Chapter 2: Restart
I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds
"What did you say?" The people in the room are shocked into silence for a moment before everyone jolts, Ororo and Hank only held from moving by a quickly raised hand from Charles.
"Please remain calm. We found you yesterday in dire condition. I'd be more than happy to answer whatever questions you have if you promise to not agitate your wounds."
Syd stays still for a moment before sighing and leaning back onto the table-cum-bed that he had woken upon. He takes a quick inventory of his surroundings, noting the people and objects around him as well as the fact that his clothes were nowhere to be seen, and he is dressed in bandages and a very loose hospital gown. His eyes widen a little when they land on Ororo, and after a few seconds of silence, he starts speaking again.
"What year is it?" An eyebrow raises on Charles face, though he answers the question regardless.
"The year is two thousand and fifteen A.D, and it is Tuesday the fifteenth of September. What is your name?" Syd takes another minute to process this information before
"Syd. My last name is irrelevant at the moment. Where am I?"
"Ah, I was wondering when we'd get to that. Allow me to introduce myself first. I am Professor Charles Xavier, and we are at my school here in New York. Xavier's school for the gifted and talented, as I like to call it. Of course, it's secretly a school for mutants." Syd's eyebrows raise sharply, and his eyes twitch from side to side for a moment, like he's having a mental debate with himself.
"Why tell me that? You don't know me." Charles chuckles a little.
"Well, for starters, it's my personal belief that all people are inherently good even if their circumstances force them to do bad things, and as such I refuse to judge people before I even get to know them. Secondly, you seem to know my dear friend Doctor Strange, or at least of him. Therefore it would be rude to not extend you the benefit of the doubt on his behalf."
"I...see. I suppose that in a twisted way, that makes a certain amount of sense. Well, in the spirit of peace and friendship, allow me to introduce myself more fully. My name is Syd Calhoun, warlock extraordinaire. Last thing I can remember is messing around with a spell that should allow me to create a small black hole. Next thing I know, everything explodes and i'm free falling. I crash land, and wake up, apparently several thousand miles away from where I started. As well as a few years in the past."
If the others in the room weren't interested in Syd before, they certainly are now. Hank in particular seems ready to ask heaps of questions, judging by the way he immediately leaps into the conversation.
"Time travel? How far have you traversed? Do you think you could replicate it? Are you positive that it's time travel and not cross-reality traveling? And how would you create a contained, localized singularity in the first place? The sheer energy requirements alone would be mind-boggling." A deep sigh escapes from Syd and Ororo, nearly in unison.
"To put it bluntly, I have no idea. My memories are kinda fuzzy right now, probably from the magical backlash of the sudden jump. I also feel like I got hit by a truck that then decided to back up over me. I'm pretty sure it was twenty twenty-four last I checked the calendar. I'm also not sure how I know this 'Dr. Strange' you mentioned, only that his name sounded extremely familiar."
Now, Usually Syd wouldn't even bother trying to lie to someone as important as Charles Xavier: martyr and former symbol of hope for mutant kind. However he's not entirely sure what he should or shouldn't say in regards to what would basically be the future. Butterfly effect and all that jazz. If he could find a way to get to Dr. Strange, he could probably confide in him the truth, and they could decide how to move forward from there. Thankfully, Xavier seems to buy his story fairly easily.
"I see. To traverse time and space, truly I know little about the mystic arts if this is something you can do, even if unintentionally. Perhaps I could get Strange to come here a bit earlier than previously thought, see if he could try to help you recover your memories. In the meantime, do you have any place you could stay?" Syd snorts a little.
"Anybody who I might crash with either doesn't know about magic and would thus not understand how I showed up looking older, or they haven't met me yet." Plus who knows who does and doesn't exist in this reality?
"Then I suppose you can stay with us." Ororo and Hank start to open their mouths to potentially question or argue this decision, but another raised hand from Xavier stops them.
