11-23-2016, 09:38 PM
He glared at her for what seemed like an eternity. For once, Magus was utterly easy to read, and Alexandria drank in frenzy, fury, and fear. Not of her, but it was fear that drove his manic emotions. It was fear that had possessed him to engage in his mad quest.
She knew this at once.
“I knew you were lying to me.”
“Please, I haven’t been-”
“I could taste your power,” Magus hissed low enough so that only she could hear. “The Black Wind was shrill at your presence. I felt your otherness. Your… darkness.”
Alex said nothing, but Magus backed off.
“I want you to be more honest with me.”
“Likewise,” Alex retorted. “I don’t even know who you are!”
Magus shrugged, turning to the Captain.
“Get this ship on its way to Rapture or I will literally skin you alive,” he shouted loud enough for the crew to hear. Everyone, not just the Captain, immediately scrambled. None doubted his threat.
The crew. Odd. He hadn’t tried to create life, just a ship.
Magus had created life – or summoned it – on a whim. He ground his teeth roughly ran his thumbs along his knuckles.
Who was responsible for these men? Did they have agency over their own actions? Was Magus responsible for their livelihood now, having abducted them from their realities as Omni had done to him?
Had Magus been plucked here by accident, too?
Godhood. It was an inescapable comparison. Every day he drew closer to real godhood, and the more and more distinct that reality became, the more uncomfortable did he.
He turned to Alexandria, shutting the thought down for now. “Well,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, start from the beginning,” Alex leaned against the wall and folded her arms, her tight clothes creaking under her movements. She smirked. “I want to know what makes a man go around calling himself ‘Magus’.”
“The beginning?” Magus arched an eyebrow. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. The truth was far more ridiculous than any story he could tell. “I was born a little over twelve thousand years ago. Relatively speaking, anyway. Time in the Omniverse seems… odd. At best.”
“Twelve thousand years, huh?”
“Technically.”
“Technically?”
“Well, I wasn’t alive for all of it.”
The bemused Alexandria didn’t have much of a retort to that. Instead, her mind worked to determine what that meant. After all, she hadn’t been alive for her entire existence.
She swept her eyes over the man called Magus. Pallid skin, red eyes, other-worldly powers, and a birthdate – if he was to be believed – over twelve millennia behind him.
“What are you?”
Magus chuckled. A sharp, halting sound. “Prophet. Tyrant. Devil. Savior.”
“Prophet?”
“Relative to my reality, I’m from the future,” Magus allowed himself another chuckle. “And the past.”
“You’re just going to be as enigmatic as possible, then?”
Magus frowned. “You’re lucky I’ve told you anything at all. I don’t know what game you’re playing but I know the game is being played. I will not play the hapless pawn.”
“Have you ever loved someone?”
The sub lurched into motion while the red warning lights, and most importantly, the annoying, repeating messages ceased.
Magus nearly leapt into the control deck, already roving over the various data feeds and images that spilled off every monitor within the highly sophisticated command center.
“Are we en route?” he demanded.
“Aye, sir,” the Captain replied. “We’re moving at full power, too. We’ll be there as fast as this vessel can carry us.”
“We’d better be, and you had better keep control of this ship going forward,” Magus growled, ignoring the sheer hypocrisy (as the ship’s designer) of the statement. “If I have to come back here before we’re ready to depart the ship, I will be less than pleased.”
Magus turned and glided away, toward a solid steel wall. He didn’t break stride or direction as his body seemed to disassociate from itself, becoming translucent and smokey. The wizard passed through the obstruction and vanished, leaving Alexandria, Captain, and crew alone in command.
He’d been lying in his bed with his hands laced behind his head, staring at the ceiling for what must have been at least a couple of hours.
He closed his eyes and inhaled relief. It felt like ages since he had gone this long undisturbed. It was that, then, which ensured it could not go on.
The sub lurched and shuddered as an awful thunder reverberated throughout the vessel. Magus bolted upright as the tremors rumbled throughout the ship. Already cursing at the Captain’s incompetence, the ethereal wizard charged through walls and bulkheads.
Materializing on the bridge in a bloom of black-and-purple smoke, Magus found himself in the center of madness, even as the ship continued to rock and groan.
“WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE NOW?!”
The Captain visibly recoiled from Magus’ verbal fury, but did not fail to respond. “We’re… snagged.”
“What?”
The word rolled out short and sharp, its tone communicating far more than simple meaning.
“It seems we’re… under attack.”
“From what?”
“We’re not sure yet,” came another voice, a young radar operator who sat at a station nearby. “But it’s enormous.”
As if to punctuate the point, another shrieking groan tore through the ship, and a sudden wave of alarms and warning tones sounded off.
“Hull pressure’s out of control. If it keeps up, we’re going to be crushed!”
