The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 8

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Chapter 8

Maddy rummaged through a chest of mahogany and gilded bronze, tossing reams of paper, messenger tubes, and old, leather-bound books about, muttering to herself.

I paced back and forth, stretching my legs.

Thursday laid out on a chaise lounge with an exaggerated yawn of contentment.

Maddy frowned at him. “Comfortable?” she asked.  

“You betcha,” said Thursday. “Your digs here are fair impressive, ma’am. Much obliged for the hospitality, truly.”

Maddy stared at him with a cold gaze, deciding whether to trust him or not.

I was in the same boat.

He’d wedged his foot in the door.  

“And tell me, young man, are these ‘digs’ more impressive than your accommodations in New Angeles?”

“Much more so, your eminence. I’ve lived in a ten-by-ten cubicle with three other guys for the last eight years…”

Maddy interrupted. “We can dispense with that level of formality, Mister Thursday. I’m not big on convention. My name’s Madison Cabot. Friends call me Maddy. You may address me as Miss Cabot, unless we reach an undesirable accord and I have somebody bury you beneath an outhouse.”

I smirked. Thursday looked perplexed. “Um, is that really one of my options?”

“Certainly, if you turn out to be something other than you’re telling us.” Maddy said.

“Well, I assure you, uh, Miss Cabot, that I’m everything I’ve said I am. And as long as we’re getting casual, please just call me Thursday, not Mister Thursday.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Of course. You’re the queen of the Citadel,” Thursday said, matter of fact. “You’re First Chair of House Cheyenne. Without your operations up here, not many folks in the four cities would be able to go outside much.”

“And what you’re telling me, what you’ve told Monday here, is that you’re some kind of New Angeles runaway, also arcane-sensitive, with no verifiable proof of your existence prior to your alleged abduction.”

“I’m no runaway. I remain in good standing, as far as I know,” Thursday replied. “But if Jack is actually the commander at the Ditch, my New Angeles citizenship will be revoked soon, if it hasn’t been already, assuming any of those trooper grunts survived Monday’s spell and made it back. Not to mention I’ll likely join their most wanted list.”

“Who might I contact at House Gammon, to confirm your residency?”

“Nobody, really,” he said.

“So, if I reach out to High Dome, they’ll have no record of your identity.” Maddy groused, dissatisfied.

“Do you have a red line to the First Chair’s council, then?” Thursday asked, amazed.

“As I’m sure you well know, all New Angeles commerce between other hubs is handled by your council’s underlings. It’s been a thorn in my side for decades. Your administrator is a ghost.”

“They are not someone who parades the local commons. I’ve never met anyone from High Dome myself. The sergeant at arms in Ward D will confirm my residency there, if you like. But I’d prefer you hold off on that, given the circumstances. Aside from the target on my back, we’re still trying to figure out if Lieutenant Crackers is rogue or if he’s sanctioned by House Gammon, right?” Thursday posed.

Maddy harrumphed. “And what do you do there?”  

“I haven’t yet been assigned any long-term vocation. I’m still studying.”

“You just happened to cross paths with Lieutenant Crackers a few weeks before, when he apprehended you?”

“He came upon me, Miss Cabot.”

“Your arcana wasn’t good enough to detract his crew?”

“I wasn’t ready, I’m sorry to say.”

“But it would’ve been, if you were?” Maddy asked.

“One would hope.”

“You surely know what happens next,” Maddy pressed on.

“I do. Happy to help.” He took in a deep breath, and exhaled. His blue eyes lit up with a white glow around the edges of his pupils. He raised a hand, fingers splayed wide. I was riveted. It was the first time I’d seen someone, other than Bard, perform arcana of any kind.

Then Maddy’s suite went completely dark. All powered lights cut out immediately. Even the beeswax candles burning on her fireplace mantle puffed out without so much as a breeze. The view window at the edge of the room grew opaque. Darkness fell over us like a blanket.

