Heart of Parchment and Ink

Blight and infertility had nearly consumed the world, leaving behind a bleak landscape. Only the mysticisms of the Magistoria could slow the encroaching rot. A rot that could not reach them in their elevated, dome-protected cities. Down below, most people were focused on surviving and allowed the mystics to handle the blight. That information was as immutable as gravity and just as unquestionable.

Reed was the type to try and defy gravity. The need to rebuild civilization was why he became a historian, even if he had to work with the Magistoria. Then his friends pointed out that he had access to a treasure trove of valuable information.

Make illegal copies?

That thrill eventually gave way to a desire to truly save the world, both from the blight and the oppressive regime he despised.

That love of defiance sent him racing through a desolate city. Toward the blighted land, of course.

Find the magic, save the girl. Er, woman. Vivian.

He clenched his fist in his jacket—just something to steady his nerves. Then, something moved at the edge of his vision, and Reed nearly tripped into another person on the street.

“Find the magic, save Vivian, don’t let the stalker kill you.”

Am I being followed? Just being paranoid, he told himself. Reed had noticed the stalker in question—after he’d arrived in this ailing city. Had the Magistoria broken Vivian?

No, Vivian’s resilient, Reed thought fiercely, white-knuckling the locket, she wouldn’t give me away.

Vivian loved history and had a problem with authority. She was old money—one of the last—and used that cash to fund the resistance. She was willing to get down and dirty even more than he was.

Which led to the current predicament.

A week ago, he came home to an empty apartment. On the coffee table, he found Vivian’s silver heart locket. It was the only jewelry she ever wore. Why would she leave that? Carefully laid out, he realized it wasn’t a sentimental farewell but a clue that she’d left him.

There was a note in the locket, folded incredibly small, behind a picture of Vivian’s parents.

They’re here. Keep going.

It sent him scrambling to stay ahead of the Magistoria and find a way to free Vivian.

Which brought Reed to the very edge of civilization, notebooks and maps crammed into his pack, and a Magistorian dogging his heels. The situation wasn’t doing wonders for his academic brain, but the stress was second to his terrified excitement. Finally, in his week of panicked research, he’d made a breakthrough.

Ducking around a warning sign and slipping into an alley, Reed opened his pack and dug through the frayed notebooks within. He took out a gas mask and compact oxygen tank. Reed wasn’t sure if he was already breathing in toxic air this close to the blighted land—let alone if the blight had a gaseous component, but he wouldn’t be any use to Vivian dead. Fixing the mask over his face, Reed closed his pack and took the final steps into the lost half of the city.

Reed’s vision felt duller within the blight. It was as if someone had leached the color from the buildings. The thuds of his boots against the asphalt were muted until they vanished entirely, and it sounded like he was walking on gravel. Then, looking down, he found dark veins spider webbing across the ground, reducing the once-solid road to a sea of fragments.

For a moment, he imagined those lines snaking their way up his legs and breaking him the same way as the pavement. But then, he shook it off and trudged onward.

No daydreaming, Reed. Viv’s counting on you, he thought, trying to reorient himself while pulling something else out of his pack.

Through some quirk of mid-apocalypse prioritization, every city’s layout was a matter of public record. Useless in any practical sense, but with what Reed uncovered, the map he continuously compared with his surroundings was the key to everything.

The work was quick enough, and soon Reed was ascending a few lonely steps to what had once been a school. Unfortunately, this would be the more tedious part of his exploration, as he had no way of knowing what any remaining magic might look like. The Era of Magic was at least a century ago, and the Magistoria jealously guarded anything about the power of the Old World.

He groaned internally, careful not to waste what precious air he had left, and saw something out of the corner of his eye.

I didn’t think they’d follow me this far. The only people who went into blighted lands were treasure hunters or those who didn’t want to return. It hadn’t occurred to him that the Magistoria might want him captured rather than dead. To find this building and what’s inside of it.

Fear and anger roiling in his gut, Reed muscled the double doors open with a terrible creak and hurried up the nearest set of stairs. He figured, given the blight started at ground level and spread upward, anything still usable would be in a place free of those terrifying black lines.

The second floor yielded nothing but horror. Inky spiderwebs stretched across desks, beds, and desiccated bodies years old. Their skin was waxy, and, Reed imagined, it would come off at the slightest touch. But, instead, it was as if the air itself had been sucked clean, with no scent of decay. Somehow, that made Reed all the sicker.

He forced himself out of whatever morbid reverie he was in when that same creak announced his stalker’s entry.

The third story was mostly free of the gore of the second and had none of the dark lines which permeated the rest of the building. In fact, from the moment Reed left the stairwell, he felt a change. Things were a bit brighter, the floor beneath his feet more solid. He wondered if the air would be safe as well, but he didn’t dare test.

