All over a damn bag of groceries.
Cassian Drake scrabbled up off the sidewalk, sitting up against one of the brick walls lining the street to his apartment. He stared at his midsection, his hand applying pressure to the mortal knife wound he suffered just moments ago.
He turned his attention to the man running away from the scene of the crime, still carrying his backpack and his groceries. The joke’s on that guy—he only made off with frozen peas, some bananas, and a stack of ungraded student essays.
Drake would have given the man all of that priceless loot if he would have just asked. There was no need to shove what looked like a short sword into his stomach. The world narrowed. Vision blurred, edges dimmed. Warmth bloomed under his palm. The puddle beneath him wasn’t just milk anymore. He sighed and tossed the leaking gallon of milk into the street, because he won’t need any calcium where he’s inevitably heading.
But then a funny thought crossed his mind.
“Guess I won’t have to pay rent,” he muttered, smiling. Let the landlord deal with it.
But then he thought about his unfinished research. He was three-fourths through a translation contract—some ancient manuscript from a dig in the mountains. Dead languages were his thing. Soon, he’d be one too.
Drake looked left, and then right, and the street was completely deserted. He instinctively screamed for help and waited a brief moment. No one answered him in the darkness.
Sure, he wasn’t happy with his day job. Sure, he had hit a dead end with his translation contract. Sure, he had just spent the last of his advance at the corner bodega. But is this really how it was going to end? Twenty-five years on this planet, just…over?
He started laughing uncontrollably, and shook his head from side to side, blood soaking through his clothes and onto the sidewalk in a growing pool underneath him.
“I’m literally going to die here on this street burned out, bitter, and bleeding out,” he chuckled. “Great. Just great.” He hated how people used literally incorrectly, but hey, no one’s grading his grammar now.
He pulled out his phone and briefly considered calling 9-1-1. He noticed he had 4% battery remaining, and he had probably less time than that. No use calling some overworked dispatcher. Help probably wouldn’t arrive in time, anyway. He tossed his phone onto the concrete.
Suddenly, his phone glowed blue, and began levitating just off the curb.
“What the—?” Drake shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs of death that were creeping into his subconscious. “I must be losing my damn mind.”
That’s when the world stopped.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
The street froze. The lights stuttered. Time frayed.
And then a voice spoke from inside his skull.
“Cassian Drake. You are dying.”
“No shit,” he instinctively said out loud. “And now I’m taking to a ghost.”
Drake blinked rapidly, not truly comprehending what he was seeing. The world shimmered, and a figure stepped into view from the space between seconds. Not human—at least, not fully. Its robe was a constellation of glitched stars, its face a shifting mask of letters and forgotten languages. Drake, out of sheer habit, focused on the unusual symbols, letters, and characters. He’s dying, but he still focused more on the new language than the fact a strange figure just materialized out of nowhere.
It spoke again.
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“Cassian Drake, you are being offered a choice.”
“What…die or go crazy? It looks like that mugger made that choice for me.” He looked down at the soon-to-be-fatal wound in his stomach, but something appeared to be different. Feel different. He tried to breathe, but no air moved. He was no longer in pain. He rubbed his hand over the wound in his belly, and it was no longer bleeding. His body was just…there. Frozen, like time just stopped mid-collapse, mid-death..
“What—who the hell—? What the hell is happening?”
“You may call me Vex,” the entity said. “I am an emissary of the Source, a dying force in need of meaning, of stability.”
“Am I hallucinating?”
“Yes. And no. You are between moments. The last breath has not yet left you.”
The figure stepped closer, language flickering across its cloak like falling code. Drake immediately thought this must be what Neo and Tank saw in the Matrix after taking the red pill.
“Cassian Drake, you are a reader. A writer. A seeker of pattern. We find minds like yours—those who understand meaning beneath words.”
“Find them for what?”
“We need you to help stabilize the Source, and help us save our world,” Vex said, in a voice that dripped of metallic echoes combined with sounds Drake couldn’t understand. “We call it Mytherra.”
