Dancing Letters

The majority of my life has been populated with events that an unbiased, reasonable spectator would only feel right in characterizing as “painfully mundane.” Not painful because of the magnitude of its “mundane-ness,” but because the norm in my hometown – in Havallia – is pain. Even now, when normalcy has been replaced with oddities, the pain is ever constant. The pain of the past replaced with the knowledge that my death looms overhead because of a little black book.

Well, it’s not just some black book. I think back now and remember how it caught my eye in the setting sunlight like obsidian glass. How when I looked directly at it, it looked like nothing. Just a bound, black, leather booklet, no bigger than my outstretched hand. I remember how I chuckled to myself as I knelt to pick it up, realizing that Benny had dropped it in his haste to get off of the sidewalk and into the diner. How was I to know that Benny wasn’t just some horndog with a list of lovers? How was I to know that Benny hadn’t just disappeared into the diner? I remember opening the book and watching as the letters seemed to dance across the page before settling onto each line in handwriting that was vaguely comforting and familiar but that I was certain was not Benny’s. I remember how anxious Azrael had become when he’d seen how the letters danced. Azrael wasn’t a dragon prone to bouts of anxiety, so as his tiny tail flicked back and forth, a part of me wondered whether or not I should leave the book where I’d found it. “Relax, Azrael,” I chuckled, “It’s a glamor spell. I’ve seen stronger stuff from children.”

I chuckled again thinking back to the academy days I’d shared with Benny. Benny had never been a gifted mage. His illusions could be exposed inadvertently, and his mage flames burnt like hot tap water. I recall his mother’s smiles of amusement and his father’s looks of disapproval as Benny chose to conquer his exams on wit alone. He’d study further ahead than the rest of the class, and layer illusions during mock battles until the truth was indistinguishable. He’d physically rig explosives that were reactive to magic in various locations around the battle zone and strategically set them off during battle until his opponents were unable to continue. If anything could be said about Benny, it was that he was a man who pursued and realized his goals whether it was acceptable or not.

Regardless, here I knelt with a glamored leather book that was obviously a poor attempt to impede prying eyes. I stared at the page as I waited for the words to reveal themselves to me. After about a second:

To the poor soul it now concerns,

You have been lucky enough to pick up a black book with an explanation in it. You have three choices:

Put down this book and leave my cave.

Direct magic at this book and risk drawing the ire of a higher being.

Accept ownership of this book, read on, and risk drawing the ire of a higher being.

The page ended there, and I couldn’t help but be amused by the intricacies of Benny’s attempts to avoid prying eyes. I began to wonder whether or not what I was holding was in fact just an archive of his sexual escapades. I rose to my feet, expecting Benny to rush out of the diner in pursuit of his little book at any moment. Surely, he’d recognize that the book in his pocket had fallen out and that I hadn’t followed him into the diner. Nothing.

Below me, Azrael had curled up and drifted off to sleep, returning to his typical coolness. “Well,” I thought, “Benny’s a twenty-year-old mage, irresponsible enough to leave behind a diary and a friend with nothing better to do than screw with him. It’s really his fault.” On the next page, I found a single hastily scrawled sentence.

Look At Me, Boy.

Confused, I looked up from the book. As my eyes left the page, I realized that the fiery reds and marigolds of the sunlight that had been flooding the page of the book a minute ago had completely vanished. Instead, the sky above was littered with more stars than I could distinguish from one another. No light streamed out into the streets from any of the diners or stores that lined the sidewalks. What filled me with the most unease, however, was the silence. Not a sound echoed from anywhere in the little town. Not a single bird sang, no wind blew against my ears, not even the hum of the streetlight generators reached me. I tried to peer into the stores around me, but the harder I looked into the glass, the more unrecognizable the insides of each store became. What I thought were bar stools and shelves morphed into abstract humps and lines, swirling on the surface of the glass. Unsure of what to do, I waited. Seconds. Minutes. Maybe hours. I lost track of time and found myself sweating uncontrollably, terrified of the magic that Benny had trifled with. This wasn’t just some powerful illusion ritual meant to immobilize a reader. This was spatial magic. This was illegal. This place didn’t exist on the same plane of existence that I had inhabited an hour ago. Time didn’t flow in the same way that I had grown to take for granted. I could walk out of here a 12-year-old child or a 63-year-old man.

