Gemini

The Age of Aquarius, the Morningstar.

They had been warned, but they had not listened.

They had tried to prepare and arm themselves against the coming darkness, but they had long since forgotten what it was they were afraid of.

The truth they had buried in ages past; magic was real.

It was time to remember.

A figure stepped out from the silver ship. It had sailed there, not on water, but from distant stars. He stood in the shattered remains of a once great world. It had been magnificent then, teeming with life. Whether any remained, he did not yet know.

This was the epicentre of a calamity, a vast crater in the middle of a cracked, dry plain. The wind swept around it, always circling, but inside it was deathly still, as if time did not pass here.

A massive black symbol discoloured the earth, a weeping eye. It was a stain, a stigma, a memory. Dark magic had been cast here, the darkest he had ever felt.

He intended to find out why.

A shadow, streaking past the stars. Deep from the void it came, drawn on a long, lonely path. It was colourless, an unnatural smear against the backdrop of infinite.

A mishappen blade plunging towards the heart.

Erebus.

A lone man walked down a rain-washed city street. The walls of the nearby buildings were covered in graffiti and propaganda, a never-ending battle for dominance. He wore outlandish clothing; a black hooded coat, well-worn boots and a grey waistcoat embroidered with arcane sigils. Around his neck he wore a pendant; silver vines twisted in the shape of a heart with two carved gems suspended in the centre. One was amethyst, the other obsidian. Two figures mirroring each other, entwined in a lovers embrace.

He smiled up at the cameras as he went, their glass eyes blinking menacingly, but they could not see him. It was a good thing too; the church-state had declared that anyone found practicing the forbidden arts was to be reported immediately. He knew what fate awaited him if he was caught.

He would not let that happen again.

It had started a decade ago; a resurgence of interest in all things occult. For a while it had been amusing, just another fashionable trend, but soon things had started to become more serious. There was more to magic than people realised, and they were hungry for change.

The government, of course, was not. It cracked down immediately, declaring practitioners enemies of the state. The propaganda machine did everything in its power to turn society against them. Machines were cast out of iron, sanctified in salt, and given just enough awareness to hunt the magi down. It was Salem all over again, but this time there was nowhere to run.

So, they had gone underground, formed covens and hidden themselves from the eyes of the machines and their masters. Magic versus technology, but they were fighting a losing battle.

The man was on his way to join some of his fellow magi at a local bar, one of the only sanctums left in the area. The war was on the brink of being lost, but they had one last ace left up their sleeves. Up his sleeve, in fact.

He had come to them many aeons ago, a magician unlike any other. He had tried to set them free, liberate them from their chains. They had walled themselves off, hidden their gods behind closed doors and denied their existence. He was there to remind them of the truth.

As a reward, they hung him from the gallows. He went willingly, ever the martyr.

The figure in the desert stood clasping the pendant. Something itched at the edge of his mind, just out of grasp, and he looked around at the vast black rune, trying to process what he was seeing. It was here he had found the pendant, glinting like a lonely little star in the darkness.

“Tell me more,” he said to it, looking up at the moon. It hung in the sky, scarred with a black mark through its core that made it look like an evil eye; a mirror to the massive sigil he stood within.

“I need to know.”

She had been the first, one of two. Masculine and Feminine. Equals.

But He had demanded She kneel, and She had refused. So, She was cast out and Her name became shrouded in lies.

She understood all too well the pain of the martyr.

Lilith, they call Her.

Chiron, She calls him.

The door burst open, and the man strode into a dusky room. A twisted grin was plastered across his face,

“Have you seen the news?”

The others in the room turned at the sudden intrusion. They were the magi, dressed in many colours from many creeds. With a flourish he shrugged off his coat and held his arm out. The coat dissipated into shadow, crawling up his arm like black tendrils. Slowly it settled just beneath his skin, eyes opening across his arm as it slithered and froze into an oily black tattoo. It seemed amused, as if enjoying the spectacle.

He held up his phone, and the screen flickered and warped with colours; every known letter, symbol and number blurring together in a cacophony of meaningless strings.

“What happened?”

An eccentric looking woman with a hawkish face and a librarians demeanour looked at him curiously.

He smirked, a dark look in his eye, “Chaos.”

There had been a wave of energy as the magnetic poles shifted and warped. Every technological device had gone haywire. The machines went wild.

Madness followed.

They had surrounded themselves with their digital servitors; slaves attending to their every whim. Technology was so deeply embedded in their lives that, when it failed, they had no idea what to do.

Their tower had fallen.

“It’s over then.”

Another figure in the room, a handsome, dark-skinned man with pale white eyes and a blood red tattoo scrawled up his neck started to laugh,

“It’s over!”

“No,”

His suddenly grim voice cut through their rising glee like a knife.

