The Fox and The Wolf: A Tale of Modern Magic

Chapter 15 - The Fox and the Wolf

Simon suddenly appeared before his former friends, a disheveled mess, backdropped against the skyline. He had not groomed himself or changed his clothes in several days. He had a lunatic's eyes. He didn't look one bit like their old friend.

The crowd applauded.

Jackie attempted to reach out to protect the tourists, but she was standing on the floor of a building high up in the sky. She had absolutely no connection to the Earth. She couldn't project Body magic outside of herself.

Instead she lunged, uselessly.

Aubrey rushed to him.

"Simon," she began "you have to understand-"

Simon brushed Aubrey aside with two fingers, using the physical contact to transfer the Body spell. She crumpled to the ground as though hit by the force of a falling bus. When she landed her arms and legs were as stiff as rocks. She struggled uselessly to get up.

The crowd began to descend into confusion. Several people shouted at Simon. Most still thought it was all a show.

"I can't deal with you just yet, babe," said Simon. "You need to watch the others die first." 

Aubrey looked up at him in obvious confusion.

"Don't you realize that this is all for you? You can't die until you bear witness to the consequences of your betrayal. The futility of your attempt to separate me from something that is as much a part of me as I it! Otherwise how are you ever going to learn?"

He looked down at her with contempt.

"You can thank Jackie for that spell, by the way. She really opened my mind to the possibilities of Body magic. You'll be paralyzed like that until I stop sustaining it."

Aubrey struggled against the Body magic, but it was like fighting against herself. She had no experience combating a spell that was so intimately a part of her. Her limbs remained paralyzed. 

Jackie transformed herself as quickly and stealthily as she could. A snout burst from her face, her teeth sharpened, claws extended from her hands and she grew three feet taller as fur covered her body, all in the span of a few seconds. The moment she was finished Jackie leapt at Simon in the form of a hideous primordial she-bear.

The last few strands of fascination that held together the gathered crowd snapped at once. They scattered in every direction screaming and jostling each other.

The Jackie-bear grabbed onto Simon's right arm and sunk her teeth in deep, blood gushing from the wound. She would have torn the arm clean off but instead she collapsed in a heap.

Simon had changed his blood into a potent contact poison. Another new trick thanks to Jackie's earlier demonstration.

Simon stuck left hand into the wound on his arm as far as it would go before withdrawing it. He licked the poisoned blood from his fingers as the bite mark had already begun to heal itself.

"Pathetic," he sneered "You were all a bunch of children playing at being wizards, even after all these years. It was an insult to the power of this place that any of you would ever dare lay claim to it, let alone steal it from its rightful master. I. AM. THE. TOWER! And I'm going to teach you the price of your treason."

Simon walked forward, into the personal space of Cicero, close enough to smell his unwashed clothes. Cicero, who hadn't moved since Simon arrived.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself before I make Aubrey watch as I kill you," asked Simon, almost pleasantly. "Any last words before justice is meted out?"

Cicero tried his very best not to look as terrified as he was. It was never good to let them see you sweat. He knew he would think of something if he could just buy himself enough time. So his new plan was to buy time. Keep Simon talking.

"This isn't justice, Simon," said Cicero.

"Excuse me?" asked Simon, the cracking of his voice betraying his emotion.

This was obviously an avenue worth exploring.

"You're killing people," said Cicero. "We would never have done that to you. When you became an intolerable threat we erased your memory."

Simon brought his face uncomfortably close to Cicero's.

"Do you think that is any better?" he asked, softly but full of intensity. "Could you, even you, possibly be so small minded as to fail to comprehend how much worse, how much infinitely worse, it is to be nothing than to be dead? Did you actually manage to delude yourself into thinking what you did to me was a form of mercy?"

Simon waved his arms and spat with menace as he ranted, always a few centimeters from Cicero's face.

"You took from me my memories! My history! My personality! You killed the only part of me worth anything and then animated my corpse to drag itself through a shadow existence. A parody of my worst imaginable failures. An insult!"

Simon got a distant look on his face, like he had just had an idea.

"I am a fair man, however," said Simon. "You are right, Cicero, you never killed me. I will therefore show you the same mercy your little cabal showed me all those years ago. I won't kill you. I will just murder your personality."

Simon leaned even closer, grabbed Cicero by the hair and looked him directly in the eyes. Cicero did not resist.

Cicero was pretty sure he had something. There was no other alternative so he had to have something.

He could feel Simon in his mind already, sealing away all his memories behind virtually unbreakable magical blocks. Cicero was forgetting everything. Who he was. Where he was. What the significance of either of those two things was. 

He just knew he had to focus on two ideas, keep them both in his mind. As long as he retained these two things he could let Simon take all of the rest of his memories. He just had to remember the spell, and the name Simon Isengrim. He didn't fight anything else, let go of every other memory save for those two things. The spell. And Simon Isengrim.

He lost all sense of who he was, where he was, why he was trying to do anything at all let alone remember things, but he did knew he had to focus on the spell, and Simon Isengrim. Whoever that was.

While Simon was distracted erasing the last nuances of Cicero's mind, Cicero cast his spell and said the only name he knew. The only two words he knew.

"Simon Isengrim."

The spell grabbed hold of Simon's soul and began to push it into the Tower. To force him from his body and make him to physically inhabit the Tower. The spell came with a tremendous burst of power, Cicero's death rattle, and so Simon immediately made to resist it.

He couldn't, though. He could not deny the simple truth of the spell, which was that he was the Tower. He and the Tower were synonymous. He could not see when he ended and the Tower began. He could see no seam or stitch where he could fight to separate them. Simon had no concept of how to fight the spell, any more than he would be able to fight an attempt to transform him into himself.

Simon's soul was torn free of his body just as Cicero lost his last memory. Unable to truly comprehend what was happening Simon was merged with the Tower. He became the Tower, finally making true on all his boasts. He ceased to be a person and became an intellect inhabiting a place.

Simon gained everything he wanted and, in the process, lost everything else. His empty shell of a body fell to the ground, even less than dead.

Cicero also fell the ground. He would have felt very pleased with himself but he had forgotten all about the spell, and the name, and what had just happened.