The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 6. Chapter 6

The architecture of the Theocracy was supposed to showcase the awe-inspiring feats of the twenty-first century. Prism-shaped and three dimensional, a monolith made of mined steel from the ruins of Elysia. This is the result of what we can achieve when you wield magic and technology together. Order in the midst of chaos.

To Vanus it just meant he had to climb a lot of steps. Steps and steps and more steps. Most days he didn’t mind. It helped him stay fit. In this business a healthy diet was important. But today he didn’t want to run around like an Olympian athlete. He wanted to go home with a bottle of Advil and a stiff drink. The bull-like Bazzelthorpe wasn’t helping, the bull-headed bastard!

His presence was the very thorn Vanus did not need in his side. Rude, abrasive, hostile. If he had a Thesaurus, the death magician would have chucked it at his fat forehead! He’d had it up to here with the withering, disapproving looks that said more than words ever could. It was psychological antagonism. It didn’t help that he insisted on showing off their distance in height, by deliberately marching ahead several feet, then stopping to face Vanus. When he did he would stand there with his arms crossed, glowering.

“You don’t have to wait for me, you know,” he said when they passed through the wards. Chaos magicians on guard marched two and fro, looking stoic in their red robes.

“I have nothing better to do,” Bazzelthorpe said with a lazy shrug.

“You mean you have nothing better to do than be an ass,” Vanus hissed under his breath.

The stereotype about the Astorathians’ superior hearing was confirmed when Bazzelthorpe growled at him. The sound was deep and dog-like. The sound a beast would make. Heard that, did you? the magician thought. Despite the burn mounting in his thighs from the arduous climb a smirk tugged at his lips.

By the time they were waved through the security check, he wondered if the growing pressure in his skull would make his head explode. He yearned for someone to shoot him. For an instant he imagined tapping Bazzelthorpe on the shoulder. Shoot me, he would say. Just pull out your gun and shoot me.

He was never quite sure what kept him on his feet. Perhaps it was just simple electrical impulses from the brain that allowed the body to transport itself from one point or another; if you made the right facial expressions and said the right words, you could scrape by on ice thin as a razorblade. It was enough to get him through the brief update he stumbled through in a flat, can-we-just-get-this-over-with tone; the attentive sounds Gwen made that continued to be at odds were her rapid eye movements, and Bazzelthorpe’s constant pomp.

When he slid into his office, locked the door, closed the blinds, and turned out the lights he almost collapsed on the floor he was so exhausted. For a horrifying second he was convinced there was something wrong with his hands. The evil presence he’d sent at the church had infected somehow so that the palms bulged and the fingers fattened like engorged leeches. He had to give into the urge to scream. He swallowed two Advil with a splash of water from the water dispenser he kept for guests - hydration was important after all. He followed this up with four gulps from the little flask he kept hidden in his desk drawer.

You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t be drinking this shit, Carlos’ sensible voice said in his head. Patient, forgiving, and loving all at the same time. And at this point nothing more than a dream. He hadn’t thought of Carlos in a long time. A simple apology could not make up for it.

He knelt on the floor, his vision porous with half-dried tears. The steel of the desk felt cool and inviting against the sweaty surface of his forehead.

“You’ve sunk too low my friend,” a voice said.

The death magician looked up. It was Bazzelthorpe. He was so tall he cast Vanus in shadow, like the black monoliths in Inferno. His eyes blazed with the promise of judgment. Of punishment. His hands disappeared into the folds of his great leather overcoat. When he pointed the sawed-off double barreled shotgun at Van’s head, the shotgun holes showed him his first glimpse of oblivion.

“Thank you,” he said, crying not tears of distress but relief.

When Bazzelthorpe pulled the trigger and the shotgun’s blast filled his ears with a deafening roar.

It was a fantasy. Now his head simply felt heavy. Not heavy and pulsing like a mad growing thing. So, there was that. But now his thoughts were vaporous. Still moronic, self-pitying, and indulgent. “Not a good working attitude,” he told himself, thinking of a firmed voice nun from his early days at the orphanage.

With a final push of effort, he pushed himself up from the floor. He curled up on the couch, bringing his knees to his chest as if to protect himself from a kick to the ribs.

His dream went exactly the same up until the end. The end came with an unexpected plot-twist. Before Bazzelthorpe could pull the trigger, putting an end to Van’s misery, a small hand took the magician’s and pulled him to safety. To a place that was not a place but a feeling. A feeling of rest. A feeling of calm. Of respite. It was a feeling he knew not for himself, but something that was being supplied to him. A cool rag across a clammy forehead.

The hand that had pulled him away from death had been the hand of a child.

When he woke up the overwhelming pain he’d felt had simmered down to a manageable murmur. A glance at his watch told him he’d slept three hours. It was only a quarter after one. Thank the Mother. It wasn’t too late to turn this faux pas of a day into something salvageable.

