Arcana 99: Stage One

Nerio pulled the brake lever and the train screeched to a stop. It had taken thirty minutes for them to move the train the two miles back to the rigged bridge. Etteilla had spent the first half coughing out questions before the smells forced her to follow the train on Zippy.

Etteilla caught up to Nerio as he walked the bridge towards the explosive detonator.

Is that why you did all this? Covering it all up?

"What the hell was that back there!?" She shouted, the time and distance did nothing to lessen her fury, "I don't care if it was you or them that slaughtered those people. You gave them the gun! Sold it even! You said you were a scientist Nerio, not a damn magical weapons dealer! " Etteilla grabbed his arm before he could push the plunger and destroy the bridge, "You aren't ignoring me this time, Nerio. You're answering me, and if you lie again you're walking out of this canyon alone."

"I didn't lie," he said, "I omitted a few of the more offensive details, but I am a scientist for the Catalan Company. . . I was. I discovered and studied artefacts for the company." Nerio glared at Etteilla. He'd have pulled away if he had the strength left. His body was exhausted and his mind too preoccupied with the blade's reminder of his shortcomings.

"The company of scientists that gave you a motorcycle lined with grenades? Developed a weapon that lets you cut people like butter?"

"The Catalan business is violence Etteilla. We rent out soldiers, equipment, training; and we sell murder. My business is—was research to supplement our products," Satisfied with how cool the words made him sound, Nerio continued, "Those people were one client I was involved with. They were a small gang in Peru at the time. The company sent me to sell them a few artefacts we didn't fully understand in exchange for their contacts across South America and some field tests the company was reluctant to perform."

"Tests like killing a train of innocent people?" Etteilla gripped his arm tighter.

"Tests like wiping out larger, more dangerous groups. I did a full psych evaluation on them before I made contact. Their leader was a pushover. He liked money, and crime was his way of getting it, but he wasn't violent. Not like that. We knew he would use the artefacts on rival gangs that encroached on his bottom line, but civilians were his bottom line. Those were members of the gang, but they weren't here on business sanctioned by their boss."

"Glad to hear you know a damn crime lord's mind so well years after you met him. Cause from what those two said their mission seemed pretty official to me. Hard to think any organization could invest millions of dollars and five hit teams into a scheme without the boss knowing, but you're the solid honest scientist, right? Why'd you ever be wrong? And what face is there left for you to save?"

"Will you only be satisfied if I tell you every piece of confidential information I have?" Etteilla responded with a face defined 'yes' by the third arcana, "Then I know because our canary didn't sing. I put a mole in their group whose sole purpose is to warn the Catalans when they plan something like that. If they stopped sending messages, or the company heard of their plan, the gang would have been wiped out." Nerio had spoken deliberately to avoid activating the third arcana. Even without it deciphering his meaning, the spell still told her he spoke the truth. Whether he was hiding anything else remained a secret.

Etteilla released Nerio's arm. Despite the rage she aimed at him, she didn't want to be investigated for a massacre. Nerio pushed the plunger and the few sticks of dynamite placed along the bridge exploded. The weight of the train tore through the weakened steel and both fell to the ravine below. An investigation later found the detonator and assumed it to be the cause of the deaths aboard. They noted the oddity of the carved bodies within the train but believed them to be just that. Coincidences from a tragic fall. Those they found that had suffered bullet wounds were assumed to have been from the armed truck a few miles back, and the event was officially declared a gang-related hit using the bomb as a cover-up.

Nerio began to approach Zippy before the train even hit the bottom. An arm stopped him two steps in, "Where do you think you're going?"

Nerio gave a puzzled look [Your horse. We are leaving, right?]

"I'm leaving on my horse. You wanna ride with me, you're paying the toll. "

"What? You said you'd let me if I told you the truth! I could be fired for telling you what I said!"

"Could be? You've made it quite clear your position with the company is strictly in the past tense. And when people from my past start hunting the both of us down with weapons I gave them while we are on a lengthy detour so I could run some errands then you can change the deal however much you like."