Bard issued the umbra spell on occasion. I’d never mastered it myself. It was a keen trick, an intermediate spell in the optics college involving the manipulation of interactions between light and matter. Thursday had also manifested a simultaneous charm of pyromancy, in snuffing out the candles. Most mage-types, in the glory days of arcana, focused in two of the nine known colleges. Bard’s preferred disciplines lay in white necromancy and air, with lesser studies in optics. Me, I couldn’t rightly say I had any legitimate regimen, other than half-measures of force and earth. Much to Bard’s lament.

Outside in the halls, we heard confused shouting and coarse language. Maddy’s voice came from the darkness. “Tell me you limited your province to only this room, Thursday.”

“I did,” he replied, “But um, I suspect Monday’s presence has exacerbated the effect, not unlike my own influence on her up in the mountains.”

“Perhaps you might discontinue the spell, before somebody on this floor walks through a window and falls fifty stories to their deaths.” Maddy said, annoyed.

“Yes, Miss Cabot,” The window grew transparent again. The suite’s lights resumed illumination. The chatter from outside subsided.

 “You forgot the candles,” she said.

“Oh, I can fire them up again with…”

“Never mind that. So. You’re a mage. How about that.” Maddy said. She fiddled through the chest again and brought out a dark, metallic cylinder.

“A ‘prentice only, Miss Cabot,” Thursday replied.

“To whom do you apprentice?” Maddy went on.

“It was a figure of speech, ma’am. Once I determined I possessed abilities, I started experimenting and went from there. If only I’d had access to bona fide grimoires or necro-tomes. New Angeles’ collection is all locked up in High Dome, naturally.”

“Until this very moment, I’ve spent years thinking Bard and I were the only game in town, though he’d told me otherwise,” I said.

“You didn’t believe him?” Thursday asked.

“Monday is particularly hard headed,” Maddy interjected.

“I knew the magicks were real enough. But I’d never seen anyone use it, apart from us, until you just did,” I said, side-eying Maddy. “But sorcery is still a cop-out.”

“No, it isn’t,” Thursday said, anxious.

“No, it isn’t,” Maddy agreed. “I’ll thank you to start taking this with the respect it deserves, young lady. Seeing as how your whole life is about to change.”

“Is it?” I asked.

“You said that downstairs, and I still don’t understand. You’re one of very few people who can actively practice arcana, and you don’t believe in it?” Thursday posed.

I waved his awestruck expression away. “It’s fragile stuff. One effect might not be the same the next time you cast it, or less so, or more so, as we just saw right here in Maddy’s chambers, or up at the lake. It’s waxy. It’s flimsy. It’s difficult to control, like a campfire in a dry forest. It’s dangerous and fickle. Look at what it did to the world. It destroyed the planet. I don’t trust it, nor should anyone else, especially anyone who can actually access it,” I snapped, looking hard at Thursday.

“Maybe it’s been inconsistent for you because you haven’t found your definitive focus yet,” Thursday suggested.

“And you have?” I retorted.

“Definitely not. But I’m still aspiring. Aren’t you?”

 “Nope. In my job, steel work and gunpowder delivers,” I murmured.

“That didn’t save you up at the lake,” Maddy noted.

“I didn’t know an entire platoon was waiting to entrap me,” I said, testy.

“Enough,” Maddy said, and turned to Thursday. “We’ve tried to convince my protégé here for years she would do herself a service by assuming there’s plenty of somebodies ready to forcefully co-opt her abilities.”

“Seriously, Monday. You’re going around with a big blinking sign above your head. If a single one of those mercenaries up there at the summit survived the blast, they’ll take the story back to whomever, and you’ll have countless bounties on your head. Have you ever used magicks before that, in the outlands, in public?” Thursday asked.

I squinted at him, tight-lipped.

“Did any of them live afterward?” he pressed on.

“I’ve never killed anyone with arcana until I met you.” I said, with more hostility than intended. “I prefer…”

“Yes, firepower over arcana. You’ve made that clear. But if you’ve used magicks to any degree over the course of your travels, and there are those who’ve seen it in action and survived, it’s a certainty there are more folks than Lieutenant Crackers looking for you.”

