With his legs failing him, Ed hoped to crawl backwards, dragging his hips with each slap of his hand to the ground. All he managed to do was create streaky red handprints on the ground.
He couldn't make sense of it, the words on the wall. What did they mean? Why were they there? Who left them?
The answers escaped him but for the 'who'. As far as Ed was concerned it could be only one person, but after what he'd seen he wasn't sure if he'd regard them being a person, since it meant acknowledging their humanity, or lack thereof.
"This can't be happening," he muttered.
He leant upright, wiped away the blood from his satchel, wiped his hand on his shirt and reached for the box.
Its plainness hadn't changed, even now. Ed was perplexed as to its importance, or why it was linked to the Slayer or him. His mind sped back to first accepting the job, "but, Owen. Surely not?"
The latch was tough, rough, rusted ever so slightly, but Ed managed to prise it open. Inside was no less plain. A bed of straw packed the open space, but filling most of it was a small metal orb, no bigger than a golf ball. Ed picked out the orb, tossed away the plain box and inspected it, rolling it around in his fingers. Four red jewels were embedded in it, one large like the north pole and three smaller ones to its south, west and east. Wrapped around the jewels, rings of silver and gold inlay with strange markings, possibly runes, that Ed had never seen before.
He'd been provided with a humble education, no better or worse than any other his own age, but his grandfather, Alden, was a man of study. At home, they had endless amounts of books that, from a young age, Ed had always been encouraged to read.
Roman Rebellion: The Exploits of Aethelwulf at the Isle of Wight, A Study of the Nazareth Faith, Columbus' Failed Crusades, Ed had read them all. As a child, he'd scoured through all the books at some point, seen all manner of symbology from all over the world. But as he traced the jagged lines, the unusual shapes they presented themselves in, he realised, he didn't recognise them at all.
As he scanned over the orb, he couldn't help but wonder if it was real gold, real silver or what sort of jewels they were. They looked precious enough, meaning, they'd certainly have value. Even without the jewels, the gold and silver alone, if real, would fetch a high price. Every part of it was in immaculate condition, untarnished.
For a brief moment, his inquisitive nature and the strangeness of the orb in his hands distracted him from his current predicament, finding himself fully transfixed with the same curiosity that drew him into his present situation.
His heart had calmed, his nerves settled and the orb had ceased rattling in his hands as they became steady again. When Ed got like this, his focus coalesced as he retreated subconsciously into a bubble, blocking out distractions beyond his field of attention. Usually, being in this state would aid in study, either recreationally or for other purposes, but he could scarcely imagine the relief it might bring him when confronted with horrors he'd witnessed in the last several minutes.
He may even have stayed there, studying the orb, lost in the shock filled void of his own thoughts until someone, anyone, else arrived. But before he could retreat deeper into the comfort his psyche attempted to provide him with, a familiar sound began to draw him out, like a hand reaching out to pull him to the surface.
He began to re-familiarise himself with his surroundings with each sluggish blink like a veil was being lifted and expanding his field vision once more. It was the words on the wall, it seemed they hadn't finished providing him with unsolicited trouble.
The sound he'd heard was the letters of the lower line, the words that told him to open the box. They were fizzing, bubbling and boiling until embers appeared and the blood seemed to burn, peeling away from the wall, the ash dissipating, disintegrating into the air.
Before long, all that remained on the wall was his name. It occurred to Ed that that magic was responsible for the peculiar phenomena, but for that to be the case, someone must be close by to activate it.
Having regained strength in his legs, he was quick to his feet, frantically checking every corner of the room. He'd resolved to search further as well, willing, though reluctant, to venture further into the house.
"Who's there!" He shouted as his voice echoed and he waited for a response. "Be warned, I know magic, I'll defend myself if I have to."
But no response came. Then, before he could take the first step, he felt a sudden pain in his thumb, like the pin-prick of a needle. It seemed as he became tenser and his attention was placed elsewhere, he'd grasped the orb firmly in his fist. His thumb squeezed into one of the jewels.
When he'd eased his grip and looked down at the strange object, one of the jewels had depressed below the surface, like a stuck button. It appeared that as Ed become tense, he'd gripped the orb tightly and pressed into the jewel. As he yanked his thumb away, he realised that when he'd pressed it, it released the almost indiscernible needle upward and punctured his skin.
The stem was thin, tall and at the top, there looked as though it was barbed. Two flat prongs stuck out either side and when he peeled his thumb away, had taken tiny traces of his blood with it.