Nerio huffed, his cool facade fading, "What's the price? All my money's in my bike"

"It's priceless. . wait, I mean, unpriced. Yeah, unpriced," Nerio raised a brow at her gaff, "Last time you rode with me was dreadful. I can take the quiet of the road, but not when your weight's reminding me of your silence the whole time. For every hour of riding we get done, I expect one conversation."

"One? [I'm looking for a loophole. And what would it be about?]"

"One, but it has to be a real conversation. Five minutes or five replies minimum. Since you've been so conversationally challenged so far, I'll be nice and start them off. Deal?"

Nerio groaned and climbed atop her horse [It is acceptable, but I refuse to speak on any family drama.]

Etteilla mounted Zippy as well, and the pair made their slow trek across the rugged terrain of Copper Canyon. On Nerio's urging, she avoided the open channel of the West-bound train tracks in favor of the peaks and troughs towards the South. Some cliffs they encountered were as high as fifty feet. Those would have been impossible to traverse with Nerio's motorcycle, but a casting of the arcana of enhancement aimed at Zippy's legs let them leap to the top with ease.

The now-demolished bridge was located somewhere near the border between Chihuahua and Sinaloa. They followed the Fuerte River until it turned into a stream near the town of Guachochi. Etteilla kept to the valley to allow Zippy to maintain their eighty-mile-per-hour gallop whenever possible. After two hours of riding they crossed over into the state of Durango and Etteilla demanded her first payment. It was eight P.M. and the sun was beginning to set on another hot June day.

"You said your job was to hunt artefacts?"

"Discover," Nerio corrected, "Artefacts can be anything anywhere, and they give off no form of energy. You can't hunt for them in the same way you can't hunt for gravity or germs."

"What then, your job was to stumble upon magic? Just hope you ran into something?"

The third Arcana told Nerio she was being sarcastic. He wasn't, "What else could we do? Rumors of magic items don't tend to leave their towns. Besides," He paused long enough for his silence to pique Etteilla's interest. Zippy took a hard leap before he could continue.

"Beside what? [You're not drawing it out on purpose, right?]" Etteilla said as he struggled around the spit clogging his throat.

"We-we weapon-weaponized luck," Nerio spoke in the hoarse tone common among those stifling a cough. He caved and cleared his voice around "luck" before continuing. He refused to restart his sentence in the vain hope that Etteilla wouldn't notice his blunder, "There are people pre-disposed to encountering artefacts. It's just luck, but it's luck the Catalans can quantify. Calculate. Every few months, all of the newborns are placed into the same room. The babies are spread out randomly and the lights are turned off before a Catalan throws a pile of artefacts into the nursery," Nerio caught the fear in Etteilla's glance over her shoulder and worked to ease her concern, "Safer ones of course and the sharper ones were padded. As entropy dictates where the person aims, how hard they throw, and where the child is only the lucky among the lucky are struck. Those are the ones pre-disposed to encountering artefacts. I was one of them."

"So you were pre-destined to be a mercenary slash artefact hunter?"

"Not destiny; likelihood. I had a special aptitude for the hunting part. Given a chest full of trinkets and jewelry, I am far more likely than average to pick out the one artefact in the pile. All of us lucky ones were encouraged to apply in areas of artefact hunting or artefact research. But the choice was left to us what we did. I could have been a janitor, a teacher, a straight mercenary. Hell, if I wanted I could have left," Etteilla didn't need the third arcana to sense the sorrow creep into his voice when he mentioned leaving. She mustered all her will and steeled herself against mockingly reminding him how it's no longer a 'could have' instance, "I was fascinated by the stories of Catalans going on expeditions into uncharted land to hunt for them. The danger, the adventure. It was all I needed to read, no matter how dry their reports were. I had to work with artefacts, to find their secrets or to find them. I couldn't be bothered to read a two-hundred page paper on why pizza from the Blue Oven was New York style despite the oven being found in Naples so I opted for hunting and research over studying."

"The what?"

"The Blue Oven. It's an artefact we found in Naples a few centuries ago. It turns whatever you put into it into a pizza. It's also blue. The oven that is. The pizza's normal. Er, normal colored. The pizza itself is weird, no one's seen anything like it. It was New York style a century before it existed with chunks of pineapple strewn atop it. The paper determined that the exact type of pizza the oven produces has never been made in any New York restaurant but theorized that it will become popular within the next twenty to forty years."