“Which brings us to the decision at hand,” Maddy said. She strolled over to the center of the suite, sat next to me in a nearby armchair, and handed the cylinder to me. “This is yours. I’ve had it since before you arrived within our borders. I wasn’t sure to whom it belonged. I have hoped for long years it was not intended for you, though Bard was convinced for an equal amount of time you were its intended recipient.”

I took the tube. It was warm in my hands.

“Or rather,” Maddy went on, “it is meant for you…and yours.”

“And mine? I have no others.”

She rolled her eyes, impatient, and pointed at Thursday.  “I believe you are starting to understand that’s not so.”

“I feel it,” Thursday agreed. “It’s an affinity, of a kind. I felt it as soon as I stepped down from Jack’s wagon, though I couldn’t place the why and how of it, until you told me your name. Didn’t you?”

He looked too hopeful, his eyes big and wet and searching.

I considered lying outright. I didn’t necessarily want to rain on their parade.

But I shook my head.

“I’m sorry. I can’t say I did. I was pretty laid out after that blast.”

“How about now?” Thursday asked.

Load that a little heavy?

I locked eyes with him.  

After holding his gaze for what seemed like far too long, I nodded.

“There’s…something.” I admitted. “I dunno. It’s weird. It’s…a familiarity. Hard to describe. Like I met you somewhere else, but don’t remember.”

“Exactly. I know you, and I don’t know you,” Thursday affirmed.

“You know more than what you’ve told us,” I accused Maddy.

“Truth. But let’s settle the family-by-blood hash before we get into it. There’s an easy enough way to determine that,” she said.

“What does that mean?” I demanded.

“Always the whiz kid,” Maddy said, chuckling. She buzzed a nearby intercom and asked her personal attendant to retrieve a genetic testing kit from the science labs. “I was convinced the whole shebang was rubbish at first. When I came to terms with it, after amassing more evidence, I wanted to tell you when you were much younger. I wanted you to have all the information to which you were entitled. But Bard…he insisted we wait, that you had to grow older, more versed in the arcane, before we revealed what we knew. I wasn’t sure he was right, and I’m still not. We thought you’d have more time, much more time. But you don’t. The truth is, the proof is twofold…first the House Gammon hunter who came looking for you, who we know isn’t working alone, and now the revelation of this boy with similar talents and surname. It’s too much a coincidence.” She gazed pitiably on Thursday. “If we’d known of you sooner…”

“I get it, Miss Cabot. I had to be persona non grata pretty much lock and stock. Or they’d have sent me to the Ditch, or executed me. I didn’t know where else to go, or in whom I could trust. I thought about requesting a meet with Lord Diaz in Tiwan, but I’m just a nobody domer, and I doubted the First Chair of House Arroyo would’ve seen me. Plus, I wasn’t sure if he’d simply corral me and return me for a bounty, or worse, dump me in his amusement arenas for house entertainment.”

“He wouldn’t have done that,” I said.

“That’s good to hear, but I didn’t know that. I had no idea the Citadel would be a safe haven. I thought about trying to seek asylum in Washoe, but it seemed a long shot.”

“That would’ve been a mistake. They see nobody uninvited." Maddy said.

Her attendant knocked at the door, and she bade him to enter. He brought to her a simple e-pad and then left the room. She handed the pad to Thursday, who pressed his thumb on the proper derma-glyph. “Ouch,” he murmured as a tiny needle drew blood. He handed it to me, and I did the same on a second glyph, then gave it back to Maddy. She pored over the screen’s data.

“Well?” I asked.

“You do not have the same parentage,” she said.

“Are there any matches at all in House Cheyenne’s database?” Thursday asked.

“I was just wondering the same thing, young man.” Maddy said. “It appears not, but House Cheyenne archives are limited to our locality. We have no grid overlap with House Li, House Gammon, or House Arroyo.”

“Maybe we were cooked up in test tubes. Or hatched from mutie sasquatch eggs. Or brewed up in a witch’s pot,” I snapped.

“Maybe we’re immaculate conceptions spawned from the outlands,” Thursday added cheerfully.