It was like stepping back in time, to be honest. A glimpse of what a place might look like if it never had to worry about the blight. Somewhere not bound by the Magistoria’s laws and lies. He desperately wanted to take a moment to be awed by the entire thing—pointedly not thinking about how it was a completely normal hallway—but his mission wouldn’t allow it. Vivian was still fighting tooth and nail to stay alive. To rest would be spitting on that.

While Reed had never seen magic before, he assumed it would be obvious enough. He overlooked anything too familiar in each room but took the time to throw any possibly related books in his pack. The Old World took magic for granted to the point it was found in every facet of life. If there was any chance the texts could help decipher that power, Reed wasn’t willing to throw it away.

Reed found his prize on a desk in the room at the center of the hall. An unassuming notebook, not unlike his own, with the words ‘Tests for Runes 406’ scrawled across the cover. What was more important, though, were the tiny stone tablets scattered across the desk.

Despite himself, Reed sat in the chair and opened the notebook. Language hadn’t changed much in a hundred years, so he had no trouble understanding the words, only how they applied to magic. The notebook was for a class on making magical symbols like those in front of him.

Flipping through the book quickly, Reed found himself engrossed in a rather technical description of the student’s unfinished project, from the expected results to the function each symbol served and the words that would make each rune activate.

As he read, Reed found his hands moving to each little symbol, examining each cut in the stones for the magic the writer described. The carving for ‘expulsion’ did not push anything out when he touched it, nor did the ‘explosion’ blow up. For all the myths surrounding magic, this seemed so mundane, so normal. Not enough to save Vivian, let alone the world.

“Well, you’re certainly having fun.” A voice sounded from behind Reed, who slammed his legs off the desk in an attempt to stand. Then, whirling around, he came mask to mask with… Vivian.

“Viv? I thought you… the locket… how are you here?” The questions tumbled out. The litany didn’t stop until something in his hindbrain screamed at him. “There’s a Magistorian following me. We have to get out of here!”

“Just when you made the big find too. Bad luck, though I’m still a bit jealous.” She smiled. With a shake of her head, the expression dissolved. “Ah well, that’s in the past now. Give me the runes, Reed.”

How could she be so calm? Someone sent to kill or capture them was in this very building, and she was talking like nothing could go wrong. Demanding the magic that should have been turning the blight back.

“Reed, give them to me,” Vivian repeated, extending a hand. “We can get out of here, and I’ll explain everything, but you have to give them to me now.”

“These won’t work, Viv,” he croaked, trying to keep his breath steady. “They won’t do anything against the blight.”

Her face flickered in annoyance, but the palm remained outstretched. “Not important right now. Hand them over.”

“Vivian, this magic would only do something against a person,” he said. “It could kill someone.”

“All the more reason to keep them out of improper hands.” She almost looked happy about that.

And then it all clicked.

“You… you’re with them now, aren’t you?”

Her face twisted into a grimace, and the hand became a fist. “Well, what was I meant to do? They’d have erased me, Reed, scoured every trace of my name and made me disappear,” she snarled before seeming to realize how violent she looked and schooling her expression. “But, they were kind enough to explain the hopeless state of the world to me and give me a chance to show I’ve reformed.”

“Me,” Reed exhaled, reeling.

“Your mind,” Vivian corrected as if they were poring over books rather than talking about her betrayal. “I show them you can be directed, that your intelligence can be put to good use, and I get moved to the capital’s center.”

“So the locket was a trap.”

“Oh, I’ll want that back.” She nodded absentmindedly. “More a proof of concept, really. You’ve proven your skill, and your loyalty’s all but a given. Now we deliver this magic to my friends, and we’re set for life. There will be more work like we did before, of course, but no personal expeditions. Too valuable to lose to the blight.”

“What about the world?” he asked.

“If you mean the land, then there’s no hope,” she said simply. “But the people, Reed. We could help them. Keeping magic away from those terrorists you called friends is a good start. And I can’t imagine what it would do for the cities.”

Her hand reached out again.

Reed couldn’t take it.

“Vivian,” he said, throat suddenly dry, “here’s your heart.”

Reed threw the locket at her face and scrambled for the ‘explosion’ rune. He spun fast, arm raised to throw when a crack split the air. Reed’s vision went white. When it returned, he was slumped against the chair, Vivian standing over him.

“You idiot,” the woman hissed, her hand gripping a pistol. The heart locket laid at her feet. “We were so close. We both could have made it out of this.”

“Didn’t think that’d work,” he wheezed, peeling the mask off his face. The air was clean. “Had to hope, though. Had to try.”

“No, you didn’t.” Vivian gave him a sad look. “I’m sorry, Reed.”

“Yeah, me too.” He let his eyes slide shut.

The second bullet went through Reed’s heart, spilling red blood on black ink and white parchment.