“A threat…him? You have to be joking. Very well, tell me what you would like me to do with him,” she said and paused to listen to her instructions. “Seriously? That is so…final,” she said, indifferent.

  Tic could feel his body readying itself for whatever was to come, an inner instinct opening him to her very real threat. An image of a shield of equations and symbols that he had used while entertaining himself came to mind and he wondered what that would do. Would it do anything at all? Where were these ideas coming from? Tic wasn’t one to believe in the mythical things in this world but he also wasn’t a fool, he knew that something greater than himself was at play here and had been with him ever since he had happened upon the talisman.

  He gasped as her skin shifted to a pearly white more pure than a fresh snowfall, tightly curled hair dropping to straight raven colored strands, hanging low down her back to the top of her perfect buttocks. He felt the compulsion building from within his groin this time and felt the urge to hate her for the lust she created as he mentally ravaged her body. She was projecting pheromones, he could almost smell each one and he recognized it as the ploy it was. Yet he was virtually helpless.

  Tic became convinced that she was a weapon, nothing more. Her beauty, her clothing…even her scent was designed to break an opponent down, make him weak.

  “An untrained child?” she said mockingly. “He can’t even control his lust.” Her eyes flickered mischievously low on his body causing Tic a moment of panic. Then he calmed and knew there was no way she could see his chubby through his graduation robe.

  “This boy…from the other side of the world, is a threat? To us? Very well then.” Her tone was mocking as she turned back to Tic who was shocked to see that her eyes had changed to the color of arterial blood, a dark red, glistening almost a purplish hue in the right light, vivid against her pearly skin. She flicked her hand at the young man disdainfully, as if she had been summoned to kill a bug.

  However, the young man wasn’t unsuspecting. Years of dealings within his family’s business had taught him how to read people and see beyond what they projected. This woman…this gorgeous specimen of femininity, who possessed the power to shift her appearance at will, was trying to kill him and he knew it, or at least suspected it.

  He flung his hands up, pulling the debris that he had originally been amusing himself with, into the shield he had envisioned. Twigs, leaves, and dirt formed the equations and symbols perfectly per his mind’s eye and the energy flung at him dissipated into nothing.

  The woman frowned before holding her hand out steady and focusing more of whatever it was she was trying to do toward the boy. His symbols converging and shifting with the flow of her magic, dispelling any attempt she made toward accessing his wards.

  “Interesting,” the woman said. She paused and listened. “I know you warned me, he just looks so…unassuming.”

  Tic watched her as she spoke to the entity within the hedgerow, realizing that she wasn’t done with him. He was tired of being the object of their interests and wanted them gone. He didn’t know why they were here and he didn’t care. However, if they thought that they could just stay here and take pot shots at him, they had another thing coming. He wanted to smite them with lightening or send fire balls at them but he didn’t know if he could. He was using organics and they usually didn’t allow for fire and things that burn. If there was a significant amount of stone he could pull from that, seeing as how stone has no fear of fire, but there wasn’t any stone, instead he was going to have to stick with the more passive energy of organics.

  Tic pushed forward slowly, evenly moving his shield of swirling equations in front of him, gradually flaring out the sides to curl around the pair that was distracted by their own conversation. It was time to close the deal.

  The woman turned to glare at him, shifting her color to a bright yellow, her hair taking on the arterial red, her eyes now shimmering black as pitch.

  “Step back from me, boy!” she commanded.

  “It’s time to put up or shut up,” Tic said and advanced like a small kid trying to stand up to a bully in the school yard.

  She flung her arms up and Tic struggled to keep from falling backwards, but his passive energy shield held and her energy was dissipated, the tendrils he had reached with were cut off. Tic still advanced as if he was brawling with one of his brothers and her eyes widened in surprise. Then she smiled and her eyes took on an angrier appearance. The yellow deepened and her hair started to pull tight into her scalp, forming tight, woven curls. She raised her hands, then stopped and turned to listen to the entity before slowly lowering her hands.

  Tic’s power was suddenly gone. He could still feel it, but it hung in the distance, just out of reach.

  “Be grateful, he has decided to allow you a few more days on this planet, boy, you almost became mine…and that’s forever.” Her tone was droll. “It would have been… fun.”

  He had no doubt she meant what she said, he also didn’t know if he could have stopped her. She seemed to be very experienced at energy manipulation, much more so than Tic was, that is for certain. However, there was something about the energy flow that gave her the advantage, It was something else he would have to ponder.

  Much to his surprise, as well as relief, she turned and walked right into the hedgerow and in a blink, she was gone, only her permanent visage burned into his mind’s eye, left to haunt him.

  “Yeah, don’t let the door hit you in the ass,” he said bravely while allowing the energy field he had supported to drop. He thought he would feel tired due to the use of energy but he didn’t. He felt refreshed, invigorated even, also very late for his meeting with his sister, Tia.

  1

  Lemure

  He looked out the library window toward the same woods he had been confronted in. He was watching the southern breeze as it tickled the leaves of the trees, moving in lazy swirls, looking so innocent yet hiding so much. As his odd experience the other day had made him regretfully aware of.