“Can we please focus?” Maddy said, sighing.

“Okay, okay. Spill it.” I replied.

Maddy walked over to her bar, took out a bottle of ale, filled three ceramic cups, and returned to the sofa, handing us drinks. I took a swallow. The brew was cold, bitter, and spicy.

“You were, I presume, instructed in your early schooling on how worldshift truly came to bear?” Maddy asked Thursday.

“The basics, Miss Cabot.  Most of it was aftermath-oriented, less historical. We were told someone a long time ago found a way to activate a lost component of arcana, didn’t really know what they were doing, and let loose unrefined magicks that reacted badly with nuclear technologies of the time.”

“That account is accurate, if vague. Yes, it’s generally believed someone put a kind of unknown arcana into motion that manifested worldwide, a theretofore unheard-of measure of magicks, though the second age was from all reports bereft of all arcana. Not even the first age’s infamous sorceresses and wizards could apply such a wide effect. It’s often theorized the person in question not only had ability, they may have had intent.” Maddy said.

“Are you saying worldshift wasn’t an accident?” Thursday asked.

“Perhaps,” Maddy replied. “We know not.”

“How could that possibly benefit anyone?” I asked.

“History shows there has never been a shortage of people who find joy in dancing among the flames. In any case, the second age’s pursuits of nuclear power resulted in much of our current pollution. When that spell fell across the earth, its unique energy signature provoked a number of fusion reactions in nuclear facilities across the world, launch sites, power plants, submarines, battleships. Whatever that arcane measure entailed, fission materials did not take kind to it. Missiles took flight and landed on random, unsanctioned targets, or detonated underground in their silos. Reactors went into meltdown. Waste storage depots spewed their contents into the atmosphere like volcanoes. Not all ordnance was affected, but a greater portion was enough to render the world into the ruin it is now. Unfortunately, the arcana from that macro-spell lingered, fusing with fallout and altering the biosphere, the air streams, the geography and topography of the earth. We haven’t any idea how the rest of the world fared. None of the four cities have been contacted by anyone outside continental borders for near a century, so odds aren’t good. International communication grids have been down ever since. Our science division estimates if worldshift occurred across the planet in the same manner as it did on our continent, at least seven to eight billion people died, or mutated to the devolved genetic strain we see about the outlands.”

Her hands trembled as she poured another cup of wine.

“You two were born long after. You can’t imagine what that did to a society’s collective psyche. It was more than most could bear. The suicide rate was unfathomable. Here among the cities which rebuilt, another several million were lost to despair. In this western region of the continent, there were two significant nuclear power plants. They’d each been decommissioned shortly before worldshift, yet they stored a great deal of spent nuclear fuel. Down south, arcane energy combined with fissionable material and completely obliterated a city – it was known as San Diego – and it poisoned the lands east and north of it. Once it was called…”

“It was called Los Angeles,” Thursday finished for her, somber. “After New Angeles’ dome was completed, its basin became our penal colony, the Ditch.”

“Yes.”

“And the Darkheart is a result of the other plant’s meltdown,” I added.

“As you say,” Maddy went on. “That second facility bled out a cloud of toxic fallout so strong, fueled with insurgent arcana, it baked the inland valleys into a radioactive hell, and it set off a number of fault lines, resulting in a drastic series of earthquakes, ripping apart and then reshaping the land into a physics-defying horror of its former self. The subsequent radioactivity, EMP waves, and volatile weather are why most people in the four cities don’t travel outside of their respective hubs, and why air transport and mecha-drones won’t operate properly at higher altitude. The only reason our hovercraft function as well as they do is because maglev tech harnesses the earth’s magnetic core beneath the ground. And even that doesn’t always behave consistently, depending on where one is traveling. Merchants and traders are forced to rely on New Gen to transport goods, travelers, and communications. That’s why talents like Monday’s are in high demand.”

“What about Washoe? Where do they figure in all of this?” Thursday wondered aloud.

