Magik Online

Chapter 40: DLC: Requiem for Earth

Ten years ago

September 21st 2018

Doomsday

Solomon Nicholae watched the GPS, trying to make sense out of it. “This is strange,” he told the driver next to him. “This machine doesn’t show our current path.”

“That’s because the map is older than the road,” Victor replied as he looked around the glades. Dayfall was almost upon them. “I’m sure we’re close, keep looking.”

Sol knew that relying on machines was a terrible idea. In the Mercedes’ backseat, the grandchild he never had echoed his sentiment, although for another reason.

“Another bug,” Mathias complained, furiously typing on his tablet. The young child played a video game of his own design, struggling with errors. Solomon wasn’t familiar with video games. Some at his parish complained they made kids violent; but Mathias, who seemed born with the devices in the womb, had yet to hurt a fly.

“You need to streamline your code,” Alice said, showing her son her own tablet. Like always, she wore a fashionable white dress, flaunting her figure. “Like this. You need to set up your enemy AI’s parameters like this.”

“But I don’t want to make them too smart!” Mathias replied. “Or they get too hard.”

“This will force you to improve,” Alice replied with a smile. “You have limitless potential if you tap into it.”

Indeed, he had inherited his mother’s brilliance; and fortunately, none of the boundless arrogance.

Alice Martel. A blue-eyed blonde as beautiful as she was smart. A genius without peer, she had won a Nobel prize for her re

A sound echoed through the radio, then silence.

Mathias moved away from the telescope, grabbing his mother’s arm. “Matt, what is it?” she asked, as he pointed at the window with his fingers.

They didn’t even need a telescope to look at it. A bloody, tailed star, racing across the skies, painting the night red.

“An asteroid,” Alice said, her face white. “It’s an asteroid.”

As the monster kept talking, Solomon realized that an entire species, everywhere, could suffer through a single moment of despair.

Love?

Love!

No, this was not love! An unforgivable crime of this magnitude could never be called love!

Blackcinders shouted, with the same feverish zeal as his own sermons.

Voices echoed across the airwaves before Victor cut the radio. Alice hadn’t listened, her eyes falling back on the alien code, as if it contained the key to their survival.

As the sound of the distant explosion resonated, the meteor impact making the house quake a continent away, Solomon returned to his.

Was someone even listening?

Two Years ago

March 22nd, 2026

One week after Alice Martel’s arrest

Solomon put the letter on his church’s pedestal, before moving to sweep around.

The church was empty. Few came here anymore. He had tried to speak up, to keep hope and faith alive. But Concordia left no room to speak against it, closing channels, silencing voices, cowing men and women into abject submission. And when he spoke, he had found the wells of hope had dried up.

The Conquest broke something in every man and woman who lived through it. A precious light was lost the day Blackcinders made the stars fall and it never came back.

Even Earth’s name they stole away.

In the end, even Solomon Nicholae stopped struggling against the inevitable. They had lost, and salvation wouldn’t come.

Sol stopped sweeping, staring up at the stained glasses of angels and saints looking down on him. A gnawing doubt, that had festered for years until he could no longer ignore it, took him over.

“God, My Lord, I have never prayed for myself. I always prayed for others. But tonight… tonight, please. Answer me. Lord, if you exist…”

He stopped himself, as the weight of his own words fell on him.

“Lord, if you exist… if you existed… please answer me. Why? Why did you send the dragons to enslave us? Why did you let them take her?” He paused, taking a deep breath. “Why?”

“Because your God helps those who help themselves.”

Sol’s eyes opened, and he looked behind him.

A human figure was sitting on his church’s bench. He cast a long, great shadow that didn’t belong to a man; his face, strong and ageless, seemed vaguely familiar, both alluring and frightening. He wore a finely crafted suit, the height of Italian fashion; a woodpecker golden brooch adorned his tie. The scent of gunpowder and mustard gas filled the room as he appeared.

The church’s door had been locked, and the priest didn’t hear him come in. “Who are you?” Sol asked when he meant: are you?

