Target #0: Associates
To protect the mystery of magecraft and to preserve magecraft beyond our reach – Enforcer’s Creed
This is no good.
Even in the pitch-black darkness of my apartment I manage to find the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand with ease. While sitting up I slowly pull out one of them and the lighter I stuffed neatly in the pack, lightly struggling to get it out without squeezing my cigarettes too hard.
As I light up my first cigarette for this day, my alarm starts going off. Nervousness didn’t let me sleep last night, and that’s for a good reason.
Today my life is going to change dramatically. It’s not the first time in the last few weeks this happened either.
Not even three weeks ago my father died. Despite his extraordinary work, it was only something really mundane that made my old man keel over. Lung cancer. The strange thing is when I got the news my first thought was the need for a cigarette. I guess this says something about my willpower, but I have sworn that I will quit once my life got a little less turbulent….maybe.
With great care I walk towards the light switch of my bedroom, hoping not to trip over a carelessly tossed aside article of clothing on the carpet, and with the lights on I manage to get into the small living room, making it to the ashtray left on the small table in the middle of the room just in time, ensuring that I don’t have to clean the wooden floor once again, especially since I don’t have the time for it right now.
My dad was a factory worker for most of his life. My mother fulfilled her wish of getting out of this country at my expense, so my dad was the only real parent I had, but he was a damn good one. While he never had much time for me, he worked his ass off to provide for me, until a day unlike any others, where he went to relax at his favorite pub.
Some really, really stupid fuck tried to pick a fight with my old man, who, by his own admission, was not really in a state for rational decisions.
You know the type, young guys trying to prove themselves with a loud mouth, who only get more and more violent when put in their place, with the alcohol not really improving their mood.
Tired from a hard day of work the conflict escalated and that asshole hit my dad with a bottle. Lots of guys would have gone down from something like that, but dad was a bit tougher than your average dude. So of course he retaliated for that assault.
With a ball lightning to his face.
Apparently this made the poor fucks head burst like a ripe tomato thrown on concrete. And it scared everyone else in the pub shitless, since even when my old man got drunk, he never threw lightning in people’s faces. In fact, nobody in there, including dad, knew that throwing lightning at people was possible. Later that night he found out that he was not the only one in this world with these kinds of abilities.
Leaving the cigarette in the ashtray for now, I light a flame on my oven to reheat some coffee I made myself yesterday. While it heats I grab a few slices of bread from the bread box I keep on my kitchen shelf. Taking another drag of my cigarette to make sure it doesn’t go out I get some butter and honey out of my fridge for a quick breakfast. I have to hurry up, since today I am going to meet Ivan about something very important.
Ivan is a friend of my family ever since he met dad on the night he accidentally killed that guy. He introduced himself as “the Second Owner of this city”. Dad obviously had no clue what a Second Owner was, so Ivan sat down and explained the, still pretty shocked, man everything. He was the man that told dad that he was a magus, or more correctly a magic user.
People with the potential to become magi are not as rare as one might think, but the awakening of one’s magic circuits is something that isn’t accomplished easily, mostly requiring some kind of trauma.
Ivan offered dad work as a “problem solver” for him, a work were he would get paid quite a bit more than a factory worker. Dad apparently already had some kind of experience with taking lives. He never really wanted to talk much about it, but he was a good shot and taught me to shoot a handgun back when I was only 14.
After getting a healthy meal I get in the small bathroom of the apartment, and pray for the shower to heat properly. While this apartment is certainly not poorly equipped, a bit more reliability with the temperature of the water would be a definite upgrade…
Oh, I forgot to mention this. Ivan works as an “honorable businessman”, a job that ties in neatly to his other job as Second Owner. Magi who try to sneak into his territory are instantly noticed by his wide information network and can get caught by the Association in a matter of hours. On the other hand, he employed three magi as “problem solvers,” causing messy magic-related deaths that force the Association to step in and take care of all evidence. Still, he is apparently worth the trouble for them.
Succeeding dad was never in question for me. I don’t like killing, and I want to make the most out of my strange “powers”, so Ivan did me a favor. The reason why I am on my way now, in fact.
After drying up I slip into a white shirt and a simple, black suit over it that I cleaned for this occasion. Ivan values professionalism and respect, and clothing was the easiest way to express both for me. I quickly fix up my dark blonde hair with a comb to finish up my brown-noser look, and make my way outside.
As I close the door behind me I can’t help but light myself another cigarette.
-----
As I halt my Yugo in the far too luxurious parking spot in front of Ivan’s mansion I notice a certain foreign car right next to mine. An Audi A8, armored, with bulletproof windows in nice, neatly polished black, with not a single speck of dust or spot of dirt on it, a car that belongs to one of my best friends. Nikola Savanovic, the son of Ivan Savanovic.
So he has come too? Seems like there will be a family meeting…
I get out of my car and take a look at something that would wash away all those preconceived notions a normal person would have about the correlation of hard work, honesty and wealth with a single glance. It was the white mansion of Ivan Savanovic, a building with two floors, a nice terrace, a garden, inviting windows on the left side which spanned both floors and another terrace on the right side. It was a wonderfully inviting sight in a city that was in a state that was far too worse to allow any of this.
But the suffering of the people was what filled Ivan’s pockets. After the NATO decided that the car and arms factories in this city are a problem that has to be taken care of, the unemployment in this city ran through the roof, which meant people were more willing to do the things he required them to do. Who could blame them? Ivan was not an unnecessary cruel man, he paid well, and if your only choice is working for him or fighting for your survival, it would not be hard to find a solution.
