Dealing out Magic: Chapter 1
Trying something new. Figured I'd post chapters of this while I'm working on it. I hope the story comes out well.
***
Heavy smoke clung to the air, obscuring the setting sun in a way fog wished it could. The abandoned compound fell beneath the expanding pall, illuminated only by the raging blaze at its heart.
The Dealer stood unfazed. Each inhale took in what little clean air remained, and each exhale puffed a path through the smoke. He had a single hand raised, the palm upturned as a trio of playing cards hovered above it.
His gaze, as amber as the hidden sunset, scoured the veil engulfing the central warehouse. There wasn’t a single sign of those he’d come for, not a hint that they were still alive.
He strained his ears, gaze narrowing as he listened for the tiniest shift in rubble. Beyond the crackling of flames and the cracking of beams, there was nothing. Beyond the hissing as water pipes burst and the roaring of collapsing walls, there was only silence.
Gunfire pierced the air. Faster than the Dealer could react through conscious effort, the cards whirled around his body. Cold, hard lead met paper. The smoke swirled in the bullet’s wake, then settled back into its proper place.
The Dealer turned to face the cards, admiring the damage. Despite their simple construction, the scraps of paper had held strong against the bullet.
He raised his other hand. The bullet and cards separated. He twisted his wrist. The bullet followed. He adjusted his fingers. The bullet turned in midair. He admired its metallic surface, entranced by how the reflection of the flames danced across the material.
When he bored of it mere moments later, he let it tinkle against the ground without decorum. He had greater duties to tend to, and they lay somewhere beyond the smoke.
“I know you’re there.”
His voice echoed across the compound, overshadowed only the slightest amount by the flames now at his back.
“You know me. I don’t want to kill you.”
The fire leaped between buildings. The Dealer watched from the corner of his eye as another warehouse lit up like a funeral pyre. He made no attempt to save the building, or the abandoned goods that lay within.
More gunfire. A trio, this time. The cards again blocked one attempt, while his own bravery left him fearless as the other two zipped past his neck and face.
“I don’t want to kill you, but I will.”
From within one of the untouched warehouses came a single man. Dressed in ratty clothing, he charged for the Dealer, armed with nothing more than a piece of rebar.
A twitch of a finger. Nothing more. One of the cards shot for the man and sliced the rebar in two. Another card shot past and left a thin slice across his cheek. The third crumpled into a ball and hit the man’s forehead with enough force to topple him backward.
The Dealer approached, a scowl distorting the slight amusement once present on his freckled face. The man was nothing more than a simple thug, knocked flat and out cold. A few moments later, he awoke with a start and sucked in a deep breath. The Dealer was there in an instant to press his foot against the man’s chest.
“Stay down.”
“Y-you’re just a kid,” the man panted out.
“I’m twenty-three, asshole.”
As focused as his gaze was on the man underfoot, the Dealer knew nothing of the other approaching from behind. The Dealer’s instincts, however, as tuned to the air around him as they were to the cards he wielded, let him know the moment an attack was made.
The three cards returned in a blink, bringing the pipe to an abrupt halt. A noise rang out through the compound, as if the pipe had impacted metal rather than paper.
Without looking, the Dealer wrapped the cards around the pipe and hauled it from the man’s clutches. The man was left grasping for it in the moment until it dropped on his head from above. With a loud thunk, the man dropped behind the Dealer.
The Dealer let out a breath through his nose, more exasperated by the tedium of the encounter than the repeated attempts on his life. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected a full legion from drug dealers, but I was hoping you’d at least put up more of a challenge.”
The Dealer replaced his foot with one of the cards, the slip of paper providing enough force to hold the man against the ground. His co-conspirator received similar treatment, leaving only one card to the Dealer.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
The card followed along as the Dealer headed toward another warehouse. The blaze had yet to reach this one, and judging by how one of the thugs had emerged from it, there was little reason to believe it wasn’t where the others were staking their claim.
Along the way, the Dealer pulled the card out in front of him. In a single instant, nothing more than the firing of a neuron in his brain, he took hold of its entire molecular structure. As simple as peeling the plastic backing off a sticker, he split the card into two identical forms. He repeated this in a cascade until he had an entire swarm of them hovering at his back.
“I know you’re in here.”
With the same influence he held over the cards, he took hold of the warehouse’s doors. Old wheels complained as they rolled along worn, dented tracks, forced down a path they hadn’t trod in months, if not years.
The moment the gap was large enough for him to stroll through, a salvo of gunfire burst from the darkness within. The Dealer stood there, steadfast, as his cards took the brunt of the assault. Never once did the paper buckle or break.
