With nowhere else left to go, Seth Marlowe shuffled his way through the narrow alleyways of Enfield North, toward his old childhood home.

  Even by Enfield standards, these streets were a picture of dilapidation. The roads were coarse dirt rather than cobblestone, muddy and upturned from the overnight rain. Fences were in disrepair, punctuated with large gaps that revealed the meagre lives of the occupants within. In the deepening dusk, drunkards in unbuttoned shirts milled about, heads hung and occasionally coming to life to yell obscenities toward no one. Yet even these lowlifes looked up in alarm and gave Marlowe a wide berth as he passed.

  He could think of at least several reasons why. It could have been his dishevelled look—barefoot, soiled clothing, and a shock of grimy hair that hung wildly over his face. It could have been the smell—it had been at least a week since he slept in anything approximating a bed, and longer still since he had a bath. He could no longer smell his own stench but didn't envy the poor sops who had to come anywhere near him. Or, he thought as a wry smile crept into his blistered lips, it could be that I've got a rotting carcass for an arm.

  That night, Carmichael's men had carried him back to the basement of St Marcus and dragged him into the Kennel. Then a bespectacled man he had never met came in and roughly bandaged him up, never saying a word even while Marlowe screamed bloody murder. He passed out from the pain and awoke some time later to an empty room. Even in his muddled state, one notion had rung clear above all else: he needed to get the hell out of there and the hell away from Art Carmichael.

  So he ran, and easily at that. The basement had been deserted by the time he had come to, and he found no guards or locks barring his way. When he stepped out of the church, it was already mid-day. Then when he finally returned to the boarding house where he rented a tiny upstairs unit, he found that the lock had been tampered with and his room ransacked. Straight away, he had gotten down on two knees and looked under the bed. The loose floorboard under which he hid the winnings he'd saved up for months had been upended, its contents emptied. He screamed again then, at the top of his miserable lungs, and he didn't stop screaming even when the landlord barged in, threatening to call the city guards if he didn't shut up.

  That was how he spent nearly a week in the county gaol, and also how he became homeless and penniless. He had no clue why they kept him for so long while barely questioning him, and he suspected that the guards didn't much know either—or care. He also didn't know what had been so funny when one of the guards snickered and said, "I'd get that arm checked out if I were you," and didn't know why his stump had started bleeding again, soaking through the bandages and leaving a dotted trail everywhere he went.

  He did know two things. First, that whoever had stolen his money had known exactly who he was, how he had earned the money, and that his room would be unattended that night. Second, that he didn't have the will or the anger left in him to do anything with that knowledge.

  So he wandered the streets of Enfield for days, begging for jobs and scraps in between bouts of abject lethargy. And he found that the streets were cold despite the turning season, and its occupants distant being within arm's reach. Enfielders were perpetually desperate even in the best of times, and no one wanted anything to do with a beggar with a festering stump for an arm. He couldn't rightly blame them, for he knew he would have been the same.

  Marlowe grew hungrier and weaker while his wound became meaner and angrier. The bandages rotted off, leaving behind a mottled, swollen, and purulent mess. He knew it was infected, and from the intensity with which the pain radiated through the remainder of his arm, he suspected that the infection had gotten into the bone. Last night, as he leaned against a tree trunk trying to keep himself as dry as possible, he had broken out in sweats and shakes, alternating between hellish heat and deathly cold.

  Seth Marlowe was dying.

  And because he was dying, he shuffled his way to his childhood home, where his old man still lived. He had been convinced that nothing in the world would compel him to seek out the man he once called his father. But he now understood that he simply hadn't known desperation in the truest sense. He trudged, step by onerous step, past the fences and buildings that were broken and worn down in all the same places as he remembered them.

  His house too, looked much the same as how he had left it. A corner shack with mossy mismatched panels, and even now, bitter shouts of a man and a woman drifted from within. He was immediately transported back to his youth, coming home after a long day of pretending to go to school, coming home to Dad and Mum about to tear each other's throats out. Only Mum had long passed from this world. He could only hope that she had gone somewhere with far fewer men trying to give her a black-eye.

  The shouting stopped at the end of a rousing crescendo, and the woman who stepped out of the house indeed wasn't his mother. She wasn't much older than Marlowe, and pretty enough that he might have made a pass at her under much different circumstances. Her eyes were red with tears and one half of her shirt had been ripped open, hanging loose from the shoulder. He didn't know her, and she wouldn't know him. The woman started when she noticed him standing by the shack, and her surprise quickly turned to disgust before she looked away and walked past him without a word.

