Hull was not supposed to be here. He was never supposed to get involved with this. He was supposed to have grown up, gotten a job in the shipyard, and lived a good thirty years wed to a woman who cooked and cleaned for him, and their seven children as well. Yes, losing one of them in infancy—and probably losing another during their childhood—would have sucked, but at least he would have been moderately happy. Hull had been on the way to go and get a job at the River Mersey, like his brother had. His mother had sent him out in his Sunday best, and he remembered feeling like the world's finest then, praying to God that he would have the fortune of running into Maddy Smith from down the road. If he had only run into her that day, then maybe his life would've turned out differently. But he did not run into Madeline that day. Hull had run into a sorcerer-hunter named Mathias De Groot, a tall and gaunt man who wore a suit with the grace of a mountain goat scaling a mountainside. Majestic, sure, but at the end of the day, it was still a dumb goat.
Hull had taken just about every turn imaginable, trying to shake the man. But each turn only confirmed one thing—he was being followed. He had eventually given up seeming calm and cool under pressure, and immediately bolted for the baker. But each step he took, each call for help, each frantic prayer, was all for naught. Hull learnt about the fog and its power about a fortnight after that day, but in the moment, that was the first time he had ever experienced magic. And it had terrified him.
"What do ya want wit me?!" he remembered his younger self asking. His accent—much like his teeth—had been atrocious back then. Mathias had responded in Dutch, as he often did back then. He'd only sully his tongue with another language if he found the person worth conversing with, and that had not been the case back then.
Even after years of knowing Dutch, Hull could not be arsed to ask him what he was saying back then, not once in his hundred years of knowing the man.
And now I'll never fookin' get the bloody chance!
Although, whether this was because Mathias was dead, or because he was about to be, Hull could not tell.
He had seen Mathias tear a tank turret off and hit a man over the head with it, caving in his skull. Hull had seen him obliterate a football with a kick, and watched Mathias scorch entire platoons of men with lightning bolts with the flick of the wrist. Even as his salt-and-pepper hair turned to silver, and his pale skin took on the texture of leather, the man's gnarled hands could administer blasphemous levels of violence.
So Hull could not believe his bloodshot eyes when he saw Mathias—in his righteous Dutch fury—drop an entire lightning bolt on their opponent and saw that he had missed. No, not missed, Hull remembered as he jumped over a wall. Dodged. The man fookin' swerved it!
Mathias, usually the calmest and coolest man in any room, lost his nerve and began to curse at the large black man, unleashing profanities that not even Hull would use. It was one of those reminders that Mathias was just that old, having been the grandson of a Dutch East India soldier; and it definitely showed whenever he had to interact with a Black person… or an Indian person… and even Hull had to restrain Mathias whenever he was in the company of a Chinese person.
Strangely enough, Mathias' second wife had been an Indonesian woman. And even now, he showered his grandson with gifts under the guise of donations. They would never know Mathias, for better or for worse.
His less than stellar behaviour towards Black people came back to bite him in the arse though, when the man who should have been turned into a charred corpse reappeared between them. Hull tried to move, but he had been far too slow, and instead got a shattered orbital bone from the man's backhand. Before his vision in his right eye had been impaired, he had gotten a proper glimpse at him. The lad was big, a couple inches shorter than Mathias but twice as wide with the sort of frame Mathias' grandfather would have fetched a pretty penny for. If the disrespect from the backhand was not enough of an indication that this man was not taking them seriously, his showing up in a charcoal-colored suit to deal with them should have been the indication.
The backhand had rocked him, badly, and sent him bouncing back into the hard concrete of the shipping dock before he slammed into and crumpled the metal of a shipping container.
Mathias had taught him the art of healing, but that was a costly magic. It drained its user very quickly if their precision was not up to snuff, and even Mathias, an old man of 200 years, struggled with it. So Hull used enough of the magic to fix his broken ribs and look up in time to see Mathias being beaten down, every strike of his never coming close to landing. Two attacks are all it took. The first was faster than Hull could see, and he only knew what it was from the impact as Mathias' entire body was hunched over and lifted off the ground from a hit that could only have landed in his gut. The second attack came in the form of the Negro catching a still airborne Mathias by the back of his neck and ankle, and bringing him down on his knee. The crack Hull heard shattered his resolve, and the fear gave him the needed adrenaline to try and stand up. He fell back down, and resolved himself to crawl away instead. But that meant that he got the full view of Mathias being choked in the giant Negro's hand, cursing him the whole way through.
The man said something in French, and was given the reply of spit, although the wad stopped in the air, never coming close to the Black man's face.
"So be it," he said, this time in English. He grabbed Mathias' outstretched right arm by the wrist and Hull would never forget the screams coming from Mathias as slowly his body began to be pulled apart. Hull watched his long-time mentor—
And perhaps his only friend in the world—have his shoulder pop out, and then tear through the skin, and then have that tear expand downwards to his ribs cracking and breaking. They either popped out of his muscle and skin, or broke inwards and stabbed through his now exposed lungs. His heart and lungs tumbled out of the separating ribcage, and still Mathias was screaming as Hull could now see the cold expression of their killer, between Mathias' two halves.