When the deafening gunfire was replaced by the clicks of empty magazines, the Dealer peeked around his makeshift barrier. There, hiding and trembling in the shadows, was a quartet of men and a single woman. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape as they huddled around a pallet of plastic packets.
“Wh-what are you?” one of them asked with a voice as unsteady as his limbs.
“I’m the Dealer.” He brushed some of the shaggy, jet-black hair from his face, his hand coming away coated in a smoky odor. “Look, I’ll accept weed, that stuff doesn’t hurt people. But this?”
The Dealer motioned to the white powder that had been stuffed into the packets. The group before him glanced, then stared once more at him.
“I won’t let actual hard drugs onto the streets. So, here’s what’s going to happen.”
The doors to the warehouse shut behind the Dealer. Darkness returned. The roaring of the fire died against the walls. Beneath the muffled noise, little else except the breaths of five terrified individuals. One of the cards caught fire. It served only to illuminate the Dealer’s harsh gaze.
“You’re going to give up. You’re going to turn yourselves into the police when they get here in a half-hour, and then you’re never going to do this again, or else.”
“What are you gonna do?” the woman asked.
A snap of the fingers. Every card above and behind the Dealer burst into a beam of light. They curved together, thinned and thickened, and as a halo, silhouetted him. It was no mere circle of light, however. No, it bore the image of God’s greatest aerial beast, that griffin-like Ziz and the wings that had once unfurled wide enough to block out the sun. With those wings now his, with the magnificent might of the beast at his back, he stared down the people before him.
“You don’t want to know. Now, will this be easy or hard?”
Beneath the light of the Dealer’s halo, the five people dropped their guns and raised their hands. It always put a smile on the Dealer’s face to see a lowly human recognize their place in the world. Yes, this was part of why he did what he did.
“Glad to see you have some kind of head on your shoulders.” The light faded off into dimming streamers. In the darkness, they returned to the playing cards they once had been. “Now, be a dear and go join your friends outside.”
Despite his phrasing, he didn’t give them a choice. Cards clamped down on each of their limbs, acting as shackles that allowed him to toss them from the warehouse. Once they’d been removed from his sight, he approached the pallet of drugs.
“And as for you …”
The Dealer ran his finger along the top layer of packets. For a group of drug traffickers and dealers in the middle of an abandoned warehouse complex, their production was flawless. No matter how he poked or prodded, the plastic remained sealed tight.
His finger did more than play along the surface, however. It acted as a conduit for his abilities, allowing him to probe the chemical structure that made up the drugs. With such knowledge in his head, it became trivial to latch onto each individual molecule and pry it apart into a useless pile of nitrogen, carbon, and water.
Now inert, he had no problems with scattering it to the wind. He even made a game out of it. He formed the playing cards into the shape of a baseball bat, lifted a pack of drugs beneath the influence of his abilities, and wound up. Each impact was satisfying, a loud crack followed by the packet spiraling away through a high, broken window. He kept at it, never slowing his rhythm until the pallet sat empty.
“That’s better.”
He dusted his hands off, returned the playing cards to their prior flat appearance, and returned to the outside world. There, all seven of the people had decided to crowd around one another. Surprising, due to the shackles restricting their limbs, but impressive enough to put a smile on the Dealer’s face.
“Y-you know we’re just the runners, yeah?” one of them piped up. “The mules?”
“Can’t be a mule without drugs.” The Dealer fabricated his cards into a folding chair. With a flash of light, they transitioned from paper into metal.
“Our boss is on the way,” said another. “He’ll kill you.”
“I doubt that.” The Dealer relaxed in his seat, one arm draped over the back.
He didn’t have to wait for more than a few minutes. At the edge of the compound, there came the grind of tires against loose gravel. The Dealer perked up an almost imperceptible amount and twitched a finger. Almost right away, rubber switched out for wrenching metal and shattering glass.
“I think that’s him,” the Dealer said. “And here he comes.”
True to the Dealer’s words, the leader of this ragtag group of drug traffickers rounded the corner of a warehouse. However, rather than walking, he was dragged, his wrists captured in a shackle made of playing cards. His legs, held tight in a similar manner, struggled to kick and break free, but nothing worked.
“Wow, look at that.” The Dealer dropped the man before the others. “The gang’s all here.”
The Dealer rose from his seat and approached the man who was in charge of the entire operation. Shards of glass clung to his suit, tiny sparkles among an otherwise flawless expanse. Fierce blue eyes stared up at the Dealer, while a flurry of curses and complaints in another language flew from his mouth. That same mouth was soon muffled by a muzzle of cards.
“I don’t have time to listen to you. All I have time for is talking. So.” The Dealer crouched in front of the group as a coach would a little-league team. “Great job today. You gave it your best effort, and you know what, sometimes it’s still not enough. That’s not bad, though. You tried, and that’s all that matters.”