Following a short moment of confusion, the jewel snapped into place as the needle retracted back into the jewel and disappeared.
Ed lifted the jewel closer to his face, baffled as to its purpose. As he stood there, debating the intricacies of the mechanism, he was completely unprepared for the blinding beam of red light that suddenly shone out of each jewel on the orb.
Quickly pulling the orb away from his face, he shielded his eyes with his free hand to ease the daze from the brightness, as the light filled the room. It lasted only a few seconds before the light faded and simmered away. Unfortunately for Ed, however, the ordeal wasn't over. The back of his left hand, the one in front of his face, shielding his eyes from the light began to burn.
Ed burned his hand on a hot pan once. He was cooking dinner for himself, and himself alone, as he always did since his grandfather died. Stupidly, while absent-minded, he attempted to make room in the oven for another pan without anything protecting his hand and it burned him. He didn't grab it hard enough to brand himself as a farmer might with their livestock, but it blistered and left a mark.
The pain he was experiencing at this moment reminded him of that pain. He imagined that if he grabbed the pan harder and held it for a period of time, that pain would be similar to how his hand felt at this very moment.
He looked at his hand and true enough, it was burning, turning pink, then red. Some sort of circle was forming. He ran to the kitchen, he'd passed through and attempted to relieve the pain under the cold water of a tap. It didn't help, if anything, the pain grew greater with every passing second.
Unable to contain his pain, he yelped and fell to his knees, tears and snot beginning to flood from his eyes and nose. Just when he was beginning to think it had to end soon enough, his right hand began to burn as well and just the same as his left, a circle was forming, pink then red.
The orb he'd been holding dropped to the floor, shortly followed by his own body as he collapsed, held prisoner by the searing of his flesh.
Ed's arms locked up, his muscles straining under the pressure. He found it hard to believe no one in the area heard the murder of the house's occupant, maybe magic was involved, maybe the Slayer killed before they could react. One thing was certain, the curdling screams coming from Ed would be heard. He hadn't closed the back door after entering.
The strain coursing through his body worsened as the pain eventually caused his head to drop and his consciousness to fade away. The last thing he saw before he passed out was the orb roll into view, the large jewel still emitting a small amount of light. Unlike before, the light was faint, forming some sort of image on the surface. It looked like a coat of arms, Ed had seen it somewhere before, a dragon, a cross, he couldn't make out the details with his vision blurring as it was.
Just before he passed out, however, as the orb rolled closer to his face, he could make out the words beneath the image, 'Inimici nostri, interfecti sunt'
----------
As the scattered fragments of his consciousness began to pice themselves back together, his eyes becoming less heavy and his senses returning to him, Ed groaned as he stirred himself back to life.
The state he woke up in reminded him of the feeling he had after a night down the pub, drinking plenty of mead and making a fool of himself. Waking up the next morning, he always felt groggy, like he'd not had enough sleep and his body had punished with a throbbing headache in return.
Rolling over off his back and onto his front, the cold of the tiled floor soothed his sore head and he questioned whether or not t stay there for a few minutes longer.
But as the daze wore off and his memories came flooding back, he recalled the events before he passed out and immediately checked his hands.
"What in the world is that?" he asked himself.
They weren't pink, or red. But the circle was still there and now, it had flourished into a discernable shape and changed colour. The best way Ed could describe it was so deep a purple that it was almost completely black, if not that, then black shaded with a hint of purple, he couldn't decide.
At first glance, the circle itself looked like the conventional magic circles you'd see formed on activating spells, or others drawn, engraved or imbued into or onto materials to attribute them with some sort of magical property.
Unlike conventional magic circles, however, the symbology was unfamiliar to Ed. Typically magic circles would include some form of a linguistic element, in Britannia and the Norse Alliance runes are commonly used, as well as other native languages and occasionally Latin. In the Roman Empire, the only officially recognised language used by their armies for magic inscription was Latin.
Inscribing language into a magic circle was necessary to allow mana to meet the conditions that would enable the desired outcome of a spell, it served as a form of programming and instructed mana to form a certain way. Because of this, the general function of a spell could be deciphered upon the study of its inscriptions, that is, as long as the language was known to the person studying it.
Ed only recognised the symbols within the magic circle because he'd also seen them on the orb earlier. He assumed that the orb taking a speck of his blood and, in turn, glowing had something to do with it all. Unfortunately, exactly what all of it meant, as well as what sort of magic had now been place on his hands eluded him.