"I thought you didn't read the paper?"

"I didn't. Fiore summarized it for me once. He had the mind and the patience for those kinds of things. He's always trying to get me to read them." . . .Was.

They had strayed too close to the forbidden family drama, and the pair returned to silence for the next hour. The Sun slunk behind the mountain tops before leaving the sky dark shortly before nine. Unable to move further, Etteilla stopped her horse and the pair waited for Nerio's bike to rebuild itself. Etteilla would have loved to stop somewhere with a real bed, but Nerio had insisted that going

directly South would be faster than heading toward civilization. She could tough it out for one more night, but she couldn't go another minute without dinner.

To distract herself, Etteilla broke their silence, "Do you name all the artefacts you find? Or is it just the one's with odd colors?"

Nerio looked up from the broken mirror he had placed on the ground, "We name most of the ones we find. Though, it's usually like the Blue Oven, a basic descriptor of what it is. It helps keep our records straight. Sometimes someone comes up with a name and is either creative enough or powerful enough to make it stick."

"Oooh," Etteilla awed, "You merci-tists can be more creative than calling the blue oven 'The Blue Oven'? Why, I'm sure the 'Chief Naming Officer' would just blow me away with the genius play of words and language made by his peers."

For the first time, Nerio understood the true potential of the third arcana as the very concept of rolling one's eyes embedded itself into his mind for every word Etteilla spoke.

"If you are actually curious, I did name one other artefact. It's a newspaper box covered in faded stickers and penile graffiti. Inside it is an eternally refilling issue of The New York Times, dated seven years in the future.

"How many street corners did they have to go through to find it?"

"What streetcorners?"

"Of New York." Nerio could barely see Etteilla's face in the twilight. Neither of them had bothered building a fire since his motorcycle's return was imminent. Despite the dark, an image of a single eyebrow being raised flashed across his mind.

"We didn't find it in New York. An expedition to the Gobi Desert uncovered it in the 20s. I wrote my thesis on it, proving that the future issues were based in our reality by sneaking an article onto the front page. Since I wrote the first paper, I got to name it, and I chose 'The Time Times.' Huh? Cool, right?"

Etteilla shook her head and ducked under a piece of flying engine, "And they went with that name?"

"Not officially; you need clout to get anything renamed officially."

"You said it being good would net the same."

"It was good! It didn't catch on is all."

The cacophony of Nerio's motorcycle rebuilding itself drowned out any future conversation. When the noise died down, Nerio set his timer and returned to his great task of sitting and stewing in patience.

"Etteilla, do you have any fun stories to tell? We've got a few minutes until we can eat, and I'm sure magicianing leads to all sorts of time-passing tales."

"It would, but I didn't exactly have a lot of peers. My family's the only magic I know about, but they're tight-lipped on the mechanics of it. Typically the parent teaches their child how to cast the arcana before telling them what fuels magic. My grandmother said it was culture or tradition or something like that. My mother called it what it was, training wheels—a precaution to keep dangerous magicians unable to reach their full potential. My mom never reached whatever ideal grandma considered good enough to be taught what the fuel was. My mom begged her to take me in when she saw my potential. She told me it was the first time they'd spoken in years; it was the first time I'd ever seen them in the same room. Two years of training with the only magician who knew how it worked, and the only thing I learned was how to act. Speak like this, stand like that, only use the arcana in these situations."

"And she never taught you what the source was?"

"Not even a hint. She tested me again and again but would fail me every time. She called me immature, crass, violent. Everything a magician shouldn't be. I got tired of going nowhere, so I went somewhere. I wasn't gonna' mold myself into someone else's vision of me. If she wasn't going to teach me, I'd have to find out myself. Hence, the race."

"The wish."

She nodded.

Nerio looked at his watch, stood, and prepared a basic meal for the two of them, "If you were never taught the source of your magic, how do you cast the spells? How do they work?" Nerio asked before starting his dinner.

"That's not something I'm gonna tell you. Excuse my rudeness if you want, but you're a gun, Nerio. I don't care if you say most of your work is in research. It's research into magical weapons, and I know you've done some selling and shooting of those very weapons. You put on a kind face, but how do I know you won't be hired to kill me later? How do I know you won't use what I say to make it easier?"