  There was still enough of himself left for Marlowe to sigh then, dismayed by this casual contempt from a young pretty thing. The thought flitted away quickly; most thoughts that came to him lately didn't like to linger. He trudged on, step by onerous step, and through the crooked door that had been left ajar.

  Inside was a perfect microcosm of the gloom and disarray of the neighbourhood. If panels looked mismatched from the outside, it was because they were stripped and broken on the inside. Worn furniture with chunks missing were scattered about in a haphazard manner, making the already small room feel even more cramped and uninviting. Tools, utensils, clothes, and broken glass covered seemingly every flat surface, making it impossible for Marlowe to walk in any further.

  He didn't need to, however. Dad was already kneeling next to the entrance, grumbling as he picked at something on the floor. Marlowe saw that it was a freshly broken bottle, its brownish contents and split pieces splashed about in a wide circle. Before he knew what to say, Dad noticed him and jumped up quickly. The older man swayed dangerously as he tried to bring his arms up into a boxer's stance.

  Seth Marlowe's father was nearly as tall as he was, and at least twice as thick, with sturdy muscles giving shape to his drink-soaked shirt. Currently, his thickly bearded face was ruddy and his blue eyes wild with indiscriminate anger. But frankly, Marlowe couldn't remember him in any other state.

  "And who the hell are you?" Dad bellowed, spittle flying. His knees buckled unsteadily even as he tried to lift his fists in a menacing manner. "You've got some nerve, intruding on my—"

  Then recognition flickered in his drink-addled pupils and his swaying slowed, though he still kept his arms up. "Seth? What the bloody hell happened to you?"

  His words were heavily slurred, but Marlowe had long learned to interpret his father's chemically altered accent, which was something of a local dialect in these parts. "Hello, Dad. How've you been then?"

  Dad finally lowered his arms and stood steady on his feet. Even the colour appeared to leak out of his face somewhat, and for a moment, Marlowe allowed himself to imagine, for once in his life and even as he was at death's door, that he could have a human conversation with his father. But this illusion too didn't linger, as in the next instant, Dad's face reddened some more with a glower. "I asked you the question first, innit? What the hell are you doing here, and with that nasty thing on your arm?"

  Marlowe sighed again, but he was finding it more and more difficult to react to anything. "It's a long story, and I'll tell it if you've got the time for it. But first, would you let me in? I think you can see I'm in... pretty bad shape."

  "You... you..."

  Dad sucked in deep breathes in between attempts to construct his latest diatribe. Come on, Marlowe silently encouraged his old man, that wry absurd smile coming back to him, you can do it. There's a good lad.

  "Youuuuu... up and leave and don't call on me for five bloody years. Now you have the nerve to show up here looking like a freak? Go on, then, where's your big talk, your big plan to show up your old man and make something of yourself, hmm? Gone the way of that disgusting arm of yours, innit? Don't come in here expecting charity when you never had the decency to treat your old man with some goddamned respect. Walk on, I ain't got no son like you."

  Marlowe wasn't really sure what he had been looking for, coming here on his last legs. An apology? For his father to have changed? That dear old Dad had seen the error of his ways and had just been waiting for the chance to explain himself, to have one last heart-to-heart before they parted ways forever? But now that this wretched excuse for a human being had uncorked another of his masterpieces, Marlowe let it wash over him, nourish him. He understood now that this was exactly what he had come for, an affirmation of the hate and misery that had defined and nurtured his life's ambitions.

  "Didn't you hear me? I said get the hell out!"

  With that, the old man lunged forward with a thick outstretched arm and shoved Marlowe's shoulder on the injured side. Marlowe flew out of the room, limp as a rag doll, and landed heavily, his head banging on the ground. The door slammed shut.

  Marlowe lay in the mud, shuddering. The wailing pain in his arm was now joined by a mighty headache. He suddenly noticed that there were tears in his eyes, cold and soothing against his feverish skin. And somehow, he couldn't imagine anything funnier. He started to chuckle while the tears continued to flow, and the chuckle gave way to full-blown laughter. His entire body ached as it shook with mirth. He couldn't remember the last time he had laughed so hard; perhaps he never had. The door remained shut.

  When Marlowe was done laughing, he left himself to die, lying in the cold mud of his childhood home as night gathered around him. He was born in the gutters of Enfield, and to its gutters he would return. As his body shut itself down, he became aware of a small, brave, and cowardly part of his mind that wasn't yet ready to let go. This iteration of himself crawled through the moments and emotions of his life that kept him clinging on all these years, in a last desperate attempt to rouse him out of submission.