“Your drake is beautiful, child.” A woman’s soft voice broke the silence somewhere behind me, cutting into my panicked thoughts. I turned to see a cloaked woman no older than twenty-five holding a necklace that swayed unnaturally in her left hand. Her stormy gray eyes held my gaze with such intensity that I questioned whether her voice masterfully disguised a boiling rage, or her eyes had been trained to intimidate with an emotion that she did not feel. A lock of red hair the color of the sunset I’d just seen fell into her face. Her cloak flowed below her in a way that made distinguishing it from the ground below impossible. Looking more closely at the cloak, I realized that any attempts to distinguish the material or exact color of the cloak yielded results like looking into the windows of the stores. As I attempted to take in the oddities of the woman standing before me, she began to chuckle. “Did you hear me, child? I’ve paid you a compliment.”

“Uh…oh. Um. I…Thank you.” I glanced down at Azrael, still asleep where I had stood when I had begun to read the black book. “Where are we? Who are you?”

Again, the woman began to chuckle. “It’s been long since a mortal has addressed me such. Since one of you has been so unaware of who I am. Perhaps it is better this way. For you to be completely open to me.”

As she finished her sentence, my body tensed with unease. It was clear to me that at the very least, I was speaking to a lesser demigod. Unsure of how to address her, I frantically searched her words for hints. I was ‘open to her.’ I was ‘mortal.’

“Calm your thoughts, mortal.” Her eyes softened and she smiled at me, obviously amused at my panic. “I am Lucia. I am the mistress of illusions, daydreams, and fantasies, and you have inadvertently gained my favor.” As she paused, I attempted to open my mouth to speak – to apologize for inadvertently entering her domain – but I found myself mute.

“I have not finished speaking, Osmond. The way that you address me amuses me but do be careful. I am not to be interrupted and I will give you time to speak. Now,” she continued, “your fantasies are truly noble. Your financial concerns. Your apartment. How you will feed your drake. How you will provide protection from criminal violence to those you hold dear. Truly noble pursuits. For those dreams, I will help you, and I will make you an instrument of my will.” As she spoke, I noticed a duffel bag at my feet that had not been there seconds before. The necklace that had been in her hand appeared around my neck, warm against my skin.

Before she began to explain my situation, that I would be her champion and defend her name with other chosen people, I knew what my answer must be. You do not reject the favor of a goddess. Their favor does not come easily and risking their anger in their realm is more dangerous than any danger you could find yourself in as their champion. Of course, Lucia seemed to be a benevolent goddess, but she could easily be prone to bouts of violence or fly into a rage at the most polite rejections. I truly had no real knowledge about the goddess that stood before me. I knew only one thing for certain: I was as good as dead.

The only mages who found themselves in the favor of the gods were heroes. War heroes responsible for the deaths of entire platoons of enemy combatants, innovators responsible for massive paradigm shifts in society and magical theory, criminals known worldwide for their horrifying uses of violence, powerful healers known for the thousands of lives they’ve saved, and geniuses known for their cleverness either in finding and contacting a god or advancing in life through sheer brainpower.

"So, you accept.” She smiled at me. It became clear to me that she could hear my thoughts as though I had spoken them aloud. For whatever, reason, she found my concerns more amusing than anything. “Any questions?” She asked, her eyes returning to the same intensity that they had held when I had arrived.

“Um…no.” As I spoke, the world around me shifted violently. Immediately, I felt something razor-sharp digging into my calf. There was a massive hand clenched in my short, curly, hair, tilting my head upward.

“OSMOND! LOOK AT ME!” Benny yelled at me as Azrael bit into my leg, drawing blood that pooled on the ground. Benny’s voice was hoarse as though he had been screaming for several minutes without pause. In the distance, I heard the wail of sirens and realized that I had likely been unconscious from the moment I focused on the words in the book. Benny looked down at me, tears running down his face which had turned bright red in his panic. He reached under my arms and began frantically trying to lift me off of the ground.

“Fuck, buddy. We need to go now.”

“Wait, but the ambulance,” I stuttered, still processing the absurdity of the situation that I now found myself in.

“You haven’t seen yourself. We need to go, now.” I looked down again and realized that Azrael had grown to almost four times his original size - now at the height of my kidney. I stumbled to my feet as Benny pulled me into a back alley. Still dazed from the bending of time and space around me, time blurred and I found myself losing track of the distance we traveled.

“Fuck, man. Go look at yourself.” Benny had begun to tear up again. We were standing in our tiny apartment in silence, his panic infecting Azrael. Silently, I stalked to the mirror, unsure of what to expect.

Now, here I stand, a duffel bag full of 20,000 dollars at my feet, a magical tattoo covering almost the entirety of the brown skin of my left arm, a streak of red running through my formerly entirely black, curly hair, my previously brown eyes gone gray. I am a champion of Lucia. I am responsible for carrying out her will with opposition from legendary magical beasts, champions of war gods, and the forces of nature. Here I stand, a dead man.