Fall of the Rightful King

Chapter Fourteen

Nick

I got a ticket for speeding. Of course I didn't get one earlier, when I was going like twenty over trying to get home to see my girlfriend, but now that I was just trying to blow off some steam, of course I do. Fantastic. The officer was a grey pegasus that had his flashlight and badge strapped to his chest. It kind of looked like they modified the vest a police dog might use, but I didn't say that. I was already in trouble.

The officer had a flashlight? I'd been out for longer than I thought. It must have been a few hours.

This whole goddamn magic thing was a piece of shit. I had magic or something, and that's probably why I hadn't changed yet, which meant that not only did it not do anything good for me, but it kept it from fixing me and kept me and my girlfriend as different freaking species. And then it turns out it doesn't even matter, sometimes people get screwed up when they're changing!

But there was an even bigger piece of shit than this whole magic thing. Me. I knew, I god damn knew that I should have told Erin right from the beginning.  It just...there'd never been a good time. There never was a moment that felt like I could have told her. God, that felt like a flimsy excuse now. What was I going to do? Could I apologize for something like this? Breaking her trust for so many months?

On top of that, I'd just lost my job for her. What was I going to do now? Go back and beg for my job back? And what about Erin? The pony thing was bad enough, but blind?

I had magic inside me. That's what Manuel had said. Maybe I could go talk to him again. He said he didn't really have healing magic, but he also said that what I had was different. Could this be the key?

I pulled up to the Langan center. The lights were on inside, and the doors wide open. I parked, but before I got out, I noticed someone skulking in the shadows. I stepped out of my car, keeping an eye on the figure, and started towards the center.

"Nick!" I heard someone whisper loudly. I turned around. Manuel was running towards me, surprisingly quick, especially given his age. I looked around, but no one else was in the lot.

"What?" I asked.

"I am so glad to find you before you go in there. My boy, why are you here?"

"Looking for you, actually. We need to talk."

"Yes, yes, but now is not a good time. There is..." he looked around, "the Order has suffered a schism. A large part of them are in there now," he said, pointing at the center, "and they are inciting the people to riot. They have strange and violent beliefs, Nick."

"Ok, fine, I'll leave them alone. Can we talk about what's been going on? I have some questions for you."

"Of course, but not in the open. I do not want them to see me, neither see you with me. Come this way."

We drove off until we got to a quiet, deserted part of the city. He kept driving as we talked.

"You are very brave," he said, "to get in a car with a man you barely know. Perhaps you do not worry yourself about what this old man can do to you?" He smiled and I chuckled.

"I wanted to talk to you about what you can do, actually." I said.

"Your condition." he said. "You are dying and look for physical salvation."

"Yeah... if by salvation you mean 'getting healed.' You said I had magic inside me. Is that why I'm still human?"

He nodded. "You possess a degree of magical resistance that I have never seen before. It doesn't simply hit a wall, like it does with our defenses. It flows around you. Our defenses cannot hold on forever, and given time even I would succumb to Alexander's transformation spell. But you... you may be able to hold out forever, without any effort on your part."

"Great. How do I make the protection go away?"

"I do not know. It is an intrinsic part of you - as much a part of who you are as your memories."

"And there's no way, not one, that someone else can remove that or even make it go down for a minute? I mean, I'm actually dying here. I'm kind of getting desperate."

He looked ahead, out the window. "There..." he sighed. “There is one way. But no, I should not have said that. Those powers should never be used."

"I'm dying. What's it going to do, kill me?"

He looked at me with an expression somewhere between anger and regret. "No. But it could do worse. Nick, those forces are anathema to magic and anathema to life. It would be very painful, and it may not even work. Alexander's spell is imperfect. Many are dying as the magic enhances illness or deformity that was already present. They say close to fifteen million are believed dead. We have to find another way."

"I... ok, what about my friends. Can we do anything to help them?" Don't get me wrong, I was furious that he wouldn't help me. Fifteen million out of the billions affected was pretty good odds. A lot better than the odds I was facing right now. But I didn't want to lose the help he could provide.

"Yes. Tell me what has happened to you and your friends." I explained what had happened to each of us, or, in my case, what hadn't happened. He nodded and didn't ask any questions.

"So?" I said when I finished. "What can you do?"

"My boy," Manuel started,

"No, don't 'my boy' me," I said. "You know more about magic than anyone else except Alexander. Why the hell aren't you helping us?"

Manuel frowned. "Many decades ago, when I was a young boy supporting Castro and Guevara, the Order fought a group of scholars who had stumbled across an ancient scroll detailing a complex and dangerous spell. In the attempt for immortality, the spell explained how to place your soul into another's body. They tried to stop them and warn them of the dangers, but in the end, the Order had to kill them to stop their efforts. What the Order knew, and the scholars refused to heed, was that the body can only support one soul. You cannot have more than one, not for long. The mind would burn itself out, and so, in defense, it will cast off one or the other before that happens.

"You see, Nick, there are things that magic is incapable of. Perhaps there exists magic sufficient to heal you. Perhaps there is magic powerful enough to undo what has been done to our world, but I do not know of a way to do so. If I tried to force my knowledge into a solution, there is no knowing the consequences it could have."

"So you're telling me..." I couldn't finish the sentence and had to start over. "Out of everything you've told me tonight, you're saying that you can't help us?"

"I truly wish I could, Nick. Maybe Alexander would have answers, but he has shown himself unwilling to help. You would think that, with his centuries of experience and knowledge, he would help the world, but it seems he wishes to toy with it instead."

I saw we were getting back to the center. "Just let me out," I said. "I'll find help wherever it has to come from."

Manuel's eyes pierced me, but I didn't flinch. "You would sell your soul to save your life?"

"Not mine. I've been dying for a few months now, and I've already accepted that there might not be anything that we can do about that. But I'll do anything to save Erin." The car stopped. I stepped out and went right for the convention center. Manuel called out to me.

"Nick, please, we can make other arrangements. We can help your passing be painless and-"

I didn't care what else he had to say.