Nerio agreed with her caution, and finished his meal a few minutes later. He packed it back in his motorcycle only to find that Etteilla had turned over to fall asleep.

"Get up," he said, taking her dirty tray and putting it away, "we have to get to Guadalajara tonight, and there's still a few more hours between us."

"In the dark? I trust Zippy on paved roads, but you've got us wandering the wilderness. He'll tear something."

"Then ride my bike."

Etteilla looked it over. Despite all the weapons hidden within it, it was just a normal motorcycle with only a single tiny seat, "Ride it where?"

Nerio noticed the same issue a few seconds after Etteilla pointed it out, "What about that spell you used on your horse this morning, can you use it on yourself?"

"And leave me sealed in a vessel waiting for you to let me out? No thanks."

"Etteilla, I've trusted you with information that could get me fired! Trust me to remember to open a jar."

"Get you fired? You've told me you already are."

"I'm on leave until the trial's over, but that's not the point!"

"No, the point is that your naivety isn't my fault. You trust too easily Nerio."

"You trust too slowly. I don't care that you won't tell me everything about your past or yourself. I've seen how you behave normally and under duress. I know you aren't the kind of person to betray me. . . for no reason."

"And how can I trust how I see you when I can't even trust what you say?"

Etteilla savored Nerio's mournful expression for a leisurely five minutes before she started to feel that pang of guilt so foreign to her, "Fine," she said, "I'm not going to seal myself, but I can shrink with the twelfth arcana. I'll ride in your hood or something just stop looking at me like I kicked your dad."

Etteilla put her hands around Zippy before closing them together, causing the horse to shrink thanks to the twelfth arcana. When the horse could fit in her palm, she took out a jar and cast the spell again to make it large enough to cover Zippy. Once the jar made contact with her hand, she cast the forty-fifth arcana. The ritual for the forty-fifth was to have an object contained entirely within a closed 'shatterable' container. Glass, porcelain, and ceramic often worked the best. But she found glass to be the most helpful with identifying what was sealed within. It was also the least painful. As she poured magic into her hand, glass began to pour out of the outer layers of her skin. A few excruciating seconds later, she had produced enough glass to seal the jar and the spell was complete. She repeated the shrinking spell on herself, putting one hand on each shoulder and clapping them together. Now five inches tall, Etteilla fit neatly into the clip-on cupholder attached to the motorcycle's handlebars. Once Nerio sat her down in the cup, she sank into the bottom to avoid the wind and find some rest.

Once she was settled, Nerio set off to finish their journey. He drove for five hours in the silent dark. The only sound was the beating of his engine. He was only a dozen minutes away from the ranch Niccolo had sent him to. It was a remote operation a few miles Southeast of Guadalajara, on the shore of Lake Chapala. Thanks to Niccolo's tickets for the Copper Canyon train, they had made the two-day journey in less than twenty-six hours.

Nerio had almost been awake for a full day, and the engine's roar had gradually transformed into a soothing lullaby as the night turned to morning. Etteilla had maintained her silence from the moment she was placed in the cupholder. Nerio wasn't sure if it was sleep or a desire for silence. As he felt sleep pull his eyelids down once more, he was forced to bet on her being awake to keep himself that way, "Hey, uh," Shit, think of something normal, think of something normal. I want her to talk, but I don't want to be mocked the rest of the way, "Your spells, do they. . ." Double shit! She said she won't tell me how they work! Crap, crap, crap, "have names?" Nerio's voice went up an octave as he lost confidence in his ability to even formulate sentences.

Etteilla popped her head above the lip of the cupholder before the strong winds forced her back down. Luckily for Nerio's ego, she was just as tired as him and lacked the strength to snark, "Names? Not unless you count their numbers."

"Really? It's just 'Spell three: effect?' That's a little boring."

"It's 'arcana,' and it's magic, it doesn't need to be interesting."

That's the point of magic! Nerio kept the thought to himself.

"You don't even call them something when you cast them?"

"No," her response held a sense of shock like she couldn't comprehend the sheer awesomeness of shouting a cool name before casting a spell.