“Find out who’s doing this and get us free,” Magus hissed, and at the Captain’s brief hesitation, he expounded. “Now!!”
“Well, that’s the thing; we know what it is – it’s some kind of… animal,” he pointed to a series of screens which showed huge, tendril-like masses stretching across the front of the ship. The main mass of the thing seemed to be behind or beside them, out of view of the cameras.
“An animal that can crush a submarine?” Alexandria quipped, having just returned to the bridge.
“Apparently,” the Captain replied, even as the groaning and shrieking continued.
“Right,” Magus said with a sigh. “How do we get it off of us?”
“The ship’s equipped with electric countermeasures,” spoke another of the console jockeys. “Basically the whole submarine’s one huge Faraday cage. We send a big, nasty shock along the outside of the ship, hopefully it convinces whatever’s got us to let go.”
“How far is Rapture from here?”
“Actually not far. We should be able to stun the thing and get to Rapture before it can catch up with us again.”
“Do it.”
Almost instantly, a bright, sizzling static discharge erupted along the skin of the sub, and suddenly they were on their way again, with the alarms and sirens mostly silenced.
And they raced toward Rapture because their lives depended on it.
When Rapture raced up out of the sea floor to meet them, Magus could hardly have been prepared for it. He gasped in wonder as a city awash in bright lights stretched up from the sea floor to meet them. There were no domes or other tacky, utilitarian solutions to a city underwater.
Instead what greeted them was a stunning, art deco vision of a 1920s metropolis, seemingly transplanted under the sea. Not one building seemed aesthetically compromised, aside from the many glass tubes that seemed to snake from building to building, inter-connecting the myriad skyscrapers.
Near the bottom were a handful of places to dock. They likely weren’t designed for a submarine that Magus had simply created based on his recollection of what one ought to look like, but the Captain and crew were confident they could make it work.
The crew. Magus still felt somewhat sick about that.
“Oh shit,” he heard someone say. “We better not take our time with getting buttoned up; that thing that had us is on radar again, and it’s coming at us fast.”
“Get us docked and off this boat. Consider yourselves free to do whatever you want after this. If the sub survives, you can take it. If not, this place seems interesting,” Magus breathed, hardly satisfied with pathetic self-absolution.
The sub careened between buildings, over and under tubes, toward its destination, even as proximity warnings blared at them.
Magus watched the feed before him with dogged intensity. The way to Omni was there, somewhere among the retro-futuristic nonsense before them, and he was practically upon it.
She knew this at once.
“I knew you were lying to me.”
“Please, I haven’t been-”
“I could taste your power,” Magus hissed low enough so that only she could hear. “The Black Wind was shrill at your presence. I felt your otherness. Your… darkness.”
Alex said nothing, but Magus backed off.
“I want you to be more honest with me.”
“Likewise,” Alex retorted. “I don’t even know who you are!”
Magus shrugged, turning to the Captain.
“Get this ship on its way to Rapture or I will literally skin you alive,” he shouted loud enough for the crew to hear. Everyone, not just the Captain, immediately scrambled. None doubted his threat.
The crew. Odd. He hadn’t tried to create life, just a ship.
Magus had created life – or summoned it – on a whim. He ground his teeth roughly ran his thumbs along his knuckles.
Who was responsible for these men? Did they have agency over their own actions? Was Magus responsible for their livelihood now, having abducted them from their realities as Omni had done to him?
Had Magus been plucked here by accident, too?
Godhood. It was an inescapable comparison. Every day he drew closer to real godhood, and the more and more distinct that reality became, the more uncomfortable did he.
He turned to Alexandria, shutting the thought down for now. “Well,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, start from the beginning,” Alex leaned against the wall and folded her arms, her tight clothes creaking under her movements. She smirked. “I want to know what makes a man go around calling himself ‘Magus’.”
“The beginning?” Magus arched an eyebrow. He thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. The truth was far more ridiculous than any story he could tell. “I was born a little over twelve thousand years ago. Relatively speaking, anyway. Time in the Omniverse seems… odd. At best.”
“Twelve thousand years, huh?”
“Technically.”
“Technically?”
“Well, I wasn’t alive for all of it.”
The bemused Alexandria didn’t have much of a retort to that. Instead, her mind worked to determine what that meant. After all, she hadn’t been alive for her entire existence.
She swept her eyes over the man called Magus. Pallid skin, red eyes, other-worldly powers, and a birthdate – if he was to be believed – over twelve millennia behind him.
“What are you?”
Magus chuckled. A sharp, halting sound. “Prophet. Tyrant. Devil. Savior.”
“Prophet?”
“Relative to my reality, I’m from the future,” Magus allowed himself another chuckle. “And the past.”
“You’re just going to be as enigmatic as possible, then?”
