The Emerald City

I like the beginning at least, I may use it for something more worth while in the future.

In reckless dreams I stalk the streets of a darkened city, as blood pools and sweeps through the cracks in the cobblestone path beneath my feet. In one hand I hold a sword rippling with blue flame and in my left burns a flashlight.
My light skips and jumps from shadow, to doorway, to overpass, and buttress. I am searching for something in the dreams, but I do not know what, and then something finds me. It comes creeping at first, hiding itself from my senses as though frightened of me, and all I hear is the skittering of disturbed gravel or the click of a baked clay tile snapping under foot.
Then, gradually, the city opens up around me as my path leads me up a hill, narrow alleyways become roads and then thoroughfares and I begin to see the bodies. They hang from light poles and lay sprawled in the streets. I can sense then, the thing that is following me, and instinctively I know that there are more of them all around me, I have to get to higher ground.
I begin to run, no longer the hunter, now the prey. I leap over half-seen bodies and blasted piles of rubble as my hand light lends a strobe like effect to the seen. I can hear them now, and occasionally I catch a glimpse of one, a scaled hand or snapping tentacle at the edge of my vision and the glimpses propel me faster.
Houses fall aways on either side of me, as tenements become houses and then mansions, each set further back from the road then the one before. It is a part of the city that I don't know at all and I begin to feel terribly exposed, but at last I can almost make out my pursuers, dead eyed and red mouthed.
All of a sudden I come to the precipice, a great jetty of stone shooting out over the better part of the city, the narrow places, the dirty places, where the real people live, and I can see the skyline shrouded in fog. There are lights at the tops of the buildings, burning gold and pale, mystic green, stabbing towards the sky, glowing spires.
I stop for too long, staring, and when I look down I see that the things are crawling up towards me, swarming up the rough worn stone. Behind me they are closing in, I can not get out, can not escape.
So I rush back to the street and there, in the ring described by a wane streetlight I drop my torch and take the sword in both hands. I stand, feet apart waiting for the first of the things to enter the ring of light. I wait, jaw set, to die, as they encircle me, but always as the first darts forward I wake up.
It's raining. I lie huddled in my long coat on the third floor of a building only partially collapsed. It used to be a school, I live in what was once a science class room, I have a nest of blankets in the space beneath the teachers desk and I can close the sliding doors to further hide myself from prying eyes, and I store the books and ephemera, the tools that keep me alive, amongst ancient beakers crusted with chemicals in a locker at the back of the room.
The roof leaks, but I am tall, and reluctant to fold myself into the desk if I feel safe enough to avoid that fate, so I am stiff and cold. I stand and stretch as I prowl the perimeter of my lair, checking that the line of salt remains unbroken, renewing in grease pen the runes of warding that shield me from scrying and those who would peer into the future.
Satisfied I cross to the locker and, whispering words that ripple in the air, for those that know how to see, but that are heard only by reality, I grasp the lock. It pops open with a faint click and I swing the door wide. From the locker I take a pendulum and a deck of cards, each card densely crowded with runes and intricate diagrams that seem to shift under close inspection. These I tuck into the voluminous pockets of my coat, then I take the old leather holster from its peg and fix it to my belt so that the iron revolver rests on my right hip.
As I walk out of the room I snap my fingers and the locker swings shut. I am very hungry.
Outside it is gray and dreary, burnt posters for shows that will never be played rustle in the dirty wind and what rays of light pierce the leaden cloud cover seem only to highlight the cracks in the road and the dust on broken storefront windows. It has been eleven months since the End, since the bombs went off and the survivors fled. Eleven months since those of us who practice the Art have been able to sleep without dreaming of the other side, of the world beyond the Veil, where we are hunted by creatures of soul-stuff and nightmares, the place from where we draw our power, taking sustenance with each of their deaths. Energy is conserved, even with the Art, and they feed off of our dead as we feed off of theirs, and there has been so much death here that the hunters of begun to cross.
They are shadows here, but every day it seems that the shadows grow longer.
I shake off the black mood that has possessed me and make my way carefully down the street, keeping always my third eye open, peering ahead for danger. Today, at least, I make it to my destination without incident despite being shadowed for a time by several large, skeletal dogs.
The market convenes every day in what used to be the central line subway, hundreds of men and women gather there to swap scavenged goods, by or sell food stuffs and services, and the little things that we can still make. More importantly however it provides us with a place where we can remember what it is to be human.
