Uprising: The Magi Saga (Tales of the Magi Saga Book 1) Read online

  UPRISING

  The MAGI SAGA

  By

  Andrew Dobell

  By Andrew Dobell

  Book list

  Wasteland Road Knights

  Liberation

  The New Prometheus - Cyberpunk

  When Frankie’s brain is transplanted into a Cybernetic body after being shot, she must go on the run from the mega corporations who want her and her cyber-body’s designer dead.

  The New Prometheus

  The Prometheus Gambit

  The Prometheus Trap

  Prometheus Vengeance

  The Magi Saga – Urban Fantasy

  When Amanda discovers she’s a Magi after being attacked by a werewolf on the streets of NYC, she’s introduced to a magical society and drawn into a hidden war for the fate of mankind.

  Epic Calling: The Magi Saga Book 1

  Shadows of Darkness: The Magi Saga Book 2

  Black Dawn: The Magi Saga Book 3

  Infinities’ Edge: The Magi Saga Book 4

  The Magi Saga Short Stories

  Only available through my mailing list;

  www.andrewdobellauthor.co.uk

  The Angel of Tarut: The Magi Saga Prologue

  His Love: A Magi Saga Short Story

  Casino Red: A Magi Saga Short Story

  Anthologies I am part of:

  The Expanding Universe – Sci-Fi

  Summer of Magic – No longer available.

  Alchemy & Arcana

  For more of Andrews work, visit:

  www.andrewdobellauthor.co.uk

  Author Note

  This story was originally published in the Short Story Anthology, “Summer of Magic”. As it’s now been returned to me, I am publishing it myself.

  The story fits into the main Magi Saga chronology just after book 4.

  I wrote this, as the story I idea was one that I had floating around my head for a few years. There’s potential to grow this story thread way beyond what’s in this narrative.

  I hope you enjoy it.

  Ellie

  Ellie risked a quick glance behind her, just one quick look, maybe he wasn’t there anymore, maybe he’d gone? But who was she kidding, he’d still be there.

  Her blood pumped hard, coursing through her body as her heart hammered like a drum in her chest while she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and not falling over in these ridiculous high heels.

  She couldn’t take it anymore, she had to know, she had to see if he was still behind her… but what if he was still there?

  She didn’t understand it, it made no sense. He never seemed to be running. Instead, every time she looked, he was walking, slowly, but with dread purpose, focused solely on her and nothing else.

  And yet, she was running, as fast as she could, trying to get away from him, but no matter how fast she ran he was always the same short distance behind her.

  There, up ahead, the left turn that would put her on her own street and within a stone’s throw of her home, and safety.

  She reached it and grabbed the railing in front of the houses to her left and looked back down the street.

  Gone. The man wasn’t there anymore, only the usual pedestrians and cars, but no strange man.

  Still breathing hard, she didn’t want to be out here anymore, so she jogged down her road towards her house. It was quiet down here, really quiet. She looked around her at the street and the houses. No people, no cars, nothing. Just her.

  Something wasn’t right here, this was London, no street in London was this quiet, certainly not hers.

  She looked back at the road she’d left, seeing a car drive along it, past the entrance to her road. There were people over there, but none down here.

  She continued on, jogging steadily but looking about her, expecting someone or something to just jump out at her at any moment. Nothing did, but her pounding heart and pumping adrenalin didn’t ease up. If anything, they got worse. She felt terrified, and yet, could see nothing.

  But that was the issue. If there were people about, if her street looked normal and not abnormally quiet, even at this late hour, she felt sure she would calm down.

  She reached the bottom of the steps that led up to her door and stopped. Peering into the darkness she did her best to see if anything or, more importantly, anyone was approaching her. But she saw nothing.

  She turned and looked the way she’d just come, back to the street where she had last seen the man, wondering if he might be only now turning onto her street. Would he see where she lived, would he try to break in and find her in her own home?

  She’d call Richard. He’d know what to do. He’d be round here so quickly.

  She recalled the moment just a few minutes ago now as she’d turned onto the side street she usually took to walk home. A small cut through that had a few shops on it and always had a few people milling about, wandering through on their walk through the city.

  She’d nearly walked straight into a man coming the other way. She stepped sideways to go around him, but he stepped with her, blocking her path. She moved again, thinking he’d tried to move out of her way as well, but he moved again too, blocking her still.

  She looked up at him then, getting a proper look at his face and his eyes that were already fixed on her. A smile on his lips told her everything she wanted to know. He was doing this on purpose, and he was enjoying it. Movement at the bottom of her field of vision caught her eye, causing her to look down and see the knife he’d just pulled.

  She screamed and backed off, but he followed her, moved with her and seemed unconcerned by her scream.

  She wailed again, screaming ‘Knife, he’s got a knife. Help me, please,’ but got only dirty looks from the people nearby, dismissing her fear as trivial. The man continued towards her, his knife held openly, glinting in the darkness from the glow of the street lights.

  Why wasn’t anyone taking any notice of her, why were they looking at her like she was some sort of lunatic?