I had enough of the world of normal people, even if there was an air of change in the last years. Former brothers killed brothers without shame, and politicians were more in touch with people like Ivan than the people they should represent.
On the other hand, this meant that Ivan wasn’t the only person profiting from this, which means that he employed tightened security measures, in this case represented by the bulky man in front of the entrance to his mansion. His completely bald head combined with his suit gave him a dangerous aura that would instill a certain amount of respect before the owner of the house he guarded like a reliable little doggie. He seemed to be older than me, I’d guess him to be in his late thirties to early forties.
“I came here on the request of Ivan. Let me through.” I try to keep my sentences short and my annoyance visible. I didn’t want to be held up by trivialities like this.
“First…I check you.”
The guy didn’t even speak proper Serbian, and I almost laughed at his stereotypical deep “tough guy”-voice.
“There is no need to check me. I wear a holstered gun because Ivan asked me to bring it here. So just let me through.” I tried to bypass him with a sidestep, but he adamantly mimics my movement, not letting me pass.
“…this is ridiculous.” I start shouting, maybe someone hears me. “IVAAAAN! IVAAAAAN! YOUR GORILLA DOESN’T LET ME IN!”
Suddenly the door opened, hitting the presumed past-time bodybuilder in the back with the doorknob.
“Don’t make so much noise, you ugly piece of shit.” A teenager with black, messy bed hair stuck his head out of the opened door. A familiar face.
“Well, excuse me, you dumbass. Is it my fault that your daddy hires retards as gatekeepers?”
Nikola Savanovic’s head gave the man a simple command: “Maksym, get out of the way.”
“He probably has weapon. Let me check him.” The guy remained stubborn, probably less out of a sense of duty and more trying to annoy me.
“You can feel him up another time. Now just get out of the way.”
“But boss said…” He still held his line. What a shining example of a stupid fuck who valued his job more than his ability to think freely. I spoke up: “Boss says let me in, you moron!”
He wordlessly got out of the way, still keeping the same emotionless expression behind his thick sunglasses.
I entered the mansion, now standing in the entrance hall of the mansion, a simple room with a niche for coat hangers and a wooden shelf with individual compartments to switch one’s shoes with comfortable house slippers. Now I finally had the chance to greet Nikola.
“Hi man! How are you doing? You sure grew since we last saw each other!” I give him a greeting hug, fitting for a childhood friend. The only thing I got in return is a sarcastic answer.
“Very, very funny Marko. Next time I won’t let him get out of the way unless you address me as ‘Mister Savanovic’.”
I try to tease him a bit more:
“Knowing your complex you won’t be satisfied until I call you ‘Grampa Niko’.”
“It’s not a complex…it’s a…well, shut the fuck up. Dad’s in the dining hall.”
He opened the door leading to the central part of the mansion, a dining hall with a nice chandelier hanging from the roof. The room had a really “open” feel to it, even with the big, solid wooden table in the middle of it taking up a lot of space. As it was too early to eat anything, no sheets were covering it, and since Ivan had a pretty strict stance on smoking, not a single ash tray could be seen on the table.
Three people sat around the end of the table, apparently in a heated discussion.
A slightly round man in a blue shirt, his sleeves rolled up and the top of his head balded out, wearing a small moustache sat vis-a-vis to a slender, grey haired man wearing a suit not unlike mine. And on the end of the table, between those two people sat a black haired man wearing a visual attack against me and all humankind.
“I don’t see the problem. Just get her to that safehouse in Belarus. It’s not my territory, but in this case it’s safer that way. You don’t want them to trace that back to me.”
I was completely ignored. It was a habit of his, he never interrupted a conversation, even for a greeting.
“Alright then. I’ll make some phonecalls.” The bald man replied.
How can you take him seriously while he’s wearing that thing?
“Good man.” Ivan patted him on the shoulder, and both of them left the dining hall.
“Marko! Hello! Take a seat please, I worked something out. You too Nikola, this affects you as well…”
I take care not to laugh at his outfit as I take the chair the round man sat on before.
“…by the way, how do you like my new suit?”
Ivan wore a pastel-green shirt together with a red tie, and over it a bright pink suit with black tiger stripes. The shoulders were very pronounced, making the slender, black haired man look more like an eccentric super villain than a respectable organized crime boss. Trying to find the appropriate words for this atrocity I settle for: “...looks good.”
“So, I talked to Lorelei. She says after I annoyed her for quite some time that she probably has the capacity for you two guys. Formally, Nikola will be your apprentice, and you will both enter a department of her choosing, I couldn’t change that, sorry. Apparently entering the Clock Tower during the year is something that troubles even those guys…Nikola, you need something to drink? You look so pale…” The man turned his head away from me for a second to look at his son.
“Here, the bottle is half-full.” He poured a bit of red liquid into a glass and gave it to Nikola.
Of course, wine wouldn’t exactly be a good drink against thirst for a teenager.
But Nikola was no teenager, and what he drunk was no wine.
“Urgh…dad, I can taste the plastic…” after hastily emptying the glass Nikola contorted his face in disgust, while Ivan poured himself a glass of the red fluid.
“Get used to it boy, where you’re going you won’t get any fresh blood for quite some time…Your flight goes tomorrow at 11:30. Pack your things, Nikola will pick you up with his car.”
“…thanks that you did all this for me Ivan.”
“No problem…your father was like a brother to me. You were like a nephew…no, like a son to me. And after your father….this is the least I can do.”
I finally did it. I got rid of the shackles of a normal life, and I can finally devote my life to what I always wanted. To research the art of the arcane, and to reach what every being in this world should strive for.
Knowledge.
Originally Posted by I3uster
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