He ran a comb through his hair. He tried to arrange his smile into something that didn’t look too awkward. It wasn’t working. Something about his eyes always looked too wide, too pleading. Let’s just get through the day without any trouble, huh? Like a door-to-door missionary not an authoritative agent of the Theocracy.

“To the Void with you,” he said to his own reflection.

While he passed the cramped cubicles to the bathroom, he made a mental checklist of the task he would get done for the rest of the day. First he would type up a report on what he found at the church. It would be short: They hadn’t done anything more than go into the church long enough to take a peek. Before attaching the report to an email and firing it off to the captain, he would recommend that a reading needed to be done. A second attachment requesting the higher ups would join the first. It could take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks before he got anything like an answer back.

Bureaucracy is a problem that afflicts every government agency, and one as disregarded as the Roc City branch of the Theocracy was no different; like any seedy police department in the city’s slums, the agency has its fair share of political disputes and scandals. The fact Vanus had an office to sleep in when he was feeling no mas was not a nameplate to indicate his importance. It was a token of compensation on Gwen’s part. This job is shit. This agency is shit. Because of the bigoted big wigs you will never rise any higher than a desk jockey who gets stuck with the jobs no one wants to do. So as a token of my appreciation and because you’re all we’ve got, here is this nice cushy office. Gwen would have made it sound more commercial and flowery and Vanus appreciated the gesture.

He also knew if he wanted to get anything done in this business it was best to think ahead. He had a feeling this little church fire would spread into bigger fires that would be much more difficult to put out. He would do what he could to minimize his involvement in the case, but he also wanted to have a contingency. Even if that contingency was putting in paperwork for a reading in a case that would only end up in a moldering box.

He was just dotting the last i in his to-do list when he sensed a heavy presence sidling up to the urinal next to him.

Slowly he looked over, then he looked back and up. It was Bazzelthorpe. Vanus stared straight ahead, trying to pretend as if he hadn’t noticed the Astorathian standing there. A masculine show of indifference. On the outside the death magician was small. It came down to a simple difference in physiology that could not be helped any more than their demographic backgrounds.

Don’t say anything. Don’t look up. Just keep staring straight ahead.

If the Astorathian could hear him whisper scathing remarks beneath his breath, could he hear the spasmodic jerks of his heart? Could those cynical, flaring eyes see how the blood thickened in the channels of his face, scalding hot against skin that had always shown every blemish?

Don’t think about it, was Van’s answer. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter.

The death magician was glad when he finished first. He pulled the metal nozzle, went to the sink, and rejoiced at the hiss of city water hitting the porcelain. He allowed himself a sigh of relief. He didn’t care that the water smelled of chemicals; that slight sulfur smell that reminded him of those hot, fetid summer days when he had nothing but well water to drink.

Bazzelthorpe was so broad he took up two sinks. For a man whose hands were so big he washed them slowly and methodically, tracing over the cracks and scratches that misfortune had traced in his skin. Though he did not look at Vanus directly, the death magician could feel the heat of his gaze all the same.

Vanus made to brush by him, tossing a wad of paper towels into the trash bin when he caught a flash in the reflection of the mirror. Their eyes met. He scowled. A voice in the back of his head told him it was best to go out the door. He overrode that voice with a stubborn shove. Some things just need to be nipped in the bud, he thought.

“Do you have something you want to say to me?” Vanus demanded in a tight voice.

Slowly Bazzelthorpe turned to face him. His face was remote, impassive. Only the eyes showed what he truly felt. “What makes you think I have anything to say to you, n'gha r'luhhnyth.” Death sorcerer.

The Astorathian term for death magician sounded acerbic rolling off his thick tongue.

“Ymg' nwngluii,” Van said, refusing to back down. Your eyes.

Bazzelthorpe blinked and he knew he’d won that round. “You speak Astorathian?” The consonants in his pronunciation sharpened with a mixture of outrage and disbelief.

The death magician crossed his arms over his chest. “Of course I do. What in the Void kind of agent do you think I’d be if I couldn’t? That’s besides the point. You have made it very clear that you don’t like me. Normally I would not care one way or another; I’ve been here long enough to accept it as a simple part of life. But with you I get the sense it’s personal. What is your problem with me? Did I spit in your coffee? Out with it!”

For a moment the Astarothian only looked surprised. He didn’t look so big, then. If anything his size and breadth only made him look awkward and out of place. His tail, which had trailed behind him like a snake slowly rolled into a ball. Vanus felt a sense of triumph.

Then the ball unraveled like a yo-yo, shooting back out onto the floor. The Astorathian’s eyes narrowed, accepting Van’s challenge.

When he spoke his voice thundered with anger. “You’re a disappointment.”