The End is Near

Chapter 11

July 14th - Mickael's journeys
Mickael was in hell. There was simply no other explanation for it.

He had observed the realm of humanity in many ways since first becoming a warrior. It was necessary to study and understand the whole of your world and your place in it in order to be a truly great warrior. He had never had any interest in being any less than truly great.

He knew of human cities and their riches. He looked with contempt upon their meanness and pettiness and squalor.

His lip curled in disgust as he crossed the street in one of those crowded cities. His trench coat and hat drew no more than a passing glance and the odd smirk from those who thought he was emulating a tough guy from a bygone era. The trench coat hid the clothing he could not bear to be parted from and the hat hid his distinctive ears. The wraparound sunglasses, of course, hid his eyes.

His mind wandered.

He had observed that illegitimate sons of royals had had their place in the world of humanity. It was not a great place, but it was still a place of sorts. They often played the role of dashing young men of means when they were in favour with their fathers. The ones not so fortunate were easily forgotten. A couple had even managed to vie for the royal thrones in their time.

Not so with my people.

As far as he knew he was the only illegitimate royal ever to have been born. It was of a union so frowned upon that neither family even wanted to acknowledge it. Or him. Except his mother, of course. He rarely ever allowed himself to think of his earliest days because then he would have to think of what a difficult thing it had been to transition and of how it had hurt to leave her.

Yet the families understood the power of blood. Royal blood was royal blood.

He had it. He therefore needed to be trained and molded to be everything that a royal could and should be. Yet he still had no real place.

Unbidden, his mind went back to his sister. It was so odd to feel a connection to someone for the first time. There was something about the way she seemed to be poking fun at him, at somewhat inappropriate times, that he found tremendously endearing. Endearing. Now that was a word I never thought I'd be using.

He guessed the humans would say he was feeling affection for this newly discovered little sister of his. A loudly honking horn and a cursing cab driver brought him back to the present as he narrowly missed being run over.

Mentally chastising himself for not focusing, he scanned the area again. He had seen this picture on a screen. The picture itself had been one of many, like a bank of computer monitors and it had only been for a quick moment. It was not the most important picture on the screens. Yet, of all the images it was the only one he had slightly recognized.

His plan was simple. First, find the exact place in the image where the camera was pointed at and then use his magick to find the place where the bank of monitors was so that he could go there. Get more information about the one scene that was most important and find the young inventor before anyone else got to him.

Simple plan, yes. Yet only someone with his gifts could actually execute it. The bank of scenes, he had little more than glimpsed, showed mostly internal images. The one image he had recognised was an internal scene but there had been a window in the background. Through that window he had glimpsed a piece of skyline that his finely-honed warrior memory had instantly placed.

Finally he saw what he had been looking for. The curve of skyline was right – as was the edge of the building. A touch of magick and he glamoured his way past the guards. A few flights of steps since he detested elevators and he guessed he was at the right floor.