With a flash of blinding white light Virgil had the world return to him and promptly collapsed to his knees the muddy ground squelching as he hit it, his hand still burning from where Rami had cut it. They were on the remains of a train track that had been left in a field to be overgrown, the grass around them reaching waist height, the field was bordering a woods so thick that in the inky blackness of night made it look at least to Virgil what he imagined the end of the universe would look like. Virgil heard moaning next to him, he turned to see Rami laying in the mud next to him. Rami was pale, as pale as a ghost with the flu, he was twitching slightly. Virgil forced himself back to his feet to survey their surroundings but the cloud cover was blocking out any star light and there didn't appear to be any towns nearby.Virgil began to panic. Where were they, why were they here, what had Rami done, were their lives still in danger Virgil thought all this and more in a matter of seconds his mind racing. He felt something pulling on the leg of his pants, looking down he saw Rami trying to pull himself back to his feet. Virgil reached down grabbing Rami under the arm and helped the man rise. Virgil opened his mouth to ask whichever one of his many questions came out first but Rami spoke first.
“Easy boy” he started, his mouth stained with mud and dirt, “there’s a cottage in the south east corner we’ll get there before we speak again.” Rami started shuffling slowly towards the forest, though Virgil found himself having to wait a couple of seconds between each step in order to stay behind him. They inched their way through the field agonisingly painfully slowly the only sound being the wet mud beneath their feet. It must have taken them at least an hour to cross to the cottage. Rami produced a massive set keys from inside his suit, how they hadn’t made a noise till now Virgil would never know. It had one enormous key ring in the middle and countless smaller rings branching off it all with a number of keys all except the one Rami wanted that one had exactly one key. He placed the key in the door, turning it the sound of the deadbolt unlocking like a cannon. Rami pushed the door open, the hinges creaking as he did so.
“Remind me to fix that before we leave in the morning” Rami said as he walked inside. Virgil followed and Rami closed the door behind him, relocking it. The room they were standing in was pitch black Virgil couldn’t even see his nose. Rami spoke next to him from the darkness.
“Take ten steps forwards there will be a door on your left that’s the bathroom you can use the light in there provided you have the door closed, to your right will be a bedroom you can’t use the light there straight ahead will be the kitchen door again the light is fine only when the door is closed I’m going to be in there when you want me to explain everything but if you wish to use the bathroom first do we'll probably be all night.” Rami shuffled off ahead of Virgil, Virgil heard the kitchen door open and close behind Rami.
If Virgil was honest he probably didn’t need to go to the bathroom but he didn’t know what awaited him in the kitchen. Walking in he could feel that it wasn't a spacious room, still it took him a moment to locate the light switch revealing it to be even smaller than he expected, it was quite literally just a toilet and sink, the walls and floor were just bare concrete. Virgil sat on the toilet for about ten minutes, his head awash with worries before he decided that nothing was going to come out and it was time to face the event at play that he was not yet aware of .
Virgil stood in front of the kitchen door, taking long deep breaths to steel his nerves before he gripped the handle. Pushing the door open it was the heaviest door he had ever had to open and inside nothing. Rami had the lights off.
“Take your time” came Rami’s voice from the nothingness. Virgil stepped through the door, closing it behind himself. Rami’s voice spoke again.
“The light switch should be next to your right ear” Virgil reached around his fingers feeling as though they were being drawn to the light. He turned it on. The light wasn’t very strong but it allowed him to see that the kitchen was just as minimalised as the the bathroom with a single work counter that had a kettle sat atop it a single ocean blue mug next to it, the concrete in this room had yet to be covered either and in the middle of the room was a table with three chairs around it Rami sat in one of the chairs a mug with the image of John Travolta on it steam with slowly rising from it and opposite him was a mug that bore a picture of trees swaying in the wind on it. Rami gestured for him to sit. Virgil pulled out the chair sitting slowly taking the mug in both hands looking down to see it contained black tea.
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“Sorry if you like milk in it we don’t have any here” Rami said. Virgil brought the mug to his lips taking a short sip, the liquid burnt his mouth and he had to stop himself from gagging on with the bitterness. They sat in silence for a few minutes as Rami drank from his cup. When he finished he eyed Virgil for a long moment before breaking the silence.
“Would you like to ask me about anything in particular or do you want me to choose a starting point and go from there” Rami said. Virgil thought for a second he had so many questions he didn’t know where he wanted to start, he opened his mouth to tell the other man to choose but that wasn’t the words he spoke.
“What were my parents like?” Virgil blurted out. Rami chuckled to himself at that before replying with a hint of sadness in his voice.
“They were my best friends, they were two of the kindness most genuine people you could ever meet but we had a falling out about twenty years ago, not long after they got married they started talking about having a family and the life we lived wasn’t a life for children to be near so they wanted out and i reacted with anger honestly I felt abandoned like they were saying we weren't family but I was young at the time and stubborn so I should have come to apologies back then but now it’s too late.”
“So what does that make me?” Virgil asked.
"You are for lack of a better term a wizard" Rami said "as we're your parents, me and your parents were somewhere between spies and anti terrorists agents."
"Against who"
"inter-realm cults. So this isn't the only world, we know of eighty-three worlds, about sixty-seven of which are part of the inter-realm Council, of those that are about half are currently ran by anti-magic cults who are trying to gain control of other realms and it was our job to stop them they are the most prominent but also the least important on a multi-realm scheme on top of those there are species specific superiority cult we only handled the human cult or a cult who attacks human, more often we were dealing with death cults. So some of these death cults are your run of the mill kill anyone death worshippers but some of them are... So to understand them you need to understand the Oncari. Each realm is held together by an being called an Oncari and the Oncari is the person who created the realm by using the strength of their magic to carve out their own realm and killing the Oncari will cause the realm to fall apart the only exception to this is this realm which is the oldest known realm. The Oncari we worked for is a Dragconoid called Solaris and that is were i was originally bringing you but instead we have to go see the Grand Council which is a subset of the council because recently 4 of our 5 Rhabdomancer all had visions that someone is uniting the cults and that the person who would save the realms is someone who is set to be a year away from maturity by the next equinox. The equinox and the solstice happen on every realm at the exact same time as it does here for reasons we don't know even realms that don’t have suns and measure time completely differently their versions of the solstices and equinox happen at the exact same time as every other realm.”
After a few moments to process the bombshell revelations just dropped on him Virgil began “ so let me just see if I got this right I’m magic, my parents where magic spies, there's a multiverse were most people out there can do magic and most of the people who can’t have anti-magic cults,there’s also death cults that want to see the multiverse burn for a bunch of different reason and there is someone out there uniting them all and we are going to meet some grand council because I could be the God damn chosen one. Yeah thanks but no thanks I’m good I'll just go to that solar dragon guy and be safe with him if that’s alright.” Virgil could hear his heart beating in his chest and he was panting was it anger or the anxiety of finding out just how small he was in relation to a multiverse or that the same multiverse might rest on his shoulders, he was pretty confident that if it did rest on him that it was beyond doomed. Rami looked soulfully into Virgil’s eyes letting the weight of the situation hit the young man full and then watching and waiting while panic gripped him again today, seeing his eyes darting around the room and the rapid rise and fall of his chest, waiting and waiting not saying a word until Virgil had recomposed himself because the last piece of information he, while only speculation was what he believed would be the thing that tipped Virgil into going with him.
“You did forget one thing, cultist are who probably killed your parents”