  Despite his trepidation, Tic was quite proud of how he had handled himself in the confrontation of what must have been wizards or sorcerers, if there was a difference. Not only were they wizards or magicians, but they had come from across the sea from what he had gathered from their comments about the other side of the Swirl, yet he had them. Or at least he almost had them…her anyways. He didn’t know enough about the image in the hedgerow to know if anyone could ever have had him physically or magically.

  Then what? a tiny voice that he had attributed to being his own internal voiced asked, causing his staring out the window to go blank. You would have wrapped her up in a swirl of leaves and twigs, possibly capturing her, but then what?

  He didn’t know. What he did know was that it had worried her and she made efforts to stop him. He couldn’t tell if she was scared or worried as her appearance kept altering with her skin tone and hair changing from this to that, but he had thought for a moment that he had seen a sign of panic on her brow, but was it real or simply what he wanted to see? He didn’t know.

  Tic reached into the pocket he had sewn on the inside of his coat and removed the palm-sized, flat stone he always kept there. There was nothing special about the stone other than it being a naturally smoothed piece of granite. Smooth to the point of being almost soft with the exceptions of what was etched into its face by ancient hands, or what he assumed were ancient hands, upon the flattest side. He assumed it was ancient because it was written symbols of various depths as opposed to words, each one separated by the depth of the individual etches and overlaid upon each other. The deepest being the hieroglyphic for earth, cut so deeply into the face that it almost delved through half of the mass. It was followed by the symbol for water though most were unaware that this symbol represented water even though it was universal as an indicator of ports and river ferries. This was different from the universal symbol in that it represented water that flowed or moved, and altered it just enough to be unrecognizable to the casual observer.

  The next etching, that was not nearly as deep as the one for earth and slightly less than flowing water, was fire. It was a symbol so dated and rare that Tic had spent hours in the library searching through varied texts in order to find it. The fourth symbol was of course air, which he didn’t even recognize as being a symbol until he found the one for fire and the next page described the necessities for fire to survive. Air was not the faintest symbol, though he had no idea what the fifth symbol meant or if it even was an actual symbol as it was so light and scraggly, it almost seemed as if there by accident.

  Tic thought of them as symbols or hieroglyphs, but the book where he had found the symbols was referred to as a book of Runes. He wanted that book but it belonged to the great library of Lemure and was never even allowed out of the building. It was stacked within the section of guarded texts, so he had copied as many pages of it as he could, ignoring the curious stares of the librarians who had no idea why anyone, let alone Tic, would be interested in anything located within that section.

  Tic was smart, unnaturally smart, and there wasn’t much that escaped his notice. When he first started using magic it was by accident, yet he knew that it was the hieroglyphs upon the stone that flowed through him. He also noticed that the stone itself had been with him. Now the small flat piece of granite was always with him and he had powers at will any time of day, powers that flowed through in a trickle or a torrent depending upon his needs. It thrilled him and he wanted to dedicate more time to it, yet he couldn’t see how to find that time. He hadn’t finished his studies, until less than a week ago, and he was committed to the family business where he played a vital role in many departments.

  Unlike the majority of people, Tic knew the difference between a star and a planet and that you couldn’t actually walk off the edge of the world because the world had no edge. Most people were aware that the world had healed after the cataclysm and it was whole again, you can take that at its worth, but most believed it to be a flat plane, in actuality it was a sphere. A giant sphere that floated in space, just as millions of other spheres did, trapped by the pull of a sun that warmed it and fed life to its inhabitants.

  Tic believed in science, and science was considered to be akin to magic by the uneducated, as well as some who have attended the university. Old ways die slowly, but in time, they do die. People had a lot of assumptions and if they weren’t going to expend the energy to validate their assumptions, then Tic really couldn’t make it any business of his.

  He would keep his abilities secret for as long as he could, for the citifolk had ways of destroying reputations over much less.

  “It is too much,” they would say, “man cannot resist the sweet flavor of magic. We are weak and will use it for ill.” Tic, however, knew better than that and didn’t fall in for fanciful tales nor games of any kind. His manipulations of the natural world’s energy was something to be researched and practiced. It was no game for magicians to use at carnivals and fairs. This wasn’t about card tricks or changing dice, this was real. Probably more real than anything else in his life and he couldn’t bring himself to treat it casually.

  Tic, despite his young age, had already surpassed the knowledge of his professors in many subjects, maths not being the least of which. He had thought about going to the capitol for grad school to further his studies in the field of science, but felt it would be redundant. Having access to one of the largest libraries of the land, Tic had read the literature of the curriculum at the university and beyond. He needed the practical knowledge and the actual workings of certain processes that he just couldn’t find anywhere. It was like people wanted to deny that these manipulative energies called magic even existed.