“Probably one of Earth’s last champions.” His voice reminded Sol of that American actor, Nicholas Cage. “You may call me March, for now.”

“That is not your true name.”

This made the man smile. “Yes, and no. Your kind called me by many names, from China to Europe, and I answered to each. But March will do for today.”

Sol hated evasive answers, but he noted an important word. Your kind. He searched his memory for where he had seen the man’s face. He had a good memory, so he quickly remembered. His priest training in Italy.

His eyes widened. “Impossible.”

“Why so surprised? Concordia brought magic back to Earth, and with it, friends and foes.”

“You exist.”

“Must one story spun exclude all others? What if all stories are simply tiny parts of a greater tale? A tale transmitted from mouth to mouth so many times, today’s versions are no longer accurate? That is the modern world, priest. A world of interpretations.”

The entity shifted on the bench, looking at the cross above the pedestal. “While I may not be so impolite to answer in your Lord’s name, I can tell you that our interests align, Him and I. I can bring some answers to your troubled mind if you hear me out. I also have a humble request to make, which I hope you will fulfill in my stead.”

Sol knew better to accept the gift before learning the price. “What request?”

“The boy, Martel… may prove instrumental in our war to come.”

“Mathias?” Sol said with protectiveness. “What do you want with him?”

“I want him safe, or as safe as a creature like him can be. I would like that you watch over him, guide and protect him.”

“Creature?”

The man smiled. “I apologize if I offended you. I myself do not know how I should call him now, after what his mother did to him.”

Sol frowned deeply, walking toward the thing in front of him. If he was afraid, as the priest looked at him dead in the eyes, he didn’t show it. “You know what happened there.”

“Partially. I was there, but only at the end. Better late than never, I should say.” The man chuckled, but the priest didn’t. “It was pretty bad. Concordia had to send their Violet Minister, Brina, to deal with the event.”

“What happened?” Sol repeated.

“What did Alice Martel want? Truly want?”

“She wanted to create a god,” Sol said. “A machine god.”

“She succeeded.”

This made Sol pause. “One cannot create a god.”

“So I thought.” March shook his head. “Have you ever heard of Hubris?”

“Another word for pride.” The worst sin of all.

“Hubris is to pride what war is to a bar brawl. Gods can be cold, heartless things; I know that more than anyone, and hopefully Miss Martel learned that too. A shame her son paid the price of his mother’s madness.”

“He was returned fine, from what his father told me,” Sol replied.

“Physically, yes. For his sake, maybe he will stay that way, but I don’t think so and I am never wrong.” March touched the bench, inviting Sol to sit with him.

He didn’t. “Explain.”

The man responded with a sigh. “The iron god did to him. Connected him to the source of all sorcery. I am not sure myself yet, and neither is Concordia; I think they’re letting him run around until they see in which direction the wind blows. But I have the intuition that what happened to him, if replicated and refined, could turn the tide in mankind’s favor. Mathias will be weapon, Concordia’s, ours, or the other invader’s, that I can tell you.”

“The invader?”

“The dragons brought malign forces back to Earth; one just as terrible as them. This is a , priest. We have enemies, merciless order and cruel chaos. Both must go for us to be free, truly free. It will be difficult, and not without blood and loss… but we can do it, together.’

A world free of the dragons? Could this man be trusted? At heart, though, Sol didn’t care.

He hoped again. “What must I do?”

“For now, watch Martel, and wait. But mark my word, priest. In time we will gather a great army, and we shall challenge Concordia for our right to exist. Know that your faith in your God is not misplaced and will one day be rewarded. Mankind is not without friends in this vast universe… and we haven’t forgotten you.”

The man vanished, leaving Sol alone in his empty church.

Spell of the Day

Immolator

Affinity: Red

Dot: 2

Price: 6-10

Activation: Passive, Thought.

You can cause anything within a range of ten meters to spontaneously ignite, so long as you can perceive it directly; this ability does not work through mediums such as videos. The more you focus on a single target, the stronger the combustion effect and the fire’s heat.