"Not even in your head?" Nerio's voice unconsciously broke into a plea. Something he'd never let happen when he was cognizant.

Etteilla didn't even humor a response to Nerio's grade-schooler question.

"You should name them!" Nerio said, knowing that Etteilla would refuse and the task would fall to him, "It'd help keep them organized in your head," And sound awesome to boot.

"Why? It's not like I shout out what spell I'm casting."

"Imagine shouting 'Arcana twelve: Flaming Rebuke!' at somebody before hitting them with a fireball or something. I bet it'd feel great and sound cooler," Nerio's drowsiness let his normally secret thoughts leave his lips. When Etteilla failed to agree on the cool factor, Nerio continued to break his carefully crafted persona, "Let me come up with some names for them then. Give me the first three."

Etteilla's minuscule groan was drowned out by the engine [It's only to keep you awake, got it? Don't expect me to actually use them.]

"The first is illumination—self-explanatory. The second is flattening, I told you about that one earlier. And, you should be using the third to make your intentions clearer," each of Etteilla's examples carried along the basic concept of their function thanks to the third arcana.

"Illumination is fine, not too many ways to make light awesome. For the second. . . maybe something like 'Plaster' or 'Paint.' Really lean into the image aspect of the spell," Nerio fell into silence for a minute. A patch of sky housed a pale grey glow floating over a crest in the road before them. The ranch's industrial spotlights reflecting off the ground, "How about 'Dimension Shift?' You could suffix it with '-al' if you want."

"Dimension Shiftal? Absolutely not."

A wizard. I'm stuck with a literal wizard and she is the lamest person imaginable.

"Okay, stick with 'flattening' then. As for the third," Nerio pretended to spend a moment thinking of the answer he had thought of yesterday.

How long should I pause? Gotta be longer than ten seconds, don't want her to know I already came up with it. But, I can't wait too long. If she thinks it's stupid I want to be able to brush it off as a whim. Has it been too long already?

"It allows for unconfusable communication, and it's one of the more useful spells you have. . . So something allegorical. What about, hmm, no that wouldn't work. How does 'Shadow of Babel' sound?"

"Fine? You're the only person who's going to be calling it that."

Nerio frowned and stopped his motorcycle at the border of the ranch's fence, "You should unshrink yourself and ride the horse to the house. You don't want him to know about your magic."

"What now? Is he going to do experiments on me if he finds out? Make me part of your company's arsenal?" Etteilla prodded at every topic she knew would get a rise from Nerio as she climbed out of the cupholder and returned herself and Zippy to their original size.

"No, he won't experiment on you or anything like that, not without your permission anyway. He'd probably just ask questions until your ears fell off."

"So the anti-you? Wonderful. What's his name?"

"I don't know," Nerio replied, not wasting a moment to bring out his canned response.

As the pair made their way up the long road to the ranch's main house, a lone figure stepped onto the porch to greet them. He was a tall man in his late forty's with thinning hair on his head and a gun in his hands, "Nerio?" despite the grammar, his tone was not a question. He put the gun down; the way he handled it told Nerio he was years out of practice, "I was starting to think you wouldn't be here 'till tomorrow. Well, morning anyway," he looked at Etteilla, "Don't tell me you've ridden this poor thing all the way from Utah. It must be exhausted, let me show you to the stable. Nerio knows the way inside. Nerio paused at the doorway and eavesdropped on the man's conversation with Etteilla. When he had introduced himself as "Diego" Nerio shut the door and walked down the hallway and upstairs to the guest rooms. The house had three. The first had its door shut and locked, the second was shut and hushed voices could be heard within, and the third was open. Inside was a small bed. Nerio walked by the empty room and entered the bathroom where he took a lengthy shower.

The Reconstruction Engine on his motorcycle meant that his clothes were always returned to pristine condition, but he'd had no privacy to change into anything other than his spare shirt until tonight. Nerio took a moment to relish in the comfort of the plush fabric of his pajamas before returning to the empty room. A moment too long as by the time he had returned, Etteilla had arrived and claimed the bed.

"Were you just carrying pajamas from the Dickens' collection this whole time? And you still made me sleep outside?"