There was no texture to them, which Ed found strange considering it felt like he was being burned, he'd expect some sort of physical response to them being there but there wasn't. If anything they looked more like tattoos. Ed even tried rubbing the circles off, but it seemed he was stuck with them for the time being.
Trying to rub them off reminded him of the fellow he delivered the letter to earlier that day that was stuck with the word 'CHEATER' tattooed to his forehead. As far as Ed was concerned, it was both good and bad. The good thing was that this could be temporary, that if certain conditions are met, they could be dispelled or disappear on their own. The bad thing was that there was a specific, calculated purpose being this entire charade he was in that led him to believe otherwise. Someone wanted him specifically for this to happen to and he had no idea why.
Picking himself and the orb up off the floor, he realised he'd need to start making decisions about what he was going to do about his present circumstances. But while he pondered on the possibilities, it seemed fate chose for him. Out on the street, a police siren suddenly woke up, whaling away and alerting the authorities to crime. Presumably this crime.
It came as a bit of a relief that the police would arrive and everything would be handled from there. He wouldn't have to go out onto the street covered in blood and raise the alarm himself while everybody stared and judged him either.
Soon enough though, it dawned on him. Of course, it wouldn't be that easy.
Ed was a lowly messenger, with no family and one reputable advocate, Freya. What were the chances that things were going to go smoothly? Practically zero.
Not to mention what this would look like to the police.
With the blood on his hands, over his body and not enough time to wash, there was every chance they'd assume he was the one who painted his name on the wall. To make matters worse, he'd been screaming himself just before he passed out, which was likely to be mistaken for the screams of the victim. He was stuck.
He didn't want to run, that would be wrong. He wanted to offer what information he could to the police, but would they believe him? With everything that happened, surely it would sound like a twisted tale he'd concocted - a barely believable one - to deflect from his own guilt. Things weren't looking good. What made matters worse was the unusual magic circles that appeared on his hands. What were they? If the police saw them, would they know what they were? What if it was illegal or unknown magic, making him guilty of some sort of crime, it could even be enough to imprison him. Ed wasn't prepared to stick around and find out.
Quickly heading for the door, Ed decided that leaving back through the way he came was the best course of action, but as he stepped out into the garden he was surprised to see a policeman already coming up the stairs of the passageway.
"Oi, you, stop right there, bleeding loksna!" he shouted as Ed turned back through the door and locked it. "Open this door right now, you hear me, boy?"
Ed didn't open the door, of course, instead, he ventured back into the house hoping to find an alternative exit. Chances were if the rear exit had been covered, there was likely already police at the front door and sure enough, when he arrived close by, he heard them banging at the door.
"Armed police, open up!"
Adrenaline began to course through Ed now, providing him with unfettered focus and enabling him to concentrate on one thing, escape.
With both the front and rear covered off, ed's remaining options were any possible exit upstairs, hopefully, there was a window he could make an undetected exit from. As Ed ran through the living room, past the blood and gore he'd been rolling around in earlier, the police broke through the door. The stairs were an equal distance from Ed and the police, so with such high stakes, Ed enhanced himself with a bit of mana.
Usually, when using mana to increase his speed, he'd be almost twice as fast. he couldn't hold his full speed for long, so he pace himself and ration what little mana he had at his disposal. But this time, unlike before, he felt a surge of mana course through him like nothing he'd ever known. Like the power of a steam engine when a sudden increase in pressure occurs, Ed felt his physical output increase exponentially. He could feel a much larger, more potent mana present coming from within him.
It shocked him but he had no time to be idle and wonder. If anything this sudden increase in mana would benefit him right now, at least he thought it would.
Ed wasn't accustomed to using this sort of power, so when he activated it and jumped for the stairs, he overshot and crashed into the wall. One of the policemen who just stumbled through the door managed to stretch out enough to grab Ed's leg as he tried to clamber onto the stairs and he held Ed down as best he could.
But Ed was single-minded, focused entirely on escape and rather than surrender and let the proper, legal course of action take place, he resorted to kicking the policemen repeatedly in the head with his free foot until he let go.
He didn't take joy in it, but it was necessary he told himself.
Upstairs, Ed ran into the first room he saw. The window faced the front of the house where there was already a considerable police presence, with more of them loading their guns and fitting their armour, readying themselves to come inside. It was no surprise they were resorting to such lengths on random calls nowadays, the Slayer could be thanked for that, they needed to protect themselves after all.