I descend the three flights of stairs, past the Kellar (in all likely hood the worlds premier nightclub, this side of the End) and into the bazaar. Before me shot two miles of densely packed humanity, a sizable portion of the population of the city is represented, at a given time maybe ten percent of the city is packed into these two miles of subway line and platform.
Lights are strung from ceiling, hooked up to the engines of the old trains it is some of the only artificial lighting left in the city. In the moments it takes my eyes to adjust I am offered an apple, a blow job, and a fortune telling, all from the same stand, the same young gentleman wrapped in silken scarves.
I pass him by with a wave of my hand and begin to swim through the crowd. I am tall, as I said, well over six feet, and broad shouldered, moreover there are few people that don't recognize me, even if they don't know my name. A nose like a misused axe blade, and eyes like coals burning out of a face where hard living warred for dominance with springy salt and pepper hair stood out even amongst so many who had seen so much. Steel tipped combat boots, a massive brown coat, and a black and white kafia tied loosely around my neck didn't hurt matters. All in all I am able to reach my preferred breakfast stand without much effort.
“Michael!” I call out, “You lazy swine, where are you?” the stand is tucked into the gap between two pillars and in the space behind a plywood counter he he has rigged a rudimentary running water system out of scavenged PVC pipes as well as an oven and small stove top from oil drums, metal grating, and two or three backyard barbecues. It is a kitchen that would have made either Escher or Rube Goldberg very proud.
“Coming, coming...” comes the genially ornery reply from somewhere around the corner, shortly followed by a slightly portly older man with a heavily lined face and gruff demeanor. “Ah, freak,” he said, “the usual?”
“Usually.” as I am replying he fills a chipped coffee mug with the black sludge he called coffee before turning back to busy himself with something on his make-shift griddle, as consequence of which I received a plate of scrambled eggs topped with a rosemary-garlic hollandaise sauce and served with a wedge of fresh dark bread.
As I eat he keeps up a stream of discourse with the several other patrons that soon gravitate to his counter, he is the sort of older guy that, though hale enough in his own right, is able to gripe entertainingly on almost any topic. As I finished off the eggs he turned to me, “You paying today?”
“I suppose so,” I keep a running tab with anyone I did regular business with, “What do you want me to do?” the favor is the hardest currency that I have ready access to.
“Nothing much, delivery run is all.” he licked his lips, uncharacteristically nervous.
“And what precisely would I be running?” it wasn't the sort of job I was normally asked to do, it was usually something like, shore up the foundation of a house so that it stops collapsing, or purify a vat of water.
“Meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. There was a slaughter last night on the north side, warehouse forty-nine. Jim Gattis runs the place and he owes me a hundred and fifty pounds of assorted meats, I need to get them over here and cured before they go bad, but there's no way in hell me or any of my people are running meat from the north side this time of year.” this time of year, when the dogs are out, hungry from the winter but free to move at will, and hunting in packs.
“Alright, I'll see what I can do. Send your scrip with me so he doesn't ask questions.”
“No shit.” from his apron he produces a grubby book of yellow paper, stapled at one end. Thumbing through it he finds a relatively grease-free page and tears it out, scribbles a few illegible words with the stub of a pencil that normally lives behind his ear, and then signs it with a flourish. He hands it to me and I tuck it into my left pants pocket.
“You have a good morning, I'll see you in a couple hours.”
“I'll see you, freak.”
I am already walking away, back through the throngs of people. Emerging from the station I am struck again by how quiet the city is. A few figures scurry furtively between buildings but away from the bazaar I hear no laughter or shouting, I smell nothing but the detritus of wild things, and all I feel is the oily, incessant, wind.
I can travel quickly, when I've a mind to, so long as it is just me, without baggage, and the sun is in the sky. I draw the back of cards from my pocket, and thumb through for the deuce of spades. There is danger inherent in any magic, and the less well contained it is the greater the potential consequences. I could step instantaneously to the north side, into the warehouse itself even, but it would light up in the minds of every Practitioner in the city, and I know better than to want that. Besides, it would mean passing wholly across the Veil, and that is an ever more dangerous proposition.