  ‘No one’s going to help you, Ellie, no one,’ said the man in a strong gravelly voice.

  That’s when she’d run away, only glancing behind her after a few hundred yards and noticing that the man was still so close to her and walking towards her.

  But he’d gone now, and so had everyone else. Ellie pulled out her phone and pressed the power button to light up the screen. The low battery icon flashed up, and the screen died, fading to black.

  ‘Shit,’ she cursed, tapping the button a few more times, trying to get the phone to light up, but without any luck. She shoved it into her handbag and turned back around. She felt sure she’d just seen something out of the corner of her eye. Movement, in the darkness, just beyond that pool of light from the overhead street lamp, she’d seen… something.

  She peered ahead of her, squinting into the darkness, a shadowy umbra that seemed way too dark to be natural.

  She almost wasn’t surprised when the man stepped forward, moving into the pool of light staring over at her the whole time. She’d kind of expected it, with everything that had been happening, it seemed only fitting that he would be in front of her, having reached her home before she did.

  She didn’t waste any time, though, and darted up the steps to her front door, fumbling in her back for her keys. Her heart rate kicked up a gear, and her adrenalin spiked as she moved her hand about inside the chasm that was her bag.

  ‘Dammit, where are you, come on,’ she muttered to herself nervously.

  Suddenly her fingers touched the familiar cold metal of her keys and pulled them out of her bag. They caught on the zip for a moment and slipped
from her grasp. Suddenly they were falling, only for her to somehow catch them again and save them.

  With a firm but trembling hold on them, she rifled through her keys, hunting for right one. It was on here somewhere. She didn’t have that many keys on here.

  Car key, backdoor key, back gate key, bike lock key, garage key, suitcase lock key… Where was her front door key? She was trembling so much she had probably missed it.

  She cycled through them again finding a new key that she had missed before but which she had no idea about. What did that unlock?

  On the third time, she found her front door key and struggled to separate it from the others. Her hands shook the entire time from the panic that filled her as she glanced behind her to see the man getting closer.

  She pressed up against the door and desperately attempted to sink the key into the lock, only for it to scratch about on the exterior, missing the clear and obvious key shaped hole despite her best efforts.

  ‘Come on, get in there,’ she hissed. Until finally the key caught in the hole and with a quick adjustment, sank into the lock.

  With a click, she unlocked the door, pushed it open, withdrew the key and with a glance at the man at the bottom of her steps, slammed the door shut.

  Ellie double locked the latch and put the chain lock on as well as she leant against the door. She tried to steady her breathing and get herself under control again, taking a slow and deep breath that shuddered through her frame as her heart beat like a hammer. Any harder and it might burst from her chest.

  She forced herself to take another breath, and another, slowly getting her panic under control. She reached into her bag again and withdrew her phone. She felt sure it had had a good amount of charge left in it. She’d used it only a few moments ago. She pressed the button a few more times to try and get it to turn on, but nothing happened.

  ‘Bloody thing,’ she cursed. For a moment she thought she’d heard something, so she froze to the stop and listened.

  After a few moments of utter silence, she wondered if she’d imagined it.

  Could it be him, outside the door, wanting to get in? She needed to plug her phone into the charger and call her brother. He’d know what to do.

  Standing up straight, her eyes focused upon the peephole in the door.

  Was he still out there, waiting for her? Maybe he’d try and break her door down or find some other way inside? The thought terrified her. She felt sure she wouldn’t sleep tonight, that was for sure, unless Richard came around, then maybe she could. Her brother would put this right, she felt sure of that.

  She had to see, she had to know if he was out there, waiting for her. So she put her eye to the peephole and looked through it to see the distorted fish-eye view of her front steps.

  Empty.

  He’d gone.

  She adjusted her stance to a more comfortable one and continued to look out through her door, half expecting to spot him suddenly, stood in the shadows, watching her house.

  Instead, she saw a car drive past, and then a couple walking hand in hand in the cool winter's air, talking happily.

  Where were they a moment ago?

  She stepped back from her door with a frown, feeling a little confused. Maybe it was nothing, she just happened to be on her street during a quiet moment maybe?

  She looked down at her phone again, remembering that she needed to charge it and turned into the house, nearly walking straight into the man that was stood behind her.

  ‘Hello Ellie,’ said that same deep, gravelly voice she had heard only a few minutes ago.

  She stepped back in shock, her mouth hanging open as she stared up at the man that had been outside only seconds ago but who now stood in her hallway.

  He appeared a little dishevelled, his clothes looked like they had been worn almost continually for a year or two as they were covered in holes and threadbare rips as he stood there, staring at her with that same haunting smile playing over his lips in a way the promised only pain and death.

  ‘But, how did you…’

  ‘Hush now,’ he said, and strange glowing blue energy played up his arm and over his hand like unnatural flames when it suddenly lashed out, and Ellie found herself flying sideways before hitting the wall with bone crunching force.