  His first kiss had been in this very yard, a plump blonde girl from the school across the River Lea. He couldn't recall her name but he remembered clearly the taste of marzipan in her mouth. He also remembered that his father had stormed out of the house shortly after, red-faced and raving, and he never saw that girl again.

  He remembered his first fight in the ring, the roar of the crowd as he put to use the only thing of value his father had ever taught him and landed a clean hit in his opponent's jaw. He'd cracked one of his knuckles then but the pain had been dwarfed by the exhilaration, by the emphatic knowledge that he was good for something in this world, that he had something to build on.

  As his mind finally slowed and began to fade into darkness, Marlowe remembered searching for a face in the crowd. He had searched for a shy copper-skinned girl with dark-auburn hair. When their eyes met, it hadn't been a satisfied smile that passed between them. Instead, it had been the steel visage of grave determination.

  His eyes snapped open.

  This isn't how it ends. This isn't how I die. A gust of chill night air blew overhead, and Marlowe breathed in deep. As he did, the air expanded and seared the linings inside his nose, his windpipe, and his lungs. As his airways coated themselves with fire, he felt his body at once lighten and strengthen. He stood up, without a hint of struggle or uncertainty, and he gazed upon the crooked door of his childhood home.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The pain was gone. It had been replaced by a new sensation—awareness. He was aware of the fire that burned within him, a fire that bolstered rather than destroyed. He was aware of the minuscule balls of heat and malevolence that flowed with the fire. These did not belong to him. He knew this because his newfound awareness granted him the recognition that these foreign particles had rushed into him on that fateful night, at the very moment when the black beast's Maladous fangs broke through his skin, muscle, and bone. He was also aware of a third thing—hatred. The wellspring of all of his pain, his love, his dreams, and his power now burst forth and filled his entire being with its lamentations—an incantation of vainglory and bloodlust. And the black beast answered his call.

  Step by surging step, Seth Marlowe strode toward the crooked door of his childhood home. He raised his stump, now a throbbing crucible of fury and destruction. The house, along with himself, burst into black flames, and darkened the night sky.

  ***

  Seth Marlowe awoke in an unfamiliar room. The first thing he did was to hit himself. Rapid, slapping motions from head to abdomen, anxious to smother the black flames that shrouded him—and smother the guilt that gripped his chest. But there were no flames. No heat, no fire in his lungs... no drunk old man trapped inside a burning house. It had all been a wild fever dream.

  The second thing he did was to notice that he was clean. Someone had painstakingly removed the dirt, blood, piss, and tears from every inch of his body and dressed him in a simple white gown that felt feathery light against his skin. His stump had been rebandaged—the pain a dull hum at present—and he could feel that his head had been wrapped up as well.

  Then he became aware of his own appetite. It had been days since his last morsel of anything resembling food and he had become insensate to hunger until this moment. As he looked around instinctively for something to fill his craving, he locked eyes with another presence in the room. A thin pale man in a dark suit sat near his feet, watching him with an all too familiar expression that could be called a smile only for the lack of a better word.

  Marlowe sat up, his heart pounding. He realized then that he was on a narrow bed with neat white sheets. The room was small and windowless, the only light coming from unnaturally bright sconces on the side walls. Art Carmichael sat at the foot of the bed, next to a large desk with shelves filled with books and metallic instruments. Marlowe's eyes shifted for a moment to the words engraved on the side of the desk: PROPERTY OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

  "Oh good," Carmichael's imitation of a smile widened ever so slightly as he sang in his bizarre treble. Marlowe thought himself as one who wasn't easily rattled, but he had always been disconcerted by that voice. "I was starting to tire of waiting. Let's get on with it, shall we?"

  "What more do you want from me?" Marlowe snarled, and was surprised by his own vigour. The last thing he remembered was of wasting away in the cold mud. He breathed heavily, fixing the strange being before him with a hard glare.

  "I have to say, I'm a bit confused by your tone," Carmichael chimed, his face unchanged. "As far as I can tell, I've just saved you from certain death. Washed you and clothed you, gave you a bed to sleep on. And this is all after you left me without even saying goodbye. What have I done to deserve your hostility?"

  "You're a lunatic who can turn dogs into Maladies," Marlowe spat. "And besides that, you're a thief. You know you're the one that got me into this mess in the first place."