"Get your own room; I was here first."

"The other rooms are all occupied. You're stuck with me another night Nerio." Etteilla smiled and rolled herself deeper into the mattress.

As she did, Nerio caught a glimpse of the blue robe she had worn since the race started, "You didn't even change! You can't claim the mattress when you're still wearing dirty clothes!"

"They aren't dirty," she was genuinely offended by Nerio's claim, "I'm not some animal that would wear soiled clothes in a clean bed. I'm a magician, remember? I used a spell to clean them."

"But you should at least wear appropriate clothes to bed. Not your day-wear."

"Appropriate?" Etteilla raised a brow, "We're wearing the same thing."

Nerio didn't have the time to explain the difference between their dress, "Etteilla, it's a Catalan mattress, in a Catalan home, being used as a Catalan research center. Last I checked, you aren't a Catalan."

"Last I heard neither are you."

"Are you- That's it. I'm sure you can magic yourself a nice place on the floor, and I don't care if you can't. I am sleeping on that mattress."

Nerio pulled back the blanket. He knew actually fighting her for a mattress was immature, but forcing her to share was fair game. As he pulled it back he found that the spare six inches of bed was already occupied by Etteilla's stoat, Vivian.

"Sorry, but that spot's taken." Etteilla said as Vivian swore at Nerio for "bringing the bad Sun to white Sun times"

"Would I be intrudin' to ask what the ruckus is about?" A man's voice in an unmistakable Hollywood-Southern drawl drew Nerio's gaze to the doorway. A man, maybe five years Nerio's junior, stood in it. Even in a night so deep it had turned to morning, he wore pants and a long-sleeved shirt that was clearly causing beads of sweat to form near his short tan hair. Nerio couldn't place it, but something about the man was familiar.

Etteilla recognized it immediately. She had seen John Wayne wear the same outfit in Hondo last year. The man had even copied Wayne's hairstyle but lacked the facial structure to pull it off.

"If it's a bed 'yer lookin' for partner," the man continued, unaware of Nerio's confusion and Etteilla's knowledge, "I have one in my room. I'm used to rock beds and nothing but my poncho as a blanket, so I'll gladly sleep on the floor."

Poncho?

Nerio imagined the man in a poncho and finally put the pieces together. He had seen him before. At the starting line three days ago. He was one of the four costumed cowboys behind him.

But their car didn't start. Wait, they couldn't even beat us here if it did!

An old woman joined the man in the doorway. "Don't go offering your bed, Johnathan. You worked too hard today to give it up."

He got here early enough to do work!?

"Besides," she hobbled into the room on her cane and approached Nerio. She was an easy foot shorter than him, even without her hunched back. But her gaze brought Nerio in line regardless, "A Catalan shouldn't be making such a fuss over losing a bed. Didn't my grandson teach you that?"

"Asanina? I didn't know you were doing research with-" Nerio caught himself as he remembered 'Diego's' fake name, "Diego."

"You shouldn't be usin' such language when referrin' to a lady sir." The man, Johnathan, spoke once more.

"Research?" She shook her cane in Nerio's face, "Do I look retired to you? I'm on a job! Your job, so I expect you to be well rested for when we leave tomorrow morning."

Etteilla groaned. She had forgotten about the job, "What stupid errand is Nerio making me lose the race for?"

Nerio and Asanina shared a glance that conveyed more than the third arcana ever could, "I'll leave the detail sharing for tomorrow. For now, all I can say is that doing this job will put you both in Flores by tomorrow night." she said nodding to Etteilla and Johnathan.

They were nearly a thousand miles from Flores, and had managed a little over six-hundred per day. Etteilla knew none of the numbers; to her Asanina turned "eventually" into "tomorrow night." A reasonable reward, but not one whose impossibility Etteilla could quantify.

"I'm waking you up early tomorrow so," Asanina stopped, Etteilla had fallen asleep, "Asking a question and falling asleep before it could be answered. And she rode a horse here? You sure picked a strange teammate Nerio. You really couldn't find a Catalan for it?" she looked at him a moment, remembering some long past interaction, "No, that's not you. You didn't bother with the rules after 'wish' and got stuck with her. Am I right?" She always was.