“You know how long its taken to get here?” the old man said irritably. “Im not supposed to travel too far. My doctor doesnt like it.”
“Then perhaps this business is not for you, old man,” the cloaked figure said.
“That isnt what I meant. The lack of professionalism from your people is becoming apparent. I shouldnt have to jump through these hoops just to get what I paid for.”
“You cant blame us,” the cloaked man shrugged. “We have to protect ourselves and certain people are becoming more and more suspicious over our activities. Especially considering how we source our material.”
“And that becomes my problem how? Suddenly I have to be the one to travel to you? I have other options for this, you know.”
“We know, and believe me when I say, we value your custom, but this is the new reality. Ever since the incident last year, regulators, law enforcement, hell even our competitors have been breathing down our necks. They all think, wrongly of course, that we were responsible.”
“Again, none of that is your customers fault and if you cant find a way around it, then perhaps your services are not longer worth my time or money.”
“That is your prerogative, of course, but you cannot get another supplier that has our,” he paused, “confidentiality.”
“Until you decide that isnt worth the risk either,” the old man said. “Where is my order?”
“Right here,” the cloaked one said, tapping a small box with his foot.
“Careful, you moron.”
“Dont panic, its sealed properly. Things are changing, but we will not compromise on safety. Nor will we compromise on business.”
“I know what that means,” the old man said, sliding his hand inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled out a fat brown envelope and held it across the gap between the two individuals.
The cloaked man waited for a beat too long before sliding the box at his feet across and leaning in to take the envelope. “If this is-” he started.
“Its in full,” the old man replied, a little offended at the unfinished accusation. “Make sure to pass on my concerns to your organisation,” he finished as he picked up the box and left the empty parking lot.
The old man was a wizard. That term was all but illegal these days, especially since the dark magic incident of the previous year. Wizard was originally a technical term. You needed a qualification. Experience. You needed a license.
There were still legitimate wizards, although the term offended the man. Men and women who worked from within the system to refine and change the way magic was used in day to day life. People who worked with the refineries and the scientists – another offensive term – to make bringing magic to the everyday people more efficient, cheaper and more concentrated in terms of who got to control all of that.
He wasnt the only one who worked outside of that system, but most of his contemporaries didnt call themselves wizards. They didnt want to draw attention to themselves.
The old man had no such reservations. They, the powers that be, had taken almost everything else from him, but they would not take his heritage. His birthright. His family story. He had grown up the son of a wizard, who himself was the son of a wizard and so on and so forth all the way back to the first Coven. There werent many people who could trace their lineage back to easily. And this wasnt just a brag either, he had documents. Paperwork and a very complete family tree that proved it.
He had hidden all of it, of course. Notorised copies were in several locations around the world. He was called paranoid a lot when he was younger, but as he grew older and the limits on what he was allowed to do with magic shrunk, he felt himself almost prophetic.
Now, though, it was hard enough to get his hands on any sort of refined magic. Much less raw magic. And if he needed dark magic, he could all but forget about it. Which is where his cloaked friend in the parking lot came in.
People, mostly people younger than him, considered magic to be an infinite resource. It renewed itself. When a source of magic was depleted, the energy that was used in whatever magic you did was sent back into the atmosphere where it re-coalesced at the very peaks of the world and slowly made its way back down to the rivers and streams and eventually back into the underground pockets where the rigs and such were able to extract it, send it to the refineries and get it back into use.
Except, and everyone else knew this, it didnt work that way. Raw magic was not an infinite resource. There was something missing from the non-first generation sources.
It was considered a conspiracy theory to say that the later generations were weaker than the first. Even though it did not take long to find papers that said the same thing.
Wizards were once the ruling class. They had supreme power over the people for their ability to harness the power that was inherent to raw, untempered magic. A ring with a crystal made from raw magic would last a wizard a life and a half, provided he used it with care.
Slowly, and not the least out of jealousy, more and more people learned how to do what wizards did. Learned how raw magic had sculpted the world under the supervision of a small handful of people and by the time our old man had been born, the knowledge was taught in schools. Children, barely even in double digits, were able to mould and use the raw material.
In light of that, wizards began to change the way they used raw magic. They went deeper into the structure of the magic itself. They changed it. Extracted what made it potent. They began to refine the magic into its constituent pieces.
But that knowledge also did not remain secret for long. Soon there were refineries everywhere. And then came the giant machines designed solely and specifically to dig the raw magic out of the world and make everyone a wizard.
“And when everyone is, no one will be,” the old man muttered. His father had said that too. It was one of the few things that was worth taking from him.
The box he had bought from the cloaked man two nations away sat, sealed, on the bench beside him as he worked. He manipulated a small amount of raw magic with his bare hands, muttering under his breath as the material did a small dance across the table under his deft manipulations.
He was still as good at this as he had always been, but his hands were starting to succumb to time. It would not be long before the magic itself would stop bending to his will. He glanced at the sealed box quickly but continued his work.
Slowly, the raw magic started to break down. As he massaged the gel like material, a greenish liquid started to break from it and puddle in the bottom of a glass dish.
It took nearly a week before he had enough of the liquid to work with. He resealed the raw magic into its container where it sat, sparkling a little, and replaced it on its shelf. While it didnt have an expiry date, it was becoming harder and harder to manually refine it. He had already extracted other elements from it and did have a worry that it was becoming less and less useful. Another purchase would have to be made soon, and much like the recent one he had completed, it would not be easy. Raw magic was not allowed to be sold to private individuals. Even the amount he had, bought long ago now, would be enough for law enforcement to investigate him more deeply. Again, his eyes flicked to the sealed box sitting next to him. He was confident in his abilities; he had proven himself as a younger man but it was still worrying to have unpredictability in your work. He would have to unseal the box very soon and his old skills would be put to the test.
Magic was about breaking the rules. It was about challenging what it was possible to do. He knew that the refineries were a stopgap. Magic didnt like being split down into different parts. It didnt like having a certain use for certain aspects. The wizard knew thats what the real reason for the rig incident last year was. Magic complaining about how it was being used. How fast it was being consumed and how little of the spark that made it work was being returned to the ground. The witches, at least the ones he convened with from time to time, agreed. They had known this for a long time. The rig was lucky to have its coven onboard when the accident happened. They were even luckier they had an administrator they could trust.
Magic wasnt about everyone being able to have an easier life. Magic required skill. It required talent. If you could turn the tap on in your home and have the house clean top to bottom, you miss out on what lesson is being taught. You might have been able to play with it like modelling clay when you were younger, but as you grew up and found your own way in life, the chances of being directly involved with magic grew slimmer and slimmer. You took it for granted. You looked down on it. You stopped respecting it. You forget that its almost alive. And its not willing to be treated like that.
The box sat on the wizards bench. It was open and whatever had been inside had been taken out. In a small glass box a minute amount of a twitchy black substance crawled around using tendrils to determine the size of its prison. On a shelf behind the desk, a stronger glass box, sealed with several different runes from several different magical traditions held a larger amount of the same material. It, however, sat still, simply vibrating softly.
The wizard leaned over the smaller box and spoke gently to the tendriled dark magic. He was speaking in a language long forgotten by most people as he introduced the liquid into the enclosure. Immediately the small dark magic engulfed the liquid and absorbed it into itself. The wizard smiled. He was about to break all the rules and set the world back to where it should be.