  Carmichael frowned slightly, expressing genuine confusion. Then as if he remembered something unpleasant, he wrinkled his nose before his face settled into a chilly mask of contempt. Seeing this, Marlowe was reminded of the time he had confronted his then employer about giving the Souness card to Aoife Griffin.

  "I concede that unfortunate bit of business was perpetrated by men under my employ, but I can assure you they were not acting on my orders. You've worked for me long enough to know that I take matters of obligation and compensation with the seriousness they deserve. Those men who stepped out of line... have been dealt with accordingly."

  Marlowe felt a chill run through him, cooling his distrust and anger. He had never seen Carmichael personally kill a man, but the events in the Docklands had proved that he would be more than capable should he choose to—perhaps with a variety of strange methods at his disposal.

  "Even though I wasn't directly responsible, I suppose an apology is in order. My diurnal activities occupy enough of my time and attention that I can, admittedly, become rather neglectful of my dealings at St Marcus. Perhaps I ought to vet my men more strenuously in the future. You see, here at the East India Company, I don't normally have to worry about that sort of—"

  "So this here is the EIC?" Marlowe cut in, shocked and oddly excited despite himself. "Where are we? The EIC headquarters? Why'd you bring me here? Do you work for them? Why? How? Just... WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?"

  By the time he had roared out the last of his thoughts, Marlowe was breathing heavily again, shoulders heaving with the effort. The headache returned, though he suspected that it had nothing to do with his fall. Fear, disgust, survival instincts all be damned. Frustration ruled above all else; he was simply fed up with the constant and impossible guessing at the intentions of this man or whatever he was. Art Carmichael didn't shift an inch in his seat and stared back at him evenly, his ineffable smile returning.

  "Now, now, young Seth, let's not rush the process. We all learn best when our mind and body are pushed to their limits, forcing us to discover a new truth about ourselves, an ever-refining understanding of how to apply everything we know, feel, and experience. So please, Seth, indulge me just this once. Allow me to present you with another question. Think of it as an introduction to the next phase of your training."

  So many things in that reply took Marlowe farther from comprehension. Countless new queries and angry demands competed in his mind that in the end, he was left speechless, and slumped back down on the bed. He stared at the unnaturally bright ceiling as Carmichael rambled on.

  "Do you know the story of the fairy king and the changeling? That was rhetorical, and not the question I wanted to present. I'm familiar with your academic background, or lack thereof. The fairy king—let's see, what was the name you lot gave him—ah yes, Oberon was his name. Oberon ruled the woods with his fairy queen, Titania. One day, Titania brings to their midst a human boy, a changeling, one she claimed had been birthed by a dear friend.

  "Titania dotes on this changeling, lavishing him with attention and rebuffing all attempts by Oberon to take him under his wing and train him as his knight. Annoyed and jealous, Oberon responds with a series of tricks. First, he abducts an unsuspecting local and uses his Magic to transform the man's head into that of a donkey's. He then casts a spell on Titania to make her fall madly in love with this ass-headed man. While Titania is preoccupied with her new and perplexed lover, Oberon takes the changeling and uses him to his heart's content. When he's bored with him, he has enough of a conscience to feel bad about what he'd done to Titania so he goes back, gives the donkey man his human head back, and lifts the fairy queen's spell.

  "The man goes back to his life, no doubt heavily traumatized by the events. Oberon and Titania go on their merry way back to the woods, to rule again in harmony. What's happened to the changeling boy? Well, as lovely as the boy is, he's a potential source of further discord, and Oberon simply couldn't have that. So the fairy king kills him. Doesn't even have to use his Magic to do that, just a simple snap of the neck does the trick. The end."

  Marlowe shut his eyes tight as his head continued to pound. Even though he was barely listening, even though he knew it was just more Carmichael nonsense, he couldn't help but picture the boy's neck being snapped like a twig in the fairy king's hands, and he felt himself grow queasy. In his picture, the fairy king had a face, and it was one that he knew well...

  "So I ask you, young Seth. If this story had a—I really dislike using the word 'moral'—let's go with... a truth. If there were an incontrovertible truth about the universe that's evident in this story, what do you think that might be?"

  "That kings are arseholes?"

  It was the first thing that came to mind. Marlowe kept his eyes shut, hoping for the headache to go away, wishing nothing other than to be left alone with some bread and wine. Carmichael chuckled mildly, though his voice made it sound like tittering. "Not the way I would have put it myself, but you're not far off the mark, Seth."