Ed whipped back around and out onto the landing again where the other policeman had followed him up. He was about to say something, probably the typical 'freeze' 'don't move' sort f stuff policeman usually said, but before he could, a mana enhanced Ed barged straight through him, pushing him over the bannister and tumbling back down the stairs.
There were no windows in the next two rooms he'd searched, but his final option was the rear-most room, a guest room by the looks of it, smaller than the others but furnished surprisingly well.
As he looked out the window, down to the garden, he'd hoped he'd be able to at least jump over the back of the police that had gathered below, but with so many of them stacking up, ready to enter, his chances were low at best. To make matters worse, when he looked up, beyond the property line, there was practically nowhere to go.
"I'll have to take my chances, I guess," he said allowed, attempting to reassure himself.
But as he opened the window and prepared to step out, he heard shouts from behind him. A group of police aiming weapons at him stood in the doorway, ready to fire at any given moment. Ed could see they were nervous, it was no wonder. If they assumed he was the Slayer they'd likely be eager to capture him or kill him, either way, no more murders.
Ed began to beg for his life, "it wasn't me, I swear! I'm a messenger, I was delivering a package and it was just like this when I got here. Look..." he pulled the order sheet slowly out of his pocket and threw it over.
Among the jumpy looking men, one pushed through the group and picked up the paper. He donned a bowler hat, a short scruffy beard and opted for an overcoat instead of protective gear. Older than the rest, a superior evidently. In one hand a small gun, the order sheet in the other.
He inspected it for a moment and approached cautiously, his gun ready to point at any moment.
"Okay, mate, I believe you. My name's inspector Isak, how about you get down from there, we'll go down to the station and take a statement from you, no problem. Just come with us, okay, so you can help us make sense of all this."
He spoke softly, convincingly too. Ed almost believed him completely for a moment, his experience was clear.
"No, no, no you'll think I did it, you will. But I didn't, okay I didn't," he was frantic but his thoughts were flowing freely, then it occurred to him. "Look for Owen Jansson from the messenger guild, he was the one supposed to be delivering this and when I got here, it was like this!"
The inspector continued his slow approach.
"No, stay back, stay back!" Ed shouted.
"Sir, get back! We don't know what he's capable of," s a couple of the jittering policemen behind the inspector started to get a little too nervous when Ed shouted. The inspector turned back to them and gestured to relax.
At this point the inspector looked as though he was mediating between Ed and the police, one of which was ready to escape, the other itching to shoot.
"It's fine, our new friend here is gonna get down from the window and come in with us, no harm done," he turned back to Ed and smiled pleasantly. "Isn't that right, mate?"
Ed had already made up his mind, he was going to jump and give escape a go. Hopefully, this newfound mana would surprise him even more and help him.
He looked back one last time, "Sorry, I can't."
But just as Ed was about to jump, a shot was fired, aimed straight for him, followed by another, and another, until everyone but the inspector fired their weapons. To Ed, for a brief moment, it felt like time itself slowed as he witnessed every individual gun pointed at him flash as the triggers were pulled and bullets flew his way.
Panicked, but knowing there was nothing he could do, Ed closed his eyes. He wasn't accepting his fate by any means, it was simply a defence mechanism, the same as him raising his left hand to shield himself, almost as if not being able to see what's coming makes it less difficult to face.
In the moment, Ed figured if he was going to die, at least he'd join his grandfather and see him again. He wondered what the first thing he'd say to him in the afterlife was, probably something profane, maybe a hiding for getting there early.
Ed made a thud as he hit the floor, with considerable impact. He assumed he must have blacked out and fallen out of the window because he didn't remember the bullets hitting him, he couldn't feel the pain of the bullets nestled into his body.
Then he realised... the only pain he felt was his shoulder from hitting the floor and even then it wasn't that bad. So, he opened his eyes and looked up in front of him, expecting to see a group of police officers arrest him or shoot him again, while he had one last view of those pretty flowers.
To his surprise though, all he saw was a pile of used books, a messy bed and a set of draws. Not just any either, they were his used books, his messy bed and his set of draws. Ed was in his room, but how? Why?
He looked down at his body, patting away in search of bullet holes and blood. He was fine. besides the blood he'd got on him earlier that had almost completely dried now, there was nothing.
It was as he was patting himself down that he noticed it. The magic circle on the back of his hand. It had activated.