Drake looked around, stunned. “This is a really elaborate fever dream. This must be what I see before stepping into that bright light.” Trouble was, there was no bright light to walk into.
“Cassian Drake, you are bleeding out on the corner of Fifth and Mercer. There is no ambulance coming. No miracle to be performed. Only you. Only me. Only this offer.”
Cass hesitated momentarily. He’d always imagined he'd die quietly. Maybe in his sleep. Or on a back page no one read. But this? This was something else entirely. Something he never would have imagined.
“What’s the catch? There’s always a catch.” He’d watched too many sci-fi movies. Offers like this always had a catch.
“There is no catch, Cassian Drake. Agree, and you will awaken in my world. You will be remade. You will be tested. You will become one who steadies the unraveling code and stabilizes the Source.”
For a moment, Drake mentally heard Obi-Wan Kenobi screaming at Anakin Skywalker something about being the chosen one who was supposed to bring balance to the Force.
The lights pulsed and dimmed around them. Drake suddenly noticed the words on billboards, signs, and walls start scrambling up, like they were created with a rogue AI. Things felt completely out of place and out of context. Colors around him faded, and only he and Vex remained…the same. Nothing else made sense at all. Especially how Vex used his full name every time. That was freakin’ weird.
“In my world, language is magic, and magic is language. Meaning and intention are true power. Power that bring both life and death. And you, Cassian Drake, are one of the last who truly understands that.”
Drake stared at Vex and around at this frozen moment in time, at the milk and blood blending at his knees. At his broken body, paused like a line break waiting for punctuation.
“What if I say yes?”
“You live.”
“No?”
“You die—unfinished. Like a sentence without meaning.”
Drake almost laughed, but suddenly a fleeting thought entered his mind. He thought about his students, the hundreds of high schoolers that might be a little less better off without him. Then he realized they were gonna be without him anyway. The thought was gone as fast as it appeared.
Drake sighed, and then said the most reckless—and exciting—thing he’d ever said.
“Alright, I’m in. Let’s do this.”
Vex reached out his hand, and placed it on Drake’s head. A feeling of euphoria washed over Drake, and his ears started ringing. He then noticed the symbols and characters began glowing on the strange being’s robes, and they slowly started moving in orderly lines…towards Drake.
“Close your eyes, Cassian Drake,” Vex commanded. “Let me untether you from this world, and start the process of binding you to Mytherra.”
Drake closed his eyes, and words scrolled across his mind like boot-up code—raw, rhythmic, ancient:
[BEGIN]
[SYSTEM RECOGNITION: “Cassian Drake–Consent Acquired”]
[UNTETHERING LIFE]
[INITIATING REWRITE: MAGEBORN PROTOCOL]
[PREPARING LEXICON: PRIMARY LANGUAGE STRUCTURE—CUSTOM]
[PREPARING LEXICON: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION LEVEL UP—CUSTOM]
[FINAL DESTINATION: MYTHERRA]
[CLASS: PURE MAGE / LOREMASTER]
[LEVEL: 1]
[/BEGIN]
Drake sucked his teeth, tasting a metallic substance in his mouth. He opened his eyes to see blue light pulsing around Vex, almost as if in rhythm with his breaths. Drake noticed his fingers and hands beginning to dissolve, then his wrists, his arms. He wondered to himself if this was what it felt like during the MCU blip. Suddenly, a phrase pops into Drake’s mind, spoken in an unfamiliar language he now understands. “Remember, your words now have weight.”
“Relax, Cassian Drake,” Vex said. “You are now the newest citizen of Mytherra. What will your first word be?”
Just as Vex asked the question, the last of Drake dissolved into the moment. The symbols and characters on Vex’s robe changed from blue to green, signaling the completed upload of Cassian Drake.
Vex turned around towards the rip in time and space, glanced at where Drake used to be, and saw that only the puddle of co-mingled blood and milk remained.
He stepped into the rift, and it quickly closed behind him. The teacher’s phone clattered back to the concrete, and life on Earth resumed—this time, without Cassian Drake.