“I have only been inside its walls once. I was not granted a meeting with its leader. We’re not sure who maintains governance there. They send trade envoys on rare occasions, and accept rare visitors through a strict vetting process allowing rare exceptions of couriers and messengers to approach its gates. They are, to my knowledge, the only known purveyors of teleportation spell craft.” Maddy said.

Teleportation was one of the most coveted spells in all arcana. It was only referenced offhand in Bard’s repertoire of literature. Its specific invocations of practice and methods of meditation were routinely omitted from written concourses. It was clear the masters of the first age meant to limit access. Bard said it was probable that teleportation could only be taught from another.

It was well known a great power resided in Washoe. It was teleportation which allowed them a limited trade with the Citadel. A few times a year, merchant representatives from Washoe popped in and out at House Cheyenne warehouse docks, paying with chests of gold ore for import foodstuffs, security tech, and threaded livestock. Once I saw a pair of Washoe couriers appear in the Citadel’s cargo bays, bronze-skinned Indigenous men clad in pristine white leathers and deerskin cloaks, signing what they needed to sign, then claiming the goods they’d procured, clearing the loaded platform in the blink of an eye.

“Wow,” Thursday murmured. “I thought those rumors were bunk.”

“You’d know different, if Washoe hadn’t banned New Angeles and San Francisco from their trade. Xenophobia isn’t the best way to sustain commerce.” Maddy said.

“Agreed, Miss Cabot. Though Washoe itself seems to be doing a fair job.”

Maddy huffed. “I don’t think Washoe citizens are much inclined to repeat history, young man, as you might know if your betters had instructed you in the rightful history of humanity. They’re not xenophobic. They’ve learned not to count on the evolution of their former conquerors.”

Thursday looked down, shamed. “No offense intended, Miss Cabot.”

“Are you going to open that, or keep us waiting in suspense? Now that it’s free of its ward, I suggest you read it.” Maddy said.

I looked down at the tube in my hands. It was now almost too hot to hold. I popped its sealed lid, and withdrew a rolled scroll tied with black silk ribbon. The parchment gave off a dim, warm luminescence.

“Where’d you get it?” I asked.

“From a courier of unknown origin, shortly before the time you were dropped at our border, some sixteen years ago. They’d been instructed to deliver similar messages to other settlements, and that their leaders would, in time, come to know to whom they should bequeath them, and the claimant or claimants would be one or more of seven children. Lord Diaz received one. I assume similar tokens were dropped at New Angeles, San Francisco, perhaps Washoe as well. Bard and I have considered the possibility the same person who dumped you on our doorstep might well be one and the same as the message courier in question.”

I unrolled the parchment and peered at its message. It was written in bold black inks, as fresh as if it were written yesterday. I read it aloud:

Eyes brought to bear, a world asunder

A third age, ill-tempered wonder

A fourth age, born in darkness and fear

Only unseen sight will persevere

7 children found

7 elementals bound

Fire, earth, water, air, alchemy, mind, and heart

Last endowments of forgotten art

A soldier

A siren

A healer

A tinkerer

An artist

A prince

A mouth of madness

Unified, a new day

Separated, all paths astray

Find the others, daughter-son.

Forgive me

As soon I finished, the parchment’s ink blossomed and oozed across the message, turning the page black, unreadable. Then the paper crumbled into sable dust, sifting through my fingers to the floor.

“Well, that’s that. Quackery strikes again,” I murmured. 

 “So,” Maddy pondered, “you are two of seven, all of whom are predicted to be arcane or ‘elemental’ in nature.”

“But Bard knows something more!” I demanded.

“He doesn’t know,” Maddy replied. “He believes. There’s a difference.  He hopes you and others like you may have a collective potential to heal some of the decimation of worldshift. I thought, as I still do, it was too much to ask of a young woman, even one with your capabilities. But there’s little denying we’ve exhausted our options in trying to cleanse just a fraction of the poisoned lands. House Li continues laboring to try and reverse biosphere imbalances with improved technologies, but half-measures have only proved negligible. If we don’t attempt a more stringent workaround in the next few years, there won’t be any future worth having. The world isn’t recovering. It is dying. And now, with others looking for you and your kind, time is no longer a luxury. As you know, Bard is looking for a potential candidate of your brethren in the Subterranea of the paladin stronghold. I was to have you read that scroll, and depending on what it revealed, which I fear is too little for comfort, then we agreed to send you down to House Arroyo, where your feline friend holds another of these messages. Perhaps it will reveal further indication as to how you might proceed.”