Mathias' body continued to give way like wrapping paper as his spinal column moved one way, and his ribcage, lungs and intestines went another before his life finally came to an end as everything inside him fell victim to gravity and landed with a loud thud.
Fook this!
Hull used his magic to fully heal himself, and it exhausted him badly. But he had no choice, this was his only chance to not—
The man's hand wrapped around his neck, and Hull's heart froze as he was lifted off his feet. He could have sworn that he had been running for the last thirty-five seconds, trying his best to get away from this monster. But as he looked around, he realized that he was right back at the crumpled shipping container.
"No please!" he wailed, certain that he was about to go out the same way Mathias had.
The man cursed him in French; his voice was calm, low and deep.
"You are English," he said, and Hull cussed, he's fookin' French…
"Yea mate, I am," Hull responded, finding it futile to try and fight his way out of this one; his body instead went limp.
The Negro sighed before putting him back down on his feet. "It seems like this will be a day filled with misfortune…"
You can say that again…
Hull slowly turned around and found that he was damned near a head shorter than the man, and down a couple of stones too. His nose was crooked somewhat, and he had white sideburns but an otherwise black nest of curly hair. His cheekbones were very regal-like, and his eyes were hidden behind shades.
"Listen mate, I just need to get this one out the way… you're not gonna kill me, yea?"
He shrugged: "That depends on you. Are you going to co-operate," the man then pointed beyond his shoulder to the pile formerly known as Mathias De Groot. "Or are you going to refer to me as a monkey, like your friend did?"
Hull gulped: "Never dream of it, mate. I was 'gainst the Empire and col—"
"I do not care," the man said. "Answer my questions, and I'll let you leave here alive," The man took a glance back at where Mathias' lightning bolt had scorched the ground, "As much as I really want to. If you are like your friend over there, I will not hesitate to find a reason to kill you. And believe me, I am looking for one. But for now, play it straight and true and you'll be safe. But if I feel as if you are trying to lie to me…"
That's all ya had to say, mate…
"It'll be like I'm talkin' to my bishop. Anythin' information-wise you need, yea! If I can provide it, it's—"
"Are you with the Church of the Seven Futures?"
Fookin' hell…
Hull sighed and lifted up his shirt, showing him the tattoo he had willingly imprinted onto his skin.
The man sighed. "Secrecy bindings... of course, I should have known that this would be the case. Mr Baines' intelligence is half-baked."
Hull's eyes went wide. "Hold on a minute… you know Mr Baines?!"
The man's lips curled into a wry smile, "And there is my reason. I am sorry but I cannot let you live with that crucial bit of information."
Hull took a step back, "Listen mate, I won't tell a soul, yea! Not even me own mother could make me say—"
He had known it was futile to argue, and instead tried to sneak in a blast of heat from his eyes, using his Mastered Form, intended for the man's heart. But his beams stopped mid-air. No… no, not stopped… somethin's wrong here… somethin' don't make no sense!
The man stepped aside and the heat burned into concrete ground. Hull tried to turn his head and have his lasers tear through the man, as they had a hundred men before. But he was not there, once more showing his speed as he—
The punch easily broke through Hull's weakened shroud, and instead tore a hole through his body, from his back and out through his stomach.
His final moments were spent in confusion and desperation. Confusion because his body was spinning through the air, and he could not get a sense of North and South, and desperation because he tried to use what little magic he had to heal. His reserves were never his strong suit, nor was his body. What had saved Hull from being sacrificed that day was his mind.
He was already blacking out by the time his body hit the water, and the connection of his head onto the cold water's surface at the speed he was flying, knocked him unconscious. Hull sank to the bottom of the ocean.
Julian sighed and pulled out his phone to call Baines, but it went immediately to voicemail.
He had come all the way out here to get at least a hint of clue as to what was going on. Julian had a feeling that the zealous parts of the magical community had been congregating again. First it had begun as whispers and rumours, and then sightings and pictures, to full-blown meetings and joint worshipping circles. These acts went against the provisions of the treaty, and it made him uneasy to see the growing brazenness in which they were operating. That unease went into full-blown shock and panic when Mr. Baines showed up at his front door one day, waving at him like an old friend when something like him should not be walking the Earth again.
And Julian knew first-hand the contagion of religious sickness spread like wildfire in times of confusion and despair, and these were very confusing times.
He looked back at the pile of waste that had been Mathias De Groot, a magician supremacist who wished to bring about a world where the fog was a thing of the past, and humans were to be their chattel. Julian did not care about the humans, in truth, but the current social order being upended was not in his plans. Once he got the Opera, the world could burn for all he cared, but not until then.
Julian sighed a third time before heading back home.