“They’re blaming us, they think we did it.”

He smiled, but there was no joy in it. The room fell silent.

She had gone to him, deep in the catacombs where they had buried his body. They had sealed the tomb, but She was shadow. She stood over him, watching for a moment.

“Such a waste.”

She leant over and brushed Her pale lips across his.

Life poured into him, and he bolted upright, screaming in agony.

“See?”

The room was a field of horror. Bodies hung from the rafters, strung up by makeshift gallows. The remains of several assault drones were scattered around; a fight had been raging when the poles had shifted and fried the machines mid combat.

But machines didn’t make gallows.

He sat on a dais, ignoring the bodies, and addressed the others, disgust written across his face as he spat at them with vitriol, “Do you see yet!?”

He clenched his tattooed fist, nails digging into the palm of his hand until drops of black blood fell sizzling onto the concrete floor. The eyes on his arm were filled with furious grief, tendrils twitching with rage.

“They will do to us what they did to Her, what they did to...”

His eyes held a dead, black fatalism; there was no turning back now.

The vision froze, and everything but the tattooed man faded. He breathed deeply, and slowly rose from where he sat, turning to face the figure in the desert. Eyes flared with amethyst light; they were both in there, Chiron and Lilith. Two souls, one body. They smiled at him, deep sorrow burning in Their eyes, “Do you see yet?”

“What have you done?”

The figure shook with impotent rage, voice rising as his mind raced.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”

They simply smiled.

“An eye for an eye…”

Revelation struck him as They looked up at the scarred moon hanging in the sky.

“Oh god.”

He turned and sprinted towards the silver ship. It lit up and started humming as he grew closer. He did not look back, and the pendant throbbed in his grip.

One last vision.

They stood in a field bathed in bloody darkness, a circle of mages gathered around them.

Every colour, every creed.

He held his arm out, pendant in his grip, and as the last of his tattoo drained into Her form he dropped to his knees, exhausted. She stood there, physical and real for the first time since She had been cast out and forgotten.

He knelt, and She knelt with him. Equals.

They threw themselves at each other.

They had waited millennia for this.

Under the red light of the bloodmoon they danced; two bodies, two souls.

The magi stared as one up at the moon and waited.

The lovers writhed, they wept, they screamed.

Unholy union.

As the moment reached its climax, the moon fell into shadow and a pinpoint of amethyst light formed at its centre.

Erebus erupted forth, piercing the moon, and descending upon them with mad hunger; a blade plunging towards the heart.

They didn’t look up, but sat still in their deep embrace, faces pressed close.

Eyes of amethyst meeting eyes of black.

Together for the first time, for the last time.

“I love you.”

The asteroid hit with a soul-wrenching scream.

A wave of stygian, impenetrable gloom radiated outwards.

The cloud advanced with unnatural speed as winds that were not of this world carried it forth.

Every mind it touched was laid bare, all memory extinguished.

For a single moment, humanity stood alone in perfect solidarity.

Then, they felt it; a wound that could not be healed.

Something had been lost, and they knew not what it was, only that they grieved it.

Some wept, some wailed and tore at their clothing, others stood silent in shock.

The river Styx had flooded every corner of the globe.

Nyx; the long dark night of the soul.

The figure walked through the ruins, scanning for signs of life. Nature had long since reclaimed this place; the buildings were weathered and decayed, narrow fields of long grass erupted from the pavement and towering, twisted trees tangled and impaled the crumbling structures.

He entered a building, larger and less damaged than the others. Black dust carpeted the walls and floors, stirring as he quietly made his way up a staircase. He found himself in a room, a single beam of light striking down upon the gnarled trunk of a tree rising from the floor and out through the ceiling.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw them.

Cowering in the corners, pushing themselves away from him and trying to hide in the darkness.

Men, women, and children.

Whimpering, naked and bestial.

Relief flooded through him, almost bringing him to his knees.

They had survived.

“Hush,” he whispered, trying to calm them.

“Do not be afraid.”

A sudden stillness swept over them, a confused look of remembering written upon their faces. These were the first words that had been spoken in that place for aeons and yet somehow, miraculously, they understood.

They had long since forgotten speech, but his tongue wove ancient shapes that stirred memories that could never truly be lost.

“More,” they whispered back, hunger in their ragged voices,

He nodded.

More gathered, abandoning their fear to form an audience around him.

“Let me remind you of words,”

He gazed around the room, meeting their curious eyes, holding them transfixed.

He looked up at the scarred moon hanging above, peering down through the ceiling with faint amusement.

A lasting lesson, a testament.

“Let me tell you a story,” he whispered.

He looked down at his palm, still holding the pendant, and allowed the memory to fill him for a moment. Eyes brimming with tears, he smiled, and his voice swelled,

“Let me tell you the story of the star-crossed lovers.”