“The first thinge one must knowe about the world, if one desires to learn the deep magicks, is this: That Chaos, and verily Order, doth not play at fools-toss; and thou patient scholar, with thine head aglow of possibility and dreamings, wilt surely perish indeed, if thou doth possess the pride and weake constitution of the haughtie. So, then, learne thee well, scribe, and do not seek those thinges highre than thine comprehension.”

– Abd Al’Aril, Il Syriam Kusaph, translation Aldrin Merlin, 907 A.D.

***

Hector collapsed onto his grimy, spring-heavy mattress. The flattened, stained slab bounced him back up again, defying gravity with a weary “sproink” as tired steel coiled up like a rattlesnake, then summoned enough energy to expand once again.

He landed face-down, nose smashed into the cloth. It smelled strongly of marijuana.

Hello, home.

Hector reconsidered the thought. He was growing accustomed to the dirty, cluttered, and singularly unnerving one-room shack that Yogwo lived in. But was it really home? He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know. Something about the dingy, run-down house he had owned back in Mexico called to him. That memory stung- with a sting that seemed far, far away. He might never see that place again. Certainly not if Flores caught him, or if the police caught him.

“Alright, Hector. You’re probably exhausted,” began Goonda. The old Mayan was standing over him, looking down at the prone form laying on the mattress.

Hector barely managed a reply. “Probably? I’m more exhausted than… than…” The metaphor trailed off. Hector was tired of thinking.

Luckily for him, Yogwo was not. “Than an exhaust pipe!” he finished, and proceeded to cackle uproariously, as if he had just come up with comedy itself.

“What stunning intellect,” muttered Goonda, low enough that Yogwo couldn’t hear. “Truly, the world of humor lost its greatest master when Kylington St. Clair turned to the occult.”

Hector flinched. Kylington St. Clair? Ouch. He didn’t bother to ask who the Arch-Shaman was referencing. No use offending Ky- er, Yogwo.

“Anyways, Hector, you’re probably wondering how you survived the encounter with those two men.”

“Well, between Yogwo and the snake-”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Goonda impatiently, “Yogwo and the snake. But what about that sudden gust of wind? What about the sand that so coincidentally took that time to stir itself up?”

Hector blinked in confusion and attempted to sit up on the mattress. “I- I- well, I forgot all about it in the heat of the moment. It does seem unusual, that’s for sure, but I think you’re right in saying it’s a coincid-”

“NO!” Goonda shouted. “It was NOT a COINCIDENCE!”

Hector was, quite frankly, taken aback. The ancient Central American had never shown so much emotion before.

“That,” breathed Goonda, “was just to get your attention. I’m not mad. Yogwo, I’m not. Stop covering your eyes. Good. Now,” he took another deep breath, “now, Hector, do you believe in magic?”

“Uhhh… I mean…”

“Yes, you probably do after everything you’ve lived through. And if not, you should.” Goonda began to pace rapidly up and down the room, as if measuring its length. “Anyways, Hector, I made that wind appear. I made that sand fly into that man’s eyes.”

Hector’s mouth fell open before he could stop himself. “What?! You- you- the- you… You saved my life!”

Goonda tilted his head slightly, considering. “Well, I suppose I did. Oh well. Not important.”

“Saving my life is not important!?”

“That’s not what I meant,” muttered the Arch-Shaman, his hand placed wearily on his forehead. “Let me finish. I can do… things like that. They come easily, now. Most of the time.” He paused, as if reluctant to continue. “And Hector, if you want to take down Flores, you’ll need to learn how to do the same.”

A mix of astonishment and confusion dumped onto Hector’s head like a bucket of ice-cold water. He flinched involuntarily.

“I… need to blow sand in peoples’ eyes?”

Goonda moaned in exasperation. “How can you be so slow? You need to learn MAGIC, Hector. And your modern scientists say humans evolve to become smarter over time.” The last part he said under his breath. Hector pretended not to hear.

“Anyways, Hector, the point is this: Magic is a necessary skill to learn for one of your… extraordinary lifespan. Someday, I’ll teach you, Yogwo, although not until you’re finished with natural healing.” Another pause. “Hector, the first part is… painful. But once you get past that, it smooths out a bit.”

“…Okay?” Hector didn’t know what to expect, but he didn’t like where this was going. “And since I’m immortal, there’s no risk of death? No permanent damage done?”

Goonda’s laugh had a tinge of rueful malice, like nails scraping across a very angry chalkboard. “Right and wrong, Domini. No risk of dying. As far as I know, only a stone-sleeper can kill a half-death. But you’re wrong when you say ‘no permanent damage done.’ Let me tell you, there’s permanent damage.”

That’s not so encouraging, thought Hector.

“Lie down on your mattress. I’ll explain how this works, and then I’ll help you.”

Hector complied, curious to see what Goonda would reveal.

