Mages were assholes. In a select few enclaves around the world, the laws of mundane physics basically cowered in fear of their power, and what did they do with it? They built thrones for themselves. Sure, the thrones weren't literal anymore, but that didn't change a damn thing.
If I had their power, I’d do something with it. Something to make the world even a little bit better, despite what my grandad used to say when he was still around.
I wouldn't be a coward like him, or my mum. I'd seize our family legacy and I would… well, it didn't matter. All that was left of that legacy was in the open chest on the bench in front of me.
Leaning down, I pursed my lips and blew a cloud of dust off the battered old book that lay inside the container. The dark purple leather cover was cracked and dry with age and mistreatment, and as my fingertips trailed over it, I tried to imagine what each blemish meant. What caused the uneven gouge down near the bottom? Not a knife, it wasn't clean enough. Maybe the claw of some horrifying spirit? The book was definitely old enough to have existed back when the last of the spirits still walked the Earth.
It creaked out a feeble protest as I opened it to the first rough page. There weren't any of the usual pages at the front — no legal page, no table of contents, and no foreword. It opened right into a chaotic scrawl of ancient script. Supposedly, it was an ancient germanic language written using the old roman alphabet. Of course, there was no way that my empty head had the skills to translate it.
With a sigh, I let the rough-cut early pages flutter past, until the paper started to resemble something other than failed cardboard. The alphabet and language began to change with the paper, until I started recognising a few words here and there. Then, abruptly, the words began to string out into full sentences. It still all read like some old movie where everyone used like a million more words than was actually needed to get their freakin’ point across, but at least I could understand it.
My finger traced a few lines of text while I absently read the random page I flipped to, then I carefully closed the book and set it to the side. The book was cool, but it wasn't even close to as interesting as the pair of objects that sat cradled in velvet.
Two bronze gauntlets glinted in the dim light provided by the street light through the small basement window above me. Carefully, I picked one up and rotated it slightly, marvelling at the odd construction of the armoured gloves. Instead of being a few hammered plates of bronze bound together with leather, they were made from dozens of intricately woven metal strips.
Currently, I held the smaller of the two gauntlets, although I only called it ‘small’ because the other one was a chunky beast of a thing. It wasn't just metal strips, either. The big one had a whole bunch of odd mechanisms seated between the woven metal, although they were obviously added many many years after the gauntlets were originally crafted.
Together with the book, they represented a heresy that most of the world considered to be a myth that society had left in the past.
Unchained magic.
“Itias! What are you doing down there!” my mother’s voice called from above, followed by the basement door creaking open.
With a start, I swore under my breath and scrambled to get everything back into the creaky old chest. Thankfully, I had smeared vaseline into the hinges, so it didn't actually make a ton of noise when I closed it.
Shit! The box itself would give me away! She'd freak out big time if she knew I was poking around in granddad's old stuff. Um, uh…
Aha!
Just before she came into sight, I pulled a different box over and lifted one of my old toys out. Okay… now what? Pretended to be doing… well, just hold it, I guess.
The old wooden stairs protested loudly as mum made her way down, stopping once she could duck her head to see under the ceiling.
“What are you doing? You’re not going through granddad’s old stuff, are you? You know why we can’t do that.” she questioned, giving me a suspicious glare.
I stifled a sigh and held the stuffed toy up for her to see. I hated that she had good reasons to fear our family legacy.
“I know, I was just looking at… this,” I mumbled, staring blankly at the stained old teddy bear.
Wait. It was that teddy bear.
Memory flashed, vivid in a way that only happened when the events you were remembering were particularly traumatic.
I was twelve, clutching my teddy while I lay curled into a fetal position. Heavy drops of rain slowly stole all my warmth, while the wind savaged the nearby swing set. Indescribable, incomprehensible pain seared every nerve in and around my groin. It was so bad, there wasn't any space to feel regret… or the confusing, inescapable horror that had led to the self inflicted injury.
By the time they found me, the cold had numbed both the physical and the mental pain. Neither would stay gone, but they wouldn’t reach anything close to the levels of that night again.
Mum’s sigh was loud enough that it should have stirred dust off the shelves. “Come on up and help me prepare dinner— no, clean yourself up first, it’s disgusting down here.”
“Yes mum,” I murmured, dropping off the tall stool I'd been sitting on. My feet hit the ground with a light whump, and I padded quietly over to the bottom of the stairs with the weight of disappointment burdening my slim shoulders.
