Unable are the loved to die
For love is immortality.
Praha, Ceská republika - 1970
Vika could think of no way more beautiful to observe the city than from the sky, as she moved with the window, heedless of any effect gravity or indeed the wind may have sought to exercise upon her. The spires of the buildings stretched towards the sky like pikes as though they hoped to scrape the stars, and all the world was aglow with warm light from the setting – or was it rising? – sun that hovered at the horizon.
She swept low, glad for her glamour, and then lower still, so that she skimmed along the surface of the Vltava river, and trailed a hand lightly along the surface, startling some of the brilliantly coloured fish, which darted and dodged, and made the water seem as though it sparkled. She sped along the river and then upwards again, as though caught and tossed by the wind, and her long grey hair flew and she spun and laughed at the city and at herself, and her heart was light.
Only once did she nearly drop the package, but she caught it by a single corner and pulled it with her, and very narrowly avoided an accident.
High above the city, where the clouds and the air were thin, the entire place was summed up in a few points of gold, as though the earth were a canvas with prinpicks stabbed through it, showing the light beyond. When she was young, that was what Ragnor had told her stars were – tiny rifts in the sky, glimpses into a world beyond.
Vika alighted on the high, cold cupola of the cathedral's belltower gracelessly, stumbling upon impact, as unlike a bird in that moment as she had been like one in the sky. Her long grey hair flicked and snapped behind her as the unkind wind continued to scour her. Against the darkening backdrop of the evening sky and the wan sunlight, her hair resembled so much starlight.
She turned and looked out over the city. far below her. It was a tiny oasis of warm light against the star-studded, velvety sky - rarely if ever had she seen the city from this perspective, like an angel looking down over the world. When she thought that, she almost laughed - if she was anything, it was certainly not an angel.
The wind howled at her suddenly, knocking her off balance - she managed to avoided falling flat onto her face, and laughed a little at herself, and then Vika Vlčeková jumped off the cathedral.
She could slow the air enough around her that she landed lightly, managing to avoid twisting or indeed spraining her ankle as she had done before. Old Town Square was as busy as ever, and although a part of Vika yearned to remove her glamour and join the groups of teenagers sitting outside the cafes or perched on the edge of curbs, laughing, a larger part of her registered her role as Magnus' errand girl, and forced her to turn away from the laughter and bustle of the mundane world.
Along one wall of the cathedral, visible only if you were looking for it, she found a rune carved into the wall, a mess of overlapping lines and angles taken from several different runes to create a new one. She pressed her hand against it, picturing it, focusing it in her mind, and was unsurprised when her hand began to sink into the stone as surely as if it were made of… cheese, or something. She smiled a little, and stepped forward, wincing a little as the unpleasant texture washed over her, and then she was stepping into a small space carved into the wall, barely large enough to hold her. Roughly one metre in length and width, a hole gaped into nothingness barely two inches from her foot – she stood into the space and held her breath as though to shrink her small frame into nothingness as the wall solidified once more. She stepped out, over the hole, into nothingness, and closed her eyes, and she fell.
The catacombs.
Few areas of Prague's ossuaries remained unexplored, and it seemed fitting that Magnus should have an intimate knowledge of those that were. The place was dark and stank, of rats and of rotting flesh, and Vika wondered what could be left to rot after so very long. She held the package close to her, as though it could protect her or she it, and she peered into the shadows that clung to the skull pillars holding up the roof, but could see nothing. The entire thing reminded her of the bone cities of the Nephilim, where the Silent Brothers dwelled – and she had always hated those sparse moments she had been forced to visit those. She turned on her heel, and she walked deeper into the darkness, aware acutely of being watched.
She hoped that she would know what she was looking for when she found it.
And she did. When the bones faded to iron and she came face-to-face with what could only be described as a cell, she knew that this was what she had been looking for.
The stone roof sloped suddenly downwards, a solid sheet of bones and concrete contorted into a screen of sorts. This came to just above her head – below that, thick iron bones stretched to the floor, and anchored the entire thing, like a tiny cage. On the floor in front of the cage, a thick chain stained with something dark and a few scraps of paper were all that she could see in the dim light. Stepping closer, she found that she could see nothing within the cage – only darkness.
And then the hand shot out at her and she let out a yell and fell backwards, landing in a clumsy half-crouch, and stared.
The hand was a mottled, rotting thing of bones and talons and pale, diseased flesh that clutched at the bars in lieu of grabbing Vika herself, and she realised the source of the rotting smell at once. She could see the veins and the muscles and the bones moving beneath the skin, and she took a breath. She had seen worse, but this had just taken her by surprise.
She collected herself, as best she could, and stood again. The package was still in her arms, and she held it out as one might a weapon, as though to show she meant no harm. She took a single step closer, then another, until she judged that she was close enough. She could see the creature within more clearly now – a pale figure with skin tight to the skull so that its jaw-bone and eye-sockets alike seemed far too big for its face. Whatever it was, it had been disfigured – angry, burnt wounds gaped across its bare chest.
Someone had carved, branded, sliced runes into its skin.
Magnus?
"The High Warlock of Brooklyn sends his regards," she said, and threw the package through the bars. Then she turned on her heel, and did her very best not to run as she walked back towards the light.