"I know we have little reason to trust one another, but trust can't come from nothing. If one doesn't extend a hand in friendship to a stranger, it is impossible to make friends at all. Young Syd here shall be allowed to stay here as long as needed, and if we're lucky he might even make some friends with our students." Syd's not so sure how he feels about being spoken about in the third person, but at least everything is going smoothly.
"Thanks for the offer, professor. If you ever need a favor, consider it done." Xavier chuckles a little before turning his wheelchair around.
"There's no need for that, but i'll keep it in mind. Now, I want you to focus on healing up. Tomorrow if you're feeling well we can move you into an actual room and introduce you to the others. Hank, if you wouldn't mind walking with me?"
With that, the two men leave the room, leaving Syd and Ororo alone. Syd slowly pushes himself into a sitting position while Ororo looks at him with an unreadable expression. Looking around, Syd grimaces when he doesn't see his clothing anywhere. Raising one hand he snaps his fingers, causing a few red and black sparks to fly before fading. Frowning, he does this again, with the same results.
"What are you doing?" Syd glares at the back of his hand.
"Trying to open my pocket dimension storage. Couldn't help but notice that my stuff is gone."
"Most of your clothes had been torn to shreds, and whatever was in your pockets was soaked since you fell into a pond. Was there something important we might have missed?" Syd looks up at her before returning to trying to do something with his hand.
"Just my smokes. Well, my phone too but I don't even want to try figuring out how that'd work." Ororo looks at him in disdain, as he mutters a few curse words under his breath and tries snapping his fingers again, this time a flickering circle appears made out of the black and red sparks before it just as quickly vanishes.
"You do know that smoking is bad for you right?" Syd finally turns all the way around to look her in the eyes.
"Nope. I'm a complete moron." A twitch forms in her eyebrow and she crosses her arms in front of her chest.
"I highly suggest you don't take that tone with me, young man." syd snorts a little before raising his right hand to point palm towards the opposite wall.
Furrowing his brows, a haze of black and red appears around his hand, swirling around it for a moment before coalescing into a black glove with a silver circular plate on the back. The plate has a raised center with engraved symbols that make no sense to Ororo, and there are five differently coloured gemstones embedded into the edges of the plate, each one pointing to one of his fingers.
The orange stone pointing towards his pinky finger glows a little and a leather clad book appears, hovering in the air in front of his hand. Syd moves it in front of him and it opens obediently. Curious, Ororo leans over a little to try and read it, only for the symbols inside to means absolutely nothing to her. Based on the click of his tongue against his teeth, they mean something to Syd though and he's not pleased.
"Look, you're not my mom and last I checked I don't even have a girlfriend at the moment let alone a wife, so I don't see how it's your business. Secondly, because of my magic i'm actually immune to the negative side effects of smoking. Thirdly, who said I was smoking regular cigarettes?" this draws Ororo's anger up short, as Syd continues to flip through the pages of incomprehensible chicken scratch.
"What else would you be smoking?" Syd sighs before waving his hand, causing the book to float off to the side as he turns to face her again.
"It's a magical herb, and I mean that quite literally. The closest mundane equivalent i've come up with as an explanation would be if you took marijuana but took out the THC, the chemical that gets you high, and instead of just calming you down it also boosts the rate that your magic recovers. Completely non addictive, the smoke carries no second hand side-effects other than smelling like lavender for some reason i've yet to figure out, and even if you're not magical the only possible danger of directly breathing it in is if you're asthmatic and can't handle a little smoke in your lungs. In other words, it's completely safe. Of course i'm gonna have to figure out a way to set up my garden of the stuff again, seeing as i'm no longer able to get to mine. Thankfully I keep a small stash of both dried leaves and some seeds in case of such an event. Now if I could just figure out why i've zeroed out."
"Zeroed out? Is that to do with that strange book of yours?"
"Okay, are you going to be this curious all the time?" The twitch returns, but Ororo takes a deep breath and tries not to get upset at her bosses new guest.