“Cabo is in on this hogwash too?”

“Reluctant as he was, he agreed biding our time was in your best interests.”

“Yeah, that sounds great, except Bard was training me on the sly just in case. Plan B Monday. Let me get this straight. You had no problems with me taking on outland scourges of all kinds, but pulled rank when it came to my actual origins or destinies or whatevs? Do I have that right, Mads?”

“Had you bothered heeding Bard’s advice regarding your talents, you might be less off put about all this,” Maddy replied.

“It still doesn’t excuse you guys keeping stuff from me. And what of you?” I turned to Thursday. “Nobody ever slipped you the skinny on any of this manure?”

Thursday shook his head. “As I’ve said, there was nobody to tell me. My education was limited to standard House Gammon rank and file. I was raised by a nanny who was paid to look after me, and precious little more than that. The truths of worldshift aren’t readily discussed among regular dome folk. I’ve heard more in this room in the last twenty minutes about the event than I have in twelve years of academics. I know you’re pissed off, Monday, but from everything I’ve heard, you’re lucky to have people like Miss Cabot, or this Bard fellow, or the lord of House Arroyo in your corner.”

“I can make my own choices,” I replied bitterly. I walked to the window and stared down at the alleyways where I grew up. From that height, the promenades of scurrying humanity appeared like busy ants.

Was there a better life to be had?

Arcana will right all wrongs?

It was too much to believe.

All because of the juice.

The fallen world came to bear because of the juice.

And now me, and a half dozen orphans barely able to muddle a half-baked charm, are an antidote to worldshift?

Ludicrous.

Hope was not something I generally cared to accommodate.

Yet when in dire straits…

Because what was I, what was anybody, without it?

All biz, no play, blow off that sorcery jazz, draw those pea shooters and earn those gold chits and someday you too, can sling hash in a dead-end diner, maybe set yourself up in style, build a ranch in the outlands and live hip deep in rad-soaked mud, fending off hungry muties, sheltering from acid rains.

That’s the plan, Monday?

Maybe think bigger, chica.

 If you can.

The most interesting part of the scroll hadn’t been the inane riddling, or preachy language, but that the author of the message implicated themselves. First, they’d been a mage, since they’d been able to cast a cantrip ward on the letter. Also, they’d hinted at being a guardian of some kind, addressing the recipient as both son and daughter, anticipating a pickup by any one of seven children, male or female or nonbinary alike. Lastly, they’d wanted to be forgiven. For what? Dropping us like stray puppies, abandoning us to outland forces and factions, left to try our luck among scavenging hoards? Or imposing some wayward prophetic curse upon us, where ignoring its beckon call might result in blowing what was left of humanity to kingdom come?

Then I felt Thursday’s hand on my shoulder.

“In over our heads,” he said. “Whatever you decide, I’ve got your back.”

“All the way to the end?” I whispered, echoing the traveler I’d encountered in the Darkheart.

“And beyond,” he replied.

“You don’t even know me.”

“I’m getting there.”  

I turned to him. His eyes were bright and warm and so very blue.

“You really want to do this? Head out to who knows where, to find people we’ve never met, all because of an anonymous letter?”

“If we can help…shouldn’t we?” he asked, winking at me.

I groaned. “That’s what you think this is all about? We’re supposed to un-fry bacon that was already cooked?”

“Maybe now’s a good time to roll different dice. Seems like a fair opportunity to find some explanations about who we really are, no?” he posed.

I turned to Maddy. “Fine, let’s launch this wild goose chase, find the other kiddies and see what’s what. But I’m reserving the right for told-you-so’s.”

Maddy nodded. “Whatever lets you sleep at night.”

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