The Magician

The Glass Flower

The Collegium, March 1890

The Glass Flower

            The man in the grey suit waits patiently on the edge a great precipice, silver moonlight illuminating the sonorous waterfall beneath him. His eyes are closed when he hears the Magician walk up from behind him. The black leather boots echo through the barren landscape, and he is easily detected. “Do you think she is able?” asks the man in the grey suit.

            “I am not sure yet,” says the Magician honestly. “She has progressed speedily, yes, although she lacks an overall knowledge in concepts newly prescribed.”

            “You’ll have to be sure,” says the man in the grey suit firmly. “We’re losing time!” His brazen scream thunders over the falls and into the valley beneath, hidden by a cloak of shadow. “The Collegium sits upon the edge of a knife! The Epileum Tree’s leaves fall daily! We do not have time for her to progress any further!”

            The Magician is startled by this violent outbreak, and as he is about to counter, he recognizes the trees beside him to be naked and bare, dead and sick in old age. Their contorted forms vanish like smoke soon after, as well as the mountainside, which is swept from under his very feet. The two magicians are consumed by a limitless dark and revealed in a labyrinth of stars and space. Night surrounds them, dotted with silver and purple lights that shimmer and fade repeatedly. The floor seems to have been forgotten, as they stand upon air, the man in the grey suit, hunched and haggard.

            “I grow increasingly weaker each day,” he states glumly. “My body fades from substance like a shadow does its master. I cannot risk leaving the Collegium with fear that I will not have the strength to sustain myself, and therefore diminish to dust and spirit, no longer a human, but a soul condemned to an eternal suffering.”

            “Yet the wager would still be kept?” inquires the Magician.

            “Of course,” replies the man. “It will never be forgotten, so long as the Collegium remains sickened and so long as I remain in this world.”

            The Magician stops to thinks as he calculates the situation. The thoughts are haunting to his mind. “This is more a nightmare than a dream, yet it should be likewise.”   

            “Not everything can be perfect and beautiful,” says the man. “Even magic cannot endure without suffering and strife. It is what makes it so mysterious and so coveted; the dangers that it brings and the power it commands is enough for many.”

            “Not enough for me,” states the Magician.

            “Nor me,” replies the man. “I have lived amongst it for a hundred years and counting. Yet never have I wanted it. Only hated it. Only cursed it for the curse it has placed upon me.”

            Their conversation takes them from the starry night sky to a small round chamber, alit with candles that flicker red and orange. There is a single book on a small wood table, the leather old and dry with age. The man in the grey suit strides to inspect the book, leafing through the heavy white pages.

            “There is something I fear I must ask of you, my dear friend,” says the man as he flips through the pages.

            “I can hardly call this a friendship,” the Magician replies coldly.

            “A simple title was all,” responds the man. “Anyway, if you’re done bickering over our relationship, I have something I need of you, which is of great import to both you and I.” The man in the grey suit does not wait for a response. “I require your trusted assistance in searching out these three men, as I am forced to remain within the confines of the Collegium, given my severe state.” He turns the book over into the Magician’s gloved hands, and feels himself chill momentarily. On the large page, there are three addresses, each with a different name over their calculated instructions. M. Jean Franz Remy, M. Hanas Flitzer, M. Andrea Pizarro.