"I'm sorry if my curiosity is irritating. The existence of magic is something that i've been curious about since I was young. I wouldn't expect you to understand, just like i'm sure there's a lot about you that I don't know yet. Very long explanation short though: before I knew about mutants I was raised believing my powers to be mystical or perhaps even divine in nature, and when I learned that they weren't I was curious where the line was drawn. As you are living proof that magic is real, I can't help but wonder if perhaps you know the answers to questions i'd long since stopped asking."
Syd sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose with one hand. True, he can understand the sentiment. Lord knows how ravenous he was for knowledge when he first awoke his powers. However he's currently trying to both run a diagnostic on himself and maintain a plausible cover story. Both of which are difficult with someone questioning everything he's doing. He flips a few more pages in his book.
"No, it's fine. I understand that much at least. I'm just not in a really good mood, and I apologize for taking it out on you. A short story for a short story then. First, a question: what do you think magic is? And I don't mean the literal explanation of the metaphysical energies that power my abilities. What do you think the process of casting magic is like?" Ororo moves so that she and Syd are face to face before she leans against a wall as she thinks.
"Well, I always thought that you spent years studying ancient texts, and after that it was a matter of carefully formulating magical circles and waiting for the right circumstances to be able to cast spells."
"You'd be right if we were talking about ritual magic. Name's fairly self explanatory. What you don't seem to know is that magic comes in many flavors, for lack of a better phrase. The way you express magic is dependent on multiple things, though the two most important are education and personal beliefs. Over all, there are three primary categories for spells: Ritual, Incantation, and Blitz. Ritual is the slowest but each individual spell holds incredible power, while Blitz is the fastest to cast but is generally the weakest, with Incantation being the middle ground for both aspects. There are literally thousands of branches and sub-branches to each of those three categories, but it would take hours just to list the ones my magic falls under so let's skip that for now.
My magic is referred to as 'Conceptual Construct Magic', and falls under Blitz magic, though there are Ritual aspects to it. To summarize it as quickly as possible, I crystalized certain aspects of my personality alongside some of my magical power and soul, turning them into objects. Every time I use one, it gains 'points' and becomes a little more powerful. For some reason all of my 'points' are gone, meaning that each of my constructs is back to square one. Now for the book.
That's my 'Grimoire Magika'. It's a record of all the magic i've learned, as well as a way for me to keep track of my 'points' and it allows me to somewhat manually change how my constructs are growing. Because it's a magical construct it has an infinite number of pages and I can look up whatever information I need instantly so long as I actually know said information. Helps when i'm trying to remember which species of dragon is which, not so helpful when encountering a brand new situation."
"Dragons?" Syd waves his hand dismissively.
"A hypothetical example. Most dragons have been extinct for hundreds of years, and the few that still live are reclusive and more trouble than it's worth to hunt down either literally or figuratively. My point is that as much as it's the culmination of all my knowledge, it's still limited to MY knowledge. I have no clue why i've suddenly zeroed out or how I managed to end up at this location in this time. Nor do I have any idea how to return. This..this is just great. Man I need a smoke." Snapping his hand again with a look of concentration on his face, Ororo watches as he finally manages to create a small black and red circle in the air above his hand.
Out of the circle a small black orb appears, seemingly made out of oil or something along those lines. Sticking his hand deeper into the orb than should be possible, Syd rummages around for a moment before pulling a small plastic box out. The box looks a lot like a pack of cigarettes, only the box itself is pure black except for a blood red hexagon with a black cartoon bat in the center.
Opening the box, Syd takes a small pure black stick with red colouring the last two or so inches - again, looking incredibly similar to a real cigarette - and lifts his pointer finger to point straight up. Once more a small haze of red and black particles, which Ororo decides on closer inspection look a lot like ash, covers his finger. This time they converge and create a small flame on Syd's finger tip, which he uses to light his not-cigarette. Waving his finger to 'put out' the flame, Syd inhales deeply and then releases a small cloud of smoke. A small part of said cloud drifts into Ororo's face - by complete cosmic accident, Syd would swear up and down if ever asked - and she's about to make a really angry retort when a stray thought hits her just as the smell does.