Following mom through our obscenely mediocre suburban house, I resolved to go back down after dinner, when my parents were in bed and watching netflix. If I was careful, they wouldn’t hear me down there.
“More protests downtown,” Dad commented when we entered the combined kitchen and living area.
“As there should be,” mom frowned, giving both him and the TV a glare. I really hoped they didn’t get into another argument over the protests, it always got so awkward.
To my dismay, dad turned the volume up, blasting the opinions of moronic talking heads throughout the room. Great, according to the news idiots the protestors were actually rioters. You could tell by the way they were doing nothing wrong until law-enforcement decided to get physical. That’s sarcasm, by the way... god, people like my dad were so fucking stupid.
“They’re just hurting their cause with their violence,” dad said with a deceptively neutral tone.
Mom just rolled her eyes and began to give orders. Chop the carrots, no, not that thin. Not that wide either, now peel the potatoes. Blah blah blah. I didn’t mind doing chores, but being constantly nitpicked while I did them was another matter.
As we got dinner ready, then ate it, I kept an eye on the TV. Police brutality had taken the life of another African American, and now the predictable and justified public outcry was being met with, you guessed it, more police brutality. It was a fucking mess, and that wasn’t even taking into account the pandemic. To make matters worse, I knew my friends were there somewhere, fighting for what was right. I’d tried to join them, but I wasn’t allowed to go. Dad said so.
“...Calls for intervention from the Arcane Practitioners Association have been met with silence from the enigmatic organisation. So far, the magic users of the world have maintained their strict policy of neutrality, even in the face of deadly riots and a once in a century plague. Amora, do you think we’ll see any movement from the APA this time around?”
“Well, James, as we all know, they can’t legally step in to help any single government. The President does have friends on the APA High Council though, and there have been rumours, so it’s anyone’s guess. Our boys in blue might just get some help from the notorious Hunters.”
I scowled at the two morons on the screen, and redoubled my efforts to chop vegetables. The APA should be working with the pharma corporations to make a vaccine, not sending in their goon-squad to deal with protestors. What would a bunch of magic-hunters even do in a supposedly ‘non-lethal’ situation?
“Dear, can you please turn that off? I don’t want to hear about those awful Hunters,” Mum said, her voice rising in pitch.
I couldn't blame her. Our family tree was missing a whole ton of branches thanks to them.
Dad, who had no idea about the family he’d married into, scoffed. “They keep us safe from the old magic beasts, and the magical vigilantes, they’re not awful. Just because they burned a bunch of witches back in the day doesn’t mean they aren’t important nowadays.”
I winced. Dad just stepped on a landmine. Those ‘witches’ he was talking about were in the room with him now. Except, the actual term was ‘Spiritborn’ and those burnings had been the final victory of the APA in its centuries-long war to monopolise magic.
Thankfully, for my sanity’s sake, mom and dad smoothed things over during dinner, getting back to their loving couple routine like there weren’t any cracks showing. That’s what they did, brushed conflict under the rug so it could go rancid where nobody could see it. Did I sound bitter? Probably, but whatever. I had a right to be, I was a “moody teenager” after all.
I kept an eye on the television as I washed the dishes, anxiety rising along with the tensions that were only two and a half miles away. The protestors had set up in a park opposite the city courthouse, but now found themselves surrounded by police and militia on all sides — unable to leave. Night was falling too… really not good.
On the TV, the cameraman zoomed in on the crowd of increasingly compressed protestors and — Wait… what was that? A flash of blonde, with two bright blue hair clips. Was that Eva?
Yup… yeah, I’d definitely seen my friend there. Crap, crap… extra not good. Don’t freak out, Itias, she’ll be fine. It will all be fine. This is America, we’re not some third world dictatorship… right?
Mom and dad interrupted my freaking out with their calls of goodnight, and I glanced up from the TV to give them a half-hearted wave. They were probably going to have some make-up ‘mummy-daddy time’. Hurk. So gross. I was gonna be alone down here for a while… wait. What if…? No, that was a crazy idea — something way, way out there. But, it might be a way I could maybe… possibly help…
Did I dare, though? Ah, fuck it. Of course I did. Now was not the time to doubt myself, I could help, really and truly. All I needed to do was get a move on. So I did, silently as I could, towards the basement door.
