he was going to do �" first of all, he’s left handed, since he had is revolver in his left hand. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer holding a gun with my dominant hand. This is to my advantage, as I was on the left side of his door which meant I could quickly disarm him.

The second thing was that he was sticking out his revolver like an idiot. The third thing was that when he stepped out of the door, his spell was still charging up, so he couldn’t blast me with that awful chaotic energy at a moment’s notice.

I was ready. I knew what I would do, thanks to that Temporal Spell. Man, I love Temporal Magick.

The doorknob twisted, and the door creaked open. The revolver jutted out of the doorway first, and I grabbed this opportunity to swiftly unarm him, twisting his wrist in such an angle that he was force to open his hand. He grunted in surprise and pain as the revolver fell from his hands and into mine. In a swift motion, I pulled back the hammer of the revolver, the barrel spun, and I quickly shot at the right arm of Andre.

The bullet tore into his forearm, causing him to scream in agony. I pulled back the hammer once more, finding that the revolver was single-action, and I shot at the man’s kneecaps, and he fell to the ground, screaming.

He looked up at me as his blood puddled in the floor of his doorway. “How…?”

“I have my secrets, Andre,” I winked, pulled back the hammer, and buried a hole deep into his cranium. The numerous bullet shots echoed throughout the apartment floor, and presumably through the apartment building and hell, probably neighbourhood.

I had to retrieve the Scepter, and fast.

I turned to Jared’s room, found the doorknob locked, and I blasted the knob away with another shot of the revolver, acoustics be damned. I could already hear shouting. I had to make it quick. Seattle authorities wouldn’t like me.

I burst into the room, ready to find Jared there, holding a staff and ready to blast me with pure entropic force, only to find nothing but a neat and clean one bedroom apartment. There was a couch, where the Scepter �" a three foot shaft of gilded wood with a small, crimson ruby on top �" was laid. I kept my wits about me, keeping the revolver up and about. I wasn’t a hotshot wizard, I couldn’t conjure fireballs. I had to rely on guns and fists.

Soon enough, I could hear sirens �" sounds I swear I should be tired of by now, but always just seem to get my blood pumping. Grabbing the Scepter in one hand, I walked over to the window of the apartment. Outside was an alleyway without much people yet, and the drizzle of Seattle never taking a break. Perfect for a getaway.

I slid open the window. I saw a free, open space. Grimy and Seattle, but a free space.

I heard the police coming out of their cars, slamming doors shut.

I closed my eyes and meditate. Space and distance are all illusions. There is only one point. I focused, blocking out all the sounds and all the distractions. I leaned forward, out of the window sill and inhaleed the drizzle. The outside.

I meditated, removing the illusions of distance. There is only one point.

I could hear them coming up the stairs, barking out orders, but slowly, their voices were muted. Slowly, as if somebody was carefully tuning the volume knob of the Universe, the noises of the police became muffled, and then silence.

And then all illusion was gone.

I snapped back to reality when I forced my eyes open, and I found myself outside, standing on the grimy spot I’d been focusing on. Revolver on one hand and the Scepter on one hand. I smiled as the thrill of the crime overwhelmed me, and I walked out, the mortal feds be damned.