“Magic takes many forms. I prefer not to use that term, but it will make the most sense to you, so I’ll stick with it for now,” the half-death began. “Generally, a tzulik- that’s what the Mayans called magic-users- can affect the world in small ways by transferring two forces between various objects. These forces are Chaos and Order. Chaos-magic is easier to use, since everything in the world naturally tends towards disorder and dissolution. Order is more complex. It can…” Here Goonda paused as if searching for the right word. “Order-magic can restore things. In the process of restoring one thing, though, it destroys another. You’re effectively taking the order from one object and moving it to another. Like… like…” The emaciated man scratched his withered head in thought. Suddenly, an idea struck him. “It’s like drinking water. When you’re done, there’s more water in you, but less in the cup.”

Goonda scratched his head again, as if the analogy wasn’t as good as he had hoped.

Hector grunted, not sure how much of this he really believed. It still seemed weird, talking about “magic” as if it were a reality. Even though I’m basically unkillable… Can I really be skeptical after all that’s happened?

“Okay. So, those are the basics, I guess.” Goonda glanced down at his empty hands. “Yogwo, where’s your copy of Extrareferential Infinities Desystematized? You know, the big white book with the kitten on the front cover?”

“It’s over here, du- uh, Arch-Shaman,” Yogwo replied reverently. He immediately fished a prodigious volume from one of the bookshelves lining the far wall. It was white and, true to Goonda’s statement, had a kitten on the front cover. He treated the tome as if it were a piece of expensive china.

“Thank you, Grand Shaman. Someday I really must consider a promotion,” said Goonda as he took the hefty lexicon from his underling.

“Now then, Hector. Let me read you this one passage, it might clear some things up. Errrrrrh… here we are. Ah, yes. This is the page.” Goonda cleared his throat and began to read in a voice dryer than the Sahara. “Chapter 417: Implications of Recursive Chaos Taxonomies. Composite to the Besosa-Salem manifold is the… uh… the… never mind.” He peered at Hector inquisitively. “You’re not quite ready for this yet . Heavy reading. Heavy reading indeed.” He heaved the book back into Yogwo’s waiting hands, and from the way he handled it, Hector was pretty sure Extrareferential Infinities Desystematized was, quite literally, heavy reading.

Suddenly, his attention was drawn back to Goonda.

“What was I going to- oh, yes. The fern. The infinity fern is, I suspect, unique in that it essentially possesses an unending supply of Order. In other words, it’s so perfect, so pristine, so flawless and self-consistent that no matter how much Order one draws from it, it can’t be destroyed or dissolved. That’s why it can heal your body of seemingly any damage- with its own infinite Order, it never runs out, even when it uses the supply to repair you.”

“Get to the point, Goonda.” Although he was interested to learn more about the fern and its strange powers, Hector wanted nothing more than to go to sleep. Let magic wait a few more hours.

“Fine.” The Arch-Shaman began speaking at a rapid pace. “So, to use magic, you must undergo a process called reaching arcanity. It doesn’t take long. All you have to do is lay there and try to control your breathing as best you can. I’ll do the rest. Don’t ask me how.” He paused for breath. “Anything else?”

Hector shook his head and let himself fall back onto Yogwo’s grimy mattress.

“Silence, Yogwo, we need silence. All right. Get this started. Could you fetch me…”

Goonda’s raspy, mummified voice continued issuing commands to Yogwo, but Hector stopped listening. There was nothing he would rather do than lay down and breathe evenly. Right now, that sounds extremely pleasant. Just don’t fall asleep before he does… well, whatever he’s going to do.

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation.

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. Controlled, but apparently not good enough.

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. Slightly shaky. Do better.

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. It’s alright. Just stay calm.

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. How many more times do I have to do this?

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. That felt like a controlled breath. Why isn’t this working?

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. Come on, Goonda. How much more?

Breathe. Inhalation, exhalation. Really, he said it wouldn’t take very lo-

“That’s it!” shouted Goonda.

A million blue stars exploded in Hector’s mind. Light. Blinding blue. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t see anything, anything at all. Blue.

And pain. Pain like an army of needles dragging thunderbolts through his flesh. He screamed and writhed. Uselessly.

The azure supernova filled his brain, kept expanding, kept getting bigger and brighter and more intense. It threatened to push past the limits of mentality, thrusting electric plumes beyond the Rubicon of conception. His head would literally explode, he was sure of it.

And then suddenly, everything stopped. All traces of the explosion, the icy nuke that had just gone off in Hector’s mind, disappeared. The fiery pinpricks vanished as suddenly as they had first come.

And Goonda was saying something to him. Hector’s ears slowly regained full consciousness and beamed the words up to his fuzzy, reeling brain.

“Still alive, mi amigo?”

Hector moaned softly. “Barely… I think so…”

“What’d you think?”

“Far… far…” Hector drew a deep, wavering breath. “Far worse than when I first took the fern.”

Goonda laughed in his dusty, emaciated kind of way. “I hardly remember the day I first became a half-death. But I can recall the moment I reached arcanity. Vividly.” The immortal Mayan laughed. “Too vividly. That pain will last for, well, thousands of years.” He paused, as if unwilling to break bad news to Hector. “When you get really tired, expect it to come back and wake you up a little.”

It was so fast, yet the most terrible thing I’ve ever felt. I wouldn’t have signed up for this if I had known what it’d feel like.

Goonda smiled. “Now that we’re over and done with that, Hector, I suggest you get some sleep.”

Hector didn’t hear the last few words. He had already slipped away into blackness.