“Go to hell,” the leader said in a thick accent.
“Hmm. Maybe one day. I’ve heard it’s quite warm down there. As for you …”
The Dealer’s voice trailed off as, through the din of the flames and crumbling buildings, a trio of sirens approached. Seconds later, the stampede of a SWAT unit.
“All yours, officers.” The Dealer stood and left the gaggle of restrained criminals behind. “Oh, and try not to let them go again. I don’t like seeing drugs on the streets.”
Though the Dealer wished to leave, the Lieutenant in charge of the team approached.
“How can we ever thank you, Dealer?”
“I already told you. Now, you do your jobs and I’ll do mine.”
While the officers performed their duties, switching out makeshift restraints for proper ones, the Dealer approached the flaming warehouse. His legion of cards returned once again, although he had no need for their presence to deal with a calamity of this nature. No, all he needed was to grasp the very air that acted as an oxidizer and rip it away.
The entire warehouse went dim in a heartbeat. In the next heartbeat, whatever wood remained smoldering had its embers stripped and flung high into the atmosphere. The Dealer repeated this with the next warehouse, and then the third, until there was no further threat of the fire expanding beyond its limits.
One of the officers let out a low whistle at the sight of such power. The Dealer ignored it in favor of swirling a hand through the air. The wind followed his movements, dragging the smoke around and coiling it into a vortex. Once it had all gathered, he forced it high into the sky, where it could disperse safely.
The bones of the warehouse were abysmal to gaze upon. Not enough remained of the original material to call them anymore than husks of their former selves.
“Does this place matter?” the Dealer asked.
“It’s sat abandoned for twenty years now.”
“Perfect. Then I don’t need to fix it.”
He didn’t bother with any more of an answer than that. He retreated to the side, leaning with his arms crossed against one of the few structural beams still standing. Under his watchful gaze, the SWAT unit dealt with their arrests the proper way. None of them dared an attack on the officers, not while the Dealer was so close.
Only when the armored truck had been locked up did the lieutenant join the Dealer.
“You know, I always ask, kid. Where’d you get those fancy powers of yours from?”
“What, these?” With a thought, the Dealer levitated an entire deck of cards in front of his face and shuffled them. “I fell into a vat of radioactive playing cards.”
The lieutenant laughed and patted the Dealer on the shoulder. “I’ll get a straight answer outta you one of these days, kid. For now, though, get some rest. You did good work here today.”
“We’ll see about rest.”
This whole situation registered as nothing more than a slight nuisance to him. Like a simple walk through the park, there was no need to rest muscles that weren’t strained from the day’s activities, no reason to lie in bed and wallow when there was still so much moonlight left in the sky.
“Hey.”
The single word got the lieutenant to stop in his tracks and turn around. “What’s the matter, kid?”
For a long while, the Dealer stood silent, contemplating the words he wished to use. He settled on, “Nothing. Forget it.”
Yet, the more he stared at the armored truck, the more he relied on his influence over atoms and molecules to probe the living contents, the more a nasty pit settled in his stomach. Not like he’d eaten something horribly off, but rather like a sense of impending … something. Some instinct from deep down in the ancestral chain, buried under millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of civilization. It gnawed at him, had his toe tapping in the dirt, had his finger thumping against his upper arm.
He shook his head to silence the thoughts. The act only served to bury them once again. He’d deal with them later on down the line, once they’d become too much to bear.
“I’ll see you around, officers.”
The Dealer gave a lazy salute, then started his stroll away from the compound. Rather than remain confined to the ground, however, his playing cards acted as solid steps in a rising staircase. They never faltered under his weight, forming a path that carried him high off the ground until he could gaze out over rolling pastures.
At a suitable height, he swept his gaze across the world. It was tranquil, for an abandoned complex a mile out of town. The scorched warehouses stood as an ugly, blackened stain against an otherwise unmarred landscape. A soft, verdant green sat beneath an endless sea of stars, stretching from horizon to horizon as the fading sun allowed more brilliance to shine through. The occasional flock of birds soared overhead, while a breeze would ruffle through the grass every few seconds.
This was not the life the Dealer had ever known. This peace, this silence … it settled on him like a pressure on his chest, forcing his breaths to still lest they disturb the natural order.
He squeezed his eyes shut, forced himself to fill his lungs with a heavy breath, then switched from walking to hovering, and from there, to flight. The faster he returned to the city, the sooner he could escape the overwhelming freedom afforded to him by the wilds. The sooner he could drown out the temptation afforded by his abilities.
As the complex disappeared beyond the horizon, he muttered to himself, “Keep it together.”