Instead I hold the card between my thumb and forefinger as I speak the word of activation, and a pall falls over my surroundings, details become blurred and indistinct, and sounds seem to be coming from far, far away. I stride forward and the city slips around me, frictionless. A few people see me, but none that comprehend what they saw, the spirit of a young girl, dead for some time I fear, is caught up in my wake, and buffeted along behind me for several blocks before she is pulled back to her locus with a snap.
Then, dream like, I am standing in front of the warehouse. Even without direction I should have been able to find it, the sickly sweet smell that emanates from it couldn't be anything else. Shaking my I head I rap my knuckles against the steel door several times and then wait, one hand resting on the rough concrete wall.
After several minutes without a response I knock again, and when I still hear nothing I try the door. Unsurprisingly it does not yield under my hand, meat is a valuable commodity and Gattis knows that better than most people. The nine of spades comes out and the door shivers as I set its magic against the lock. With a sickening crack the tumblers snap open and I push my way inside.
The warehouse is dark, and largely empty save for several boxes, neatly packed in the center of the room. Something is moving in the dimness, something that I can feel more than see, and it is not Jim Gattis. He is twisting in mid-air a meat hook set under his rib cage, his limbs akimbo.
The warehouse is two stories tall, with windows on the second story. One of them across from me is broken. I draw my pistol and cock the hammer back, no time to play with cards, though the spells written into the diamonds are my best shields and the clubs provide a more nuanced battery of offensive options.
I fish the pendulum from my pocket and let it dangle between the third and fourth fingers of my left hand, palm up. It swings several circuits of the room as I mutter refinements to the spell of searching with which it is imbued. In under a minute I feel a distinct tugging.
I exhale slowly as I allow the pendulum to lead me, gun at the ready, eyes probing the darkness. Even taking care I don't see the dog before it is in mid leap, it is a massive gray beast, with hollow stomach and burning eyes. I through myself backwards, rolling to avoid the pounce, and my pendulum goes skittering across the floor, still writhing to face the dog.
By sight alone I can tell that there is something wrong about the dog, it is too quiet, too hard to pick out of the shadows, and most of all it is absolutely unnaturally strong and fast. That leap was easily a hundred feet, given the insistence of the pendulum, and it had enough force behind it to knock me unconscious or kill me outright.
Still, strange as it was the dog has to take time to recover from its pounce. I bring the gun to bear and pull the trigger, the hammer falls on an empty chamber, and a bolt of pure magical force leaps from the barrel, striking the creature in the chest and throwing it into an empty packing crate that shatters under the impact.
I stand and dust myself off, turn to find my pendulum. That saves my life, because I notice that it is still wriggling, now towards the crate. Without looking I leap to my left, re-cocking the gun, crooning to it words of bolstering and destruction.
Spinning around I expect to see the dog standing where I had been a moment before, but it is lying in the remnants of the crate, unmistakably dead. A smoke or mist is rising from its body, pale, effervescent green.
With a curse I make safe the gun and return it to its holster, scooping up the pendulum as I begin to run. Risking a glance over my shoulder I can see a figure taking shape from the mist, indistinct and ephemeral, but pregnant with menace.
In the far corner of the warehouse I make my stand. Working as quickly as possible I sketch a pentagram in grease-pen and, standing in the center, I lay out the ace, four, seven, two, and jack of diamonds, beginning at the point in front of me and working clockwise. A word of command and the entire set up burst into ghostly flame before vanishing from mortal sight.
The figure is stalking towards me and where its feet fall bits of concrete vaporize and join its corpus. There is only one card in the deck that may effect a creature from beyond the Veil and if it fails I know I will be reduced to my wits and creativity and the power of my words. Not for the first time those seem like rather fragile weapons.
Crossing the fingers of my left hand I fish out the suicidal king of clubs and toss it, casually, towards the many faced figure. Calling out unheard words that shake the dust from the rafters I see the card beginning to glow, and slow in its flight, righting itself to hang in thin air before the oncoming creature. I crouch down, and at the edges of my vision I see the ghostly patterns of the wards I called into being moments before, silently I urge them to work.
The figure reaches for the card and my breath catches in my throat as, fascinated, it takes the card in its hand.
The shock wave sends cracks running through the walls and floor of the warehouse but I, sheltered from the worst of it by my wards am able to absorb the better part of the energy from the creatures death, filtered into usable form by four of diamonds.
With a word I dismiss my active spells and look about, wondering how to explain what had just happened to the late butchers expectant customers, but then, I am the wizard, this is my city.