Magus frowned. “You’re lucky I’ve told you anything at all. I don’t know what game you’re playing but I know the game is being played. I will not play the hapless pawn.”
“Have you ever loved someone?”
The sub lurched into motion while the red warning lights, and most importantly, the annoying, repeating messages ceased.
Magus nearly leapt into the control deck, already roving over the various data feeds and images that spilled off every monitor within the highly sophisticated command center.
“Are we en route?” he demanded.
“Aye, sir,” the Captain replied. “We’re moving at full power, too. We’ll be there as fast as this vessel can carry us.”
“We’d better be, and you had better keep control of this ship going forward,” Magus growled, ignoring the sheer hypocrisy (as the ship’s designer) of the statement. “If I have to come back here before we’re ready to depart the ship, I will be less than pleased.”
Magus turned and glided away, toward a solid steel wall. He didn’t break stride or direction as his body seemed to disassociate from itself, becoming translucent and smokey. The wizard passed through the obstruction and vanished, leaving Alexandria, Captain, and crew alone in command.
- - - - -
He’d been lying in his bed with his hands laced behind his head, staring at the ceiling for what must have been at least a couple of hours.
He closed his eyes and inhaled relief. It felt like ages since he had gone this long undisturbed. It was that, then, which ensured it could not go on.
The sub lurched and shuddered as an awful thunder reverberated throughout the vessel. Magus bolted upright as the tremors rumbled throughout the ship. Already cursing at the Captain’s incompetence, the ethereal wizard charged through walls and bulkheads.
Materializing on the bridge in a bloom of black-and-purple smoke, Magus found himself in the center of madness, even as the ship continued to rock and groan.
“WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE NOW?!”
The Captain visibly recoiled from Magus’ verbal fury, but did not fail to respond. “We’re… snagged.”
“What?”
The word rolled out short and sharp, its tone communicating far more than simple meaning.
“It seems we’re… under attack.”
“From what?”
“We’re not sure yet,” came another voice, a young radar operator who sat at a station nearby. “But it’s enormous.”
As if to punctuate the point, another shrieking groan tore through the ship, and a sudden wave of alarms and warning tones sounded off.
“Hull pressure’s out of control. If it keeps up, we’re going to be crushed!”
“Find out who’s doing this and get us free,” Magus hissed, and at the Captain’s brief hesitation, he expounded. “Now!!”
“Well, that’s the thing; we know what it is – it’s some kind of… animal,” he pointed to a series of screens which showed huge, tendril-like masses stretching across the front of the ship. The main mass of the thing seemed to be behind or beside them, out of view of the cameras.
“An animal that can crush a submarine?” Alexandria quipped, having just returned to the bridge.
“Apparently,” the Captain replied, even as the groaning and shrieking continued.
“Right,” Magus said with a sigh. “How do we get it off of us?”
“The ship’s equipped with electric countermeasures,” spoke another of the console jockeys. “Basically the whole submarine’s one huge Faraday cage. We send a big, nasty shock along the outside of the ship, hopefully it convinces whatever’s got us to let go.”
“How far is Rapture from here?”
“Actually not far. We should be able to stun the thing and get to Rapture before it can catch up with us again.”
“Do it.”
Almost instantly, a bright, sizzling static discharge erupted along the skin of the sub, and suddenly they were on their way again, with the alarms and sirens mostly silenced.
And they raced toward Rapture because their lives depended on it.
- - - - -
When Rapture raced up out of the sea floor to meet them, Magus could hardly have been prepared for it. He gasped in wonder as a city awash in bright lights stretched up from the sea floor to meet them. There were no domes or other tacky, utilitarian solutions to a city underwater.
Instead what greeted them was a stunning, art deco vision of a 1920s metropolis, seemingly transplanted under the sea. Not one building seemed aesthetically compromised, aside from the many glass tubes that seemed to snake from building to building, inter-connecting the myriad skyscrapers.
Near the bottom were a handful of places to dock. They likely weren’t designed for a submarine that Magus had simply created based on his recollection of what one ought to look like, but the Captain and crew were confident they could make it work.
The crew. Magus still felt somewhat sick about that.
“Oh shit,” he heard someone say. “We better not take our time with getting buttoned up; that thing that had us is on radar again, and it’s coming at us fast.”
“Get us docked and off this boat. Consider yourselves free to do whatever you want after this. If the sub survives, you can take it. If not, this place seems interesting,” Magus breathed, hardly satisfied with pathetic self-absolution.
The sub careened between buildings, over and under tubes, toward its destination, even as proximity warnings blared at them.
Magus watched the feed before him with dogged intensity. The way to Omni was there, somewhere among the retro-futuristic nonsense before them, and he was practically upon it.
![[Image: Magus.jpg]](http://rpnexus.com/sig/miscsig/Magus.jpg)