  Marlowe heard the scrape of a wooden chair leg and opened his eyes. In no time at all, Carmichael now stood over him at the head of the bed, pointing his eerie smile down at him. He held something in one of his hands, a nearly spherical object the size of an apple. It had a moist, almost fleshy look to it, and something at its centre pulsed like a beating heart.

  "Personally, this is how I interpret it. The story tells us that there are two categories of beings in this world. Those that are mundane and ordinary—they go about their lives only with what's been given to them, content never to reach above their station or to try and change their status quo. Then there are those of us that have the power to manipulate the world around us—the air, the soil, our own body, even other living things. And the ones with power can take from those without. Or give, should the mood strike them. The point is, the powerful can do whatever they damn well please."

  With a motion so devoid of intent that it never occurred to Marlowe to react, Carmichael reached down and grabbed hold of his shortened right arm at its base. As he did, the bandages around the stump fell away, unspooled by an invisible hand. Marlowe stared at the stump, now dry and pink—free from the pus, swelling, and dead tissue that he had walked around with for days. Then as he watched, Carmichael's other hand that held the sphere swooped into view and inserted itself into the stump.

  "ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH"

  The pain was unlike anything he could ever imagine. Far worse than when he had lost the arm, worse still than when the stump and the bone underneath had become inflamed and necrotic... worse than when his body had been engulfed in the same black flames that had incinerated his father. A thousand suns bore into his arm, scorching and erasing from existence everything in their path. And with the pain, the memories of what he had done to his childhood home and his father in it came gushing back.

  And yet he couldn't look away. His eyes bulged and continued to stare at the stump, which had now become conjoined with Carmichael's hand. The pale bony fingers of this monstrous being dug into the half-arm, twisting this way and that as if trying to lodge something in place. Copious dark blood welled from the wound, soaking the white gown and bed sheets. Some splashed onto Carmichael's face, a striking red against the colourless skin. Through it all, the monster continued to smile his smile that signified nothing and everything.

  When the deed was done, Marlowe slumped back onto the bed, panting and crying. He felt light-headed, and came close to losing consciousness several times. Yet as he lay, a strange cloud of energy seemed to envelope him and started seeping into every fibre of his being. The cloud flew past his bloody stump, and the pain was gone in an instant. It drifted into his stomach, and he no longer felt hungry. It crept up his spine, and his head stopped pounding. It dried his tears, and he felt his memories of murder crystallize and set, now immortalized as a building block of himself born anew.

  His breathing slowed, and Marlowe lifted his right arm to bring the stump into view. The end of the arm was no longer torn flesh. Instead, a sphere the size of an apple sat atop the arm, its base covered in twisted sinewy tissue that made it hard to see where the arm stopped and the sphere began. At the centre of this sphere—at its core—was a visible pulse, and it beat with greater strength than before it had joined Marlowe. And he could sense the pulse as well. It was one and the same with his own beating heart.

  "Congratulations."

  A voice rang out, and thought it must have come from Carmichael, Marlowe had the distinct sensation that he heard it inside his head. It also didn't sound like him, at least not entirely. Instead of the grating high pitch, this voice sounded more settled, somewhat deeper. It retained the timbre of Carmichael's voice but somehow, it sounded more human.

  Marlowe looked past his arm and at the being standing beside him. The smile was gone from his face, replaced by shining black eyes, flat lips, and a set jaw—a steel visage of grave determination. When the voice came to him again, those lips didn't move.

  "I think by the current conventions of the scientific community, what you just received would be dubbed... the Oberon Apparatus. Be grateful, young Seth. Very rarely during my time on this planet have I imparted a piece of myself to a human. And never forget that I could easily take it away."

  "What... who are you?"

  "Have you not been paying attention? I am your king, and you are hereby my knight, bound to serve me as a I navigate this cold hostile world. But take heart, for I am a powerful ally to those who serve me faithfully."

  "Why... me? What do you... want from me?"

  But even as he asked the question, Marlowe knew. His crystal memory. Baptism by black fire.

  "Why else? You passed my test, young Seth. As for what I have planned for you... first, you must be trained of course. You are now possibly the most potent attuned human in the world but you're useless if you don't learn to control the Quintessences. I'm content to leave that task in the capable hands of the East India Company. I'm not really one for drills and instructions, as you probably gathered by now.

  "When you're ready, I'll come back for you. And together, we shall pay an old friend a long overdue visit."