Chapter XLVI

Silas arrived at Carrot’s apartment feeling a little exhausted. It wasn’t even that far away, but the bike ride had him moving his legs in a way that he wasn’t practiced in.

He knew how to ride a bike, of course. They were one of the more popular means of transportation around the confines of the Magical Society where importing fuel from the wider world was sometimes tricky, and where the oldest wizards still remembered a time where cars were competing with carriages for space on the roads. 

There were even a handful of spells to make riding easier. Not that he was going to waste time and his magical energy on that now. 

The ride over unnerved him greatly. The streets of the city were vacant. Or rather, he wished they were.

Whatever spell was being cast had likely started in the very early hours of the morning, when the vast majority of people were still asleep. He imagined that most people that had succumbed to the spell and who were unconscious were knocked out in the safety of their own beds. 

But not everyone spent the night sleeping.

He biked past three accidents and stopped at each. One was a delivery driver who looked like he had a broken nose. The other two were just normal cars. All three had slipped off the side of the road and run into either a lightpost or into the front of a streetside business. No one was dead, fortunately, but a few of them were going to wake up with some serious bruises. 

Silas suspected that  the spell made people feel weak before they finally succumbed to sleep, then unconsciousness. That had probably contributed to the accidents not being so bad. A person that suddenly felt weak was likely to pull their foot off the pedal. Those that he saw out in the open, slumped on the sidewalks or just within businessplaces that stayed up all night looked like they had simply slumped to the ground.

So far, he hadn’t noticed any fires, and there was no smoke on the horizon. A small miracle, that, but it wouldn’t last forever. 

Whatever was plaguing the city, whatever the spell was, it had to be ended soon, or else there might be a real disaster underway. So, he pedaled faster, using muscles that hadn’t been used in a while to get to Carrot’s place.

He ditched the bike by the front entrance. No one was likely to steal it now, at least. Then he went up the stairs, taking them two at a time. He paused to cough a floor up. Some of that dust had started to bother his throat. 

Silas stopped at the next floor up, then leaned against the nearest wall and closed his eyes. He focused on himself and on his magic. 

Surprisingly, what was saving him wasn’t a spell, but a simple exercise. It was taught to new students to help them learn the very basics when it came to manipulating their magic. It wasn’t too tiring, but it did require some focus.

He gripped his magic, letting it flow out of himself in a slow wave, then he tightened it close, pulling it all back in as quickly and suddenly as he could.

The result was that all of the magical dust clinging to him rose, then fell away. Some of it simply clung back onto him and his magic, but repeating the motion a dozen times in quick succession acted like taking a dusty blanket and waving it in the air rapidly. It threw a lot of the dust off of him.

He was still tired, however. The dust was clearly sucking away at his strength and magic, but the rate that it did so at was ridiculously slow. 

It would take a day of standing still and loosening his grip on his magic for him to be fully drained. At least, that’s what he felt. He hadn’t yet had the time to really sit down and study the dust, its rate of attrition, and how strong it was. 

But he was a wizard. Just a Wizard-at-Arms, sure, but he was still an accredited member of the Ordo Venator. He had more magic in him than a hundred normal civilians. 

He flashed back to how sick he felt the last time he had drained his magic. Then further back, to lessons about responsibly using one’s magical reserves so as to not deplete them completely. 

This was bad. If a person was fully drained of magic they might well live on for a while, but it wouldn’t be comfortable, and it wouldn’t be healthy. They needed to stop whatever spell was being used before it was too late.

With that in mind, he pushed off the wall, then jogged up the last couple of floors. He arrived at Carrot’s door, then thumped his fist against it. “Carrot! It’s me!” he called out. He heard her approaching, feet thumping through their little apartment until the lock rattled. 

Carrot swung the door open wide and stared at him.

She had been crying, he noted. There was a thin layer of dust clinging to her, and it was wet around her eyes and cheeks. Otherwise, she looked fine. He couldn’t see any injuries on her, and what he felt through his magic wasn’t too strange. 

“Mister Silas,” Carrot said. She took a deep breath through her nose. “Mom’s sick.”

“I know,” he said. “Can I come in?”

She scampered back, then gestured him towards what he assumed was Tulip, Miss Cuddlesworth’s, room. “She’s over here. I put her in bed. Ah, it seemed like the right thing to do?”

“Probably,” he said. 

Was Tulip more magical than the average person? Her daughter was... an anomaly, as far as magical potential went. That didn’t mean that she herself was. Magic was only somewhat hereditary. Sometimes talent skipped generations, or sprung out of thin air. 

Still, if she was, she might be attracting more of the dust. He couldn’t tell so easily, not with how little he knew. 

Stepping into the woman’s room made him feel like he was intruding. It was a clean space, though quite small. There was a dresser, a small makeup table with some knick-knacks, and a basket of folded clothes that hadn’t been put away yet. Otherwise, the space was clean and neat, if not terribly luxurious.

Tulip herself was laid out on the bed, blankets pulled up to her neck, though he could tell that she was dressed in everyday clothes. 

He moved over to her side, then gently grabbed the hand that was above the blankets and touched it at the wrist. “Heartbeat seems fine,” he said. “Do you mind if I touch her?” he asked.

“Ah, no?” Carrot said, uncertain.

He nodded and leaned forwards, trying to exude as much professionalism as he could as he touched Tulip’s neck and felt for her pulse there. It was strong, slow. Her breathing wasn’t shallow, but it wasn’t deep either. No rapid eye movement that he could tell.

Magically, she felt like any other normal person off the street. That was to say, there was nothing much to feel at all. He eyed the dust collecting on the blankets. It was thin, almost missing.

“Ah, I’ve been collecting the dust,” Carrot said.

“Oh? How?” he asked.

She raised a hand to the side, gesturing to a small plastic bag. There was a lump of what he assumed was dust at the bottom. “I’ve been doing this,” she said.

He watched as Carrot gathered raw magical energy in her hand, then kept it perfectly still as a sort of orb. Keeping magic, especially as much as she was gathering, so still was an impressive feat. 

Then she moved the ball over her mother, and the little particles of dust leapt up, sticking to it like iron shavings onto a magnet. 

“There’s a lot,” Carrot said. “But I’ve been trying to keep it off of her. Is that dust what’s causing all of this?”

“I think so,” Silas said. “It’s all over the city.”

“It is?” she asked. “That might be why the police aren’t answering the phone.”

He nodded. “I saw people unconscious on the street. And no one is out of their home.”

“Oh,” Carrot said. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know, yet,” he said. “But I don’t think sitting back and waiting is the right answer. I need some space to work. The kitchen, maybe? I wait to run a few quick tests.” He pointed to the plastic bag, and Carrot gladly handed it over after dumping the dust she’d collected into it. “Thank you. I don’t know if I can help you mother so easily, but it might be possible.”

“Okay,” Carrot said. She took a deep breath, visually gathering her courage. “Okay,” she repeated. “Iris is on her way too. Maybe she’ll be able to help as well? Ah, but try to find out what you can, I guess.”

“I’ll do that.” Silas paused, then patted her on the shoulder. Then he squeezed out of the room.

They really did have to get to the bottom of this, and soon.

***