"Huh. It really does smell like lavender. Weird." Syd snorts.
"Told you. So, any other odd questions you have about me or magic that you just can't wait to find the answers to?"
"You said that your magic is called 'conceptual construct' magic, and that it was crystallizations of your personality and soul. Isn't tearing your soul into pieces kind of bad for your health?" Syd shrugs, wincing a little as he aggravates one of his wounds.
"If you're not careful. To do it properly it's less 'tear a piece off your soul' and more 'shave a little off the top'. If you only take a small bit of soul away from the source, it's only about as painful as a splinter, and the main core and the new piece both heal fairly quickly, stabilizing. True, if someone were to somehow to the nigh impossible and actually break one of my weapons it would hurt like a bitch, but the fragments would reconverge to my core after a little time, and i'd actually become more powerful because of it. Of course, the more powerful the soul fragment the more painful it is when it's shattered, so the concept of spamming constructs and breaking them isn't really feasible for large scale power jumps. Plus if it gets too powerful it does actually run the risk of crippling me if it breaks. Thankfully with five fragments it'd take about a decade before any of them would reach that point, and i'd like to think myself smart enough to break it before it got that far, or just not allow it to break at all."
"Makes sense, I suppose. Like taking a snipping from a plant and potting it so it can become a whole new plant. So, what sort of 'aspects' did you put into your constructs?" Syd summons his glove once more, and points to each of the five gems as he speaks, taking another puff of his not cigarette as he does so.
"The Death Scythe: representative of the concept of Death. I funneled all of my fear into it. The War Hammer: the concept of Hate. That's my anger. Apollo's Bow: the concept Arrogance, as well as my pride. The Golden Coffin: Creation and my greed. And finally we have the Philosopher's Stone: made from the concept of Eternity and my regret." Ororo blinks and sits silently for a moment as Syd puffs away.
"Well...those sound….pleasant." Syd snorts.
"Don't worry, they're not supposed to. They were designed to be weapons of nearly unstoppable strength. They were created with the sole purpose of making me the most powerful being on the planet."
"Why?" Ororo's question brings Syd up short as his mind flashes to the last twenty four hours in his memory.
"A pipe dream from a time long past, before a child learned that power wasn't the most important thing in life." Syd stares off into the metaphorical void, flashes of the people he's lost floating by and dissipating.
The weapons had been made for the purpose of winning a war. A war that, if he has a say in it, would never happen in this world. A war that took from him things he didn't even know he had until it was too late. Syd breathes deeply of the relaxing herbs in his...he guesses 'joint' is the closest word. Blunt? He was never clear on pot-head nomenclature.
After a few minutes Syd resumes the conversation. Ororo asks a few more questions about his powers, and he answers them as simply as he can. Ororo doesn't ask him about his past, which he begrudgingly respects her for. He'll never tell her this of course, but this is actually the second time they had met.
The first was three years ago in his memory. She was aged, but was no less powerful for it. She had helped him learn that just because he had power didn't mean he could do everything on his own. He had nearly broken down when it took a pack of Sentinels to take her out. He would never forget the feeling he got from watching her raise her hands alongside Thor, literal God of Lightning, and call down a light show that nearly crystalized a square mile of land.
Eventually Syd became tired, and Ororo decided that further interrogation could wait until later. After showing him where spare clothing was kept, she turned off the lights in the infirmary and left Syd to his own devices. Syd slept that night, but only because his body demanded it. All night his mind was plagued with images from the last few days, both real and imaginary.
He slept, but his mind was not rested when Hank came back hours later to tell him that it was morning and he should get ready to move into his actual room. It was time for him to face this new world he had found himself in. Syd felt the need to ask where the nearest stiff drink was, but felt that it would deemed an inappropriate question. He was probably right.
I am Become Death, Destroyer of Worlds
