Elias reached Manchester fourteen hours after the sky opened. The journey normally took a little over an hour.
It took fourteen.
Motorways were blocked. Abandoned vehicles filled roads. Several towns had improvised barricades. A bridge had collapsed for reasons nobody understood. Twice Elias's convoy changed route because of monsters.
Once because of people.
The people were worse.
His surviving security team travelled in four vehicles. Former military. Former police. Private contractors. People Elias had hired because acquiring rare artifacts occasionally required operating in locations where travel insurance became more theoretical than practical. Elias sat in the second vehicle surrounded by equipment. A rifle rested beside him. Three magical detectors were strapped to the dashboard. All three gave different readings.
Infuriating.
Myrddin spoke through his earpiece.
"Possible manifestation ahead."
"Type?"
"Human."
The convoy slowed.
Five people stood across the road. Cars burned behind them.
One man walked forward.
Young. Tracksuit. Blood on his shirt.
His hands glowed.
"Road's closed," he shouted.
Elias lowered the window.
"Why?"
"You want through, you pay."
"How much?"
The man smiled.
"Everything."
Elias looked at him.
Behind the young man, two others carried stolen rifles. A woman wore body armour over pyjamas. Another man had a supermarket bag filled with phones. Civilisation had existed here yesterday. Elias leaned his head back.
"You're a remarkably early adopter."
"What?"
"You've discovered extortion within fourteen hours of acquiring magical abilities."
The man's smile disappeared.
"Get out of the car."
"No."
He raised a glowing hand. One of Elias's guards lifted a rifle. Elias held up a finger.
"Wait."
He opened the door.
"Doctor," the guard warned.
"I want to see it."
Elias stepped onto the road. The young man looked confused.
"What?"
"Your ability."
"Back up."
"How does it work? Do you feel heat before activation? Pressure? Does breathing affect it? Emotional state? Are you generating something or converting ambient energy?"
The man stared.
"You're fucking mental."
"So I've been told."
The glowing hand brightened.
Elias watched closely.
There.
A movement.
Shoulder tightening. Breath held. Glow increased after inhalation.
"Interesting."
The man fired.
A bolt of orange light crossed the distance. Elias moved before it left the hand. Military training was not magic. It did, however, teach you not to remain where someone was aiming. The bolt struck the vehicle. Metal scorched.
Elias fired twice.
Knee.
Shoulder.
The young man fell screaming. His glow vanished. The armed men behind him froze. Elias kept his pistol raised.
"Leave."
They ran.
The woman stayed long enough to drag the wounded man away. Elias crouched beside the scorch mark.
"Temperature."
"Approximately six hundred degrees at impact point," Myrddin reported.
"Low penetration."
"Correct."
"Potentially thermal rather than kinetic."
A guard stared at him.
"Sir."
"Yes?"
"You nearly got killed."
"Statistically, I get nearly killed quite often."
"You could have let us shoot him."
"Then I wouldn't have observed activation."
The guard stared.
Elias sighed.
"Fine. Next time you may shoot him first."
They continued.
Manchester was chaos.
Not destroyed. That would have been simpler. Destroyed places had one problem. Manchester had ten thousand. Power worked in some districts. Phones in others. Police remained visible. Military vehicles moved through the city. Hospitals overflowed. People queued outside supermarkets. Rumours spread faster than information.
Someone claimed the government had fallen.
It had not.
Someone else claimed London was gone.
It wasn't.
Another claimed aliens were offering people immortality in exchange for children. Elias hoped that one was false. A crowd gathered outside a church where someone had apparently healed a dying man. Two streets away, another crowd was attacking a building because a resident had grown horns. At a junction, soldiers guarded a crater containing blue crystals.
Elias stared through the car window.
"Stop."
"We need to reach your sister."
"Thirty seconds."
He approached the crater. A soldier raised his rifle.
"Back."
"I only want a sample."
"Back."
"I am Dr. Elias Vale."
The soldier stared.
"Wizard bloke?"
Elias closed his eyes.
"Yes."
The soldier looked at another man.
"That's him."
Apparently twenty-three million views had consequences. The officer in charge approached.
"Doctor Vale?"
"Yes."
"We've been told to detain you if encountered."
"That seems unfriendly."
"Government wants you transported to a secure site."
"My niece is three kilometres away."
"Orders."
Elias looked at the officer. The officer looked at Elias's security team. Then at the strange crystal crater. Then at the sky, where an object the size of a stadium floated silently behind the clouds. The old world fought the new one inside his expression.
Finally he lowered his voice.
"I haven't seen you."
Elias nodded once.
"Thank you."
"Go get your family."
The soldier hesitated.
"And Doctor?"
"Yes?"
"My daughter downloaded one of your things. The circle. She made light."
Elias stared.
"Which model?"
"Don't know."
"Tell her not to improvise."
The soldier laughed despite himself.
"That's what you're worried about?"
"More than you can imagine."
Catherine slapped him when he arrived.
Then hugged him.
Elias tolerated both.
Lucy ran into his arms.
"Uncle Elias!"
He picked her up.
She immediately pulled back.
"Is magic real?"
"Yes."
Her eyes became enormous.
"Are you a wizard?"
"No."
Catherine glared.
"He made fire."
Lucy gasped.
"You're a wizard!"
"I am a researcher who has generated a reproducible anomalous thermal manifestation."
"Wizard."
"Apparently education has collapsed already."
Catherine hugged him again. This time he returned it.
For several seconds.
Then he stepped back.
"We leave now."
"Where?"
"My estate."
"You said things attacked it."
"They did."
"And?"
"We shot most of them."
Catherine stared.
"Most?"
"The remainder left."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
That bothered him.
The four-armed creature had withdrawn, not fled, after probing the estate's defences.
Intelligent. Organised.
Restricted by some alien treaty, perhaps. But were the creatures even part of those treaty-bound civilisations? Or native organisms displaced through whatever had happened to Earth? The distinction mattered.
Everything mattered.
Myrddin marked a route.
Catherine grabbed bags.
Lucy tugged Elias's sleeve.
"Uncle Elias?"
"Yes?"
"If magic is real, are dragons real?"
Elias paused.
He looked toward the fractured sky.
"I sincerely hope so."
Catherine stared at him.
"What is wrong with you?"
"Quite a lot, according to documentation."