Down I went, rushing right for that familiar old chest in the back, hidden behind a row of shelving. The heavy wooden lid of the chest squealed alarmingly when I lifted it, but I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the distant sounds of a TV show playing from up the stairs. My parents had begun the near-nightly ritual of shoring up the cracks in their relationship.
Pushing aside the box of old junk I'd used as a cover, I pulled the dark, wooden chest towards me. Thumbs on either side of the lid, I flipped up the latches and opened it. The book went to the side again, and I lifted the pair of woven metal gauntlets up and out.
Because of the ‘injury’ between my legs, I didn't have the benefits of testosterone, and I certainly hadn't put in the work to overcome it. So, my weak noodle arms struggled a little with the heavy gauntlets until I had them resting on the table.
With one finger, I traced the woven strips of bronze — or at least, I thought it was bronze. The strip my finger followed twisted into knots and whorls that were reminiscent of celtic artwork, except that they didn't match any known symbology from that ancient people. My finger came to a stop against one of the thick, grey plates that provided extra protection over key areas, and I took a deep breath.
I allowed myself a rare smile as I thought back to the crazy, amazing day I’d accidentally gotten them to work. I’d been bored out of my mind as I helped empty out my grandparents’ house for the final time, and I’d tried them on… and something miraculous had happened. Raw, unknowable energy had sparked within, and I had felt the dormant power of a Spiritborn shiver and come to life within me. Since that day… well, since that day I started to break the rules my mother and granddad had set out. I started trying to learn magic.
Without putting the gauntlets on, I tucked them under one arm and hurried awkwardly upstairs to my room. I was going to need a disguise — a costume, like one of those few magic-wielders around the world who attempted to be superheroes every now and then. They were kinda cringe, in my opinion, but at least they were doing something.
Now, I was gonna go and be a cringe superhero. First, I grabbed my purple billowy pants. I didn’t know what they were called, but I loved them. I never got the chance to wear them though, they looked really girly, I’d probably get laughed at by everyone within a thousand miles.
On, went a pair of black tank tops — two to keep my torso warm in the chill night air, but also to allow for the gauntlets because when I was wearing them, the bigger one went up almost to my armpit, and the smaller one a few inches over my elbow. Finally, and most importantly, I grabbed a simple black medical mask — the kind we were required to wear because of covid.
Wait, the mask wasn't going to be enough. Dipping back into my closet, I rifled around until I found a piece of last-year’s halloween costume — a dark grey witches’ cloak. Yeah, I know… a real ‘witch’ in a witch's cloak, but I wanted to keep my head covered with the big hood it had.
Okay… costume was done — time to leave the house. Eva might not have much time.
Making sure to be as quiet as I could, I raced for the back door, making sure to leave it unlocked as I left. Then, I stopped in the backyard. Time for the moment of truth.
The gauntlets were obviously too big for me, the first and biggest one could've been a very uncomfortable thigh-high sock, as it was now. I had no hope of reaching my little fingers down into the glove, but it didn’t matter, that wouldn’t be a problem in a moment.
Kneeling down, I placed the second, smaller gauntlet up on its fist and slid my left arm into it. The thing came all the way up to dig into my armpit. I did the same with the larger right one, except I didn't manage to reach the glove. Two massive metal arms on my tiny ones, I probably looked ridiculous.
It was only for a moment though, because the exact instant my right hand settled in as far as it could go, the gauntlets began to change. Woven metal slithered silently, as though they had all suddenly come to life. The length of the armoured gloves shrank and constricted, reforming gently against my pale skin. The fingers shivered and moved to allow better movement, while the elbow joint slid down to the appropriate position for my frame.
The amount of material that made up the bulk of the gauntlets remained the same however, and the armoured plates didn't change size at all. It made my forearms and hands seem massive and chunky in a way that… was actually pretty dope. Adding to the cool factor, and also to the reason I’d specifically worn purple, was the way the negative space between the knots and whorls began to glow with a faint, subtle dark purple light. Colour coordination!
Giving them an experimental flex, I smiled when they moved with gentle ease, as though they were made of, and weighed nothing more than cloth. Time to move… without breaking my leg this time. God, explaining that incident to my parents had been difficult.
Okay.
Deep breaths… crouch… visualise which function I want the gauntlets to perform, make the proper gestures, twist my wrist just so… and launch.