  Ellie whimpered as she fell to the floor in a heap. What the hell was that? Some kind of strange blue force had shot out of his hand and thrown her across the room and into the wall like a rag doll. Pain bloomed across her shoulder and arm which had taken the brunt of the hit. Something felt wrong in her shoulder, out of place maybe? Had she broken something? She tried to use her left arm, but when the stabbing pain lanced through her body, she let her arm go limp. She felt sure she had broken something, her clavicle perhaps?

  She used her other arm and shifted herself up into a sitting position and looked up at the man again as he looked down on her with a sick sort of glee.

  ‘What… what are you?’ Ellie asked, seeing the curious blue energy playing over his arm again.

  ‘Take a guess,’ he said, clearly enjoying her suffering.

  ‘I… I can’t. It hurts, I think I’ve broken something,’ she said as she winced once again.

  ‘Guess!’ the man shouted, his tone leaving no room for questioning.

  The force of that shout was almost physical, nearly knocking her over onto her back. This was crazy, she thought as she looked up at the glowing blue light that rippled and flowed over his hand and arm again.

  Could it be magic or something?

  ‘Are you, like, a…Death Eater?’ she said, feeling very unsure about anything anymore. The world had suddenly gone quite mad, and nothing really made much sense to her. Who was this man who could somehow appear in her home out of thin air?

  The man laughed a deep hearty laugh that Ellie would have enjoyed if it had come from a friend. But coming from this man, this, stalker, it felt anything but friendly.

  ‘Heh,’ he said, actually looking slightly impressed. ‘This isn’t Harry Potter my dear, and no heroic trio from Hogwarts is going to save you today. But, that was, impressive. I have to give credit where credit is due after all, you really are quite perceptive. I am officially impressed. This is indeed Magic,’ he said, waving his hand about. As she watched, dark shapes moved in the shadows of her unlit home. Focusing on them, she saw two, three other people, maybe four in here with her and the man. She found it difficult to concentrate and decided to look back at this man.

  ‘Magic?’ she asked. Was he serious? This was crazy. ‘But…’

  ‘Oh, I’m bored now,’ the man said, and there was a flash of blue light and a body shaking pain for the briefest of seconds, and then, nothing.

  *

  Carson watched with a somewhat bored expression, one eyebrow raised, blinking a few times as the girl suddenly exploded in a haze of blood while bits of flesh from her body splattered against the walls.

  He smiled again, the sight of a pitiful Riven human getting their just deserts was always a satisfying end to the day. He didn’t get to do it nearly enough these days.

  With a thought, he pulled on the Magical essence and cancelled the illusion Magic he’d placed upon her and walked over to the center of the blood and gore. Squatting down, he reached into Ellie’s handbag and withdrew the phone. He tapped the power button and sure enough, the phone lit up, as it had been doing with Ellie each time she’d pressed the button, only she couldn’t see it.

  With a swipe, he was in and hunting through her messages until he spotted the thread he wanted.

  Coming Home

  With the sudden but fleeting feeling of dislocation and a flash of white light, Liz was no longer in New York. She now stood on the rooftop of a block of council flats in the northeast of London, the cold winter air whipping about her and blowing her long blonde hair everywhere.

  She turned into the wind and brushed the stray hairs from her face before taking a moment to pull it all into a ponytail that she secured with a hair band.

&
nbsp; Stood next to her was Gentle Water, the wind pulling at his leather jacket as his Magic faded after the Port.

  She eyed him as he looked about himself, no doubt wondering where she had brought him.

  They stood on loose gravel on the rooftop of a large block of flats, most of the apartments in the block would be owned by the local council, although a few of them were now privately owned, bought by the occupants from the council through its rent-to-buy scheme.

  ‘Where are we?’ Gentle Water asked.

  Liz smiled as she finished sorting out her hair. ‘I used to call this home. This was where I lived with my mum and sister, before… you know,’ she said. She never really liked talking about it, even now, two years later, it could still feel a little raw and emotional.

  ‘I see. You wanted to come home?’ he asked.

  ‘After everything that happened, I just wanted to see it all again. I’ve not been back here since I left London on that train with Raven, on the run from Nate and the Inquisitors. But I thought, I just wanted to come home, think some things through, you know?’

  ‘Of course, I understand,’ Gentle Water said in his soft Chinese accent. ‘Call me when you are ready to return,’ he said.

  Liz smiled. ‘I will, and thank you,’ she said.

  He smiled, and with a surge of Magical Essentia followed by a whip crack of air rushing into the space that he had once occupied, Gentle Water disappeared.

  Liz was looking forward to learning that little trick, but she wasn’t there yet. She had progressed from the rank of Apprentice to Adept, but Porting was a Knight level Magical ability. It was only a matter of time and effort to get there, though.

  Liz pulled her jacket about her and zipped it up to shut out the cold air and looked over the rooftop around her. Liz had never been up here, even when she had lived here, it wasn’t something that had ever really occurred to her to do, but with just a cursory glance she soon found a nearby access door that she hoped would lead down into the building itself.