  Working in the family business was good for that, though not related to his talents. He had developed some dyes as well as other chemicals to help with their popular cobbler business. He had even developed some flexible products for the soles of boots and work shoes, but they came at a premium price as they had come from the other side of the Swirl. This was his duty to his family and he was ready to dive in full bore, not to mention he was paid quite well.

  He had a good position within the business as head of accounting, but felt he had more to offer with some innovations on the production side of things. Alas it was not to be, as his brother Vince was in charge of production and his brother Tad Junior was in charge of sales and marketing, his sister Tia was in charge of R&D, while Zac, his second oldest brother, would be the overseer of distribution. They are all very good at their jobs and gave Tic no reason to commandeer their positions. Tic already had a lot of responsibility but was it enough? There wasn’t much he could do about it so he focused on his own department and worked the leather in his spare time, even department heads were required to put out at least pair of crafted boots a day.

  He found science exciting and it interested him beyond many other things, but he knew that it wasn’t a new magic coming in to replace the old. It was simply the laws of the world in which they all live.

  It is the same magic that has always been, he thought. Through extreme concentration, much like you obtain while meditating or chanting, the physical properties of the world can be harnessed, it is not magic as much as it is the aligning of energies; where science is dabbling, magic is utilizing.

  He inwardly smirked at the concept of magic and pulled his hand around and cupped it, palm up, so that only he could see it and focused.

  Magic is much, much different than that. He snickered silently as a blue ball of flame pulled from the stone walls and floor, surrounding him, swirling like a planet adrift in the palm of his hands. He half wanted to throw the flames against the bookshelf allowing it to blast outwards in giant sparks and flames but he wouldn’t. The books and furniture would be unharmed as he wouldn’t put any heat behind the flames, but it was best not to let people know about certain things and he was in a public library.

  He day dreamed as he watched the trees, unfortunately, the activities of young men between here and the trees kept distracting him. They had developed a variant to the game of Pom that was exceptionally brutal. This wasn’t unexpected as all the boys throughout the city were vying for that one chance to be the year’s chosen, so the competitions escalated.

  Tic was the same age as most of the guys and knew all of them, as well as the girls who were scattered off in groups of their own as they worked upon projects that would be on display and awarded trophies and ribbons for recognition of quality and value for whatever it was they produced. All very useless meanderings, not to mention pretentious in Tic’s opinion. Now after hearing his sister Tia ranting about how pathetic this chosen festival was. She used words that simply weren’t spoken as sentences in public. Words like gender bias and gender neutral mixed with male supremacy. Yeah, a lot of people felt the same way, but obviously not enough to change anything. The chosen this year would of course be a man, as it had always been a man.

  Tic may be of a similar age as the teens in the field, but they were by no means of a similar intellect nor interests. Tic had given up on playing in fields three years ago and relied on the family’s warehouse to keep him in good physical condition.

  He took off his boot and studied it, noticing how perfect the awl work was between the thick composite sole and soft leather upper and he imagined a time when things were different. A time when things were easier and work became a distraction as mankind focused more upon the lesser things. A rot began and society crumbled as it burned. Tic’s mind wandered at all of the historical events where magic and or science was used in nefarious ways; there is no wonder people fear both powers.

  Sadly, Tic knew that he would never become a great scholar who studied the mastery of the universe and all it entailed, not that anybody could ever really contain that much knowledge in a lifetime. He would like to pursue that but Tic, even being the scholar he was, did enjoy the physical challenges of his life as well. Working in the factory making boots and those little dock shoes his sister developed were times he loved, as long as it didn’t keep him too far away from his books and studies. He had even developed a one-man process that allowed him to produce two times what any of his siblings could do with half the work though they didn’t utilize his ideas within the factory. They were cobblers, very successful cobblers, and the entire family loved what they did for a living.

  Tic’s grandfather’s father’s father started the business in Lemure almost two hundred years ago and it had evolved into the largest cobbler factory east of the swirl. The business was now owned by his father, Tad Rowe, as well as his uncle, Rowen Rowe, who was younger than Tad by almost ten years and shared a father. Rowen really only came by a few times a year bearing specialty hides and cured sap for soles, as well as other things required for their production. Much more than that, they really didn’t know much about him other than he was a master cobbler himself and traveled both coasts of the Swirl. He was always very hands off with the factory end of things other than training apprentices and bringing new technology to the business.

  Tad and Rowen were only half-brothers, sharing the same father, but they were as close as most full brothers and truly enjoyed their time together. Tic assumed that being incredibly successful and tripling the size of the business helped. Rowen was in town now and Tic hoped to spend some time with him.

  His father, Tad, in truth couldn’t wait for the opportunity to turn the whole works over to his children. Since his wife and mother of his children had passed, he had the urge to hit the roads and he said as much to his children as he slowly phased himself out of the daily work force. He wanted to travel the world as he had never had the chance to, most of his adult life had been dedicated to running the factory.

  Tic couldn’t blame him really, though he himself had no such desires, he couldn’t begrudge his father or uncle as they had always dedicated their entire lives to the children as well as the family business, in truth they knew nothing else. Or at least that is what Tic and his siblings thought.