Contractor by Andrew Ball Page A

floating up into the room.
    Push yourself out of your body."
    Daniel prepared himself for a herculean
    effort of will. Xik made it sound simple, but
    from what he’d seen so far, magic was
    anything but. He braced his hands on the
    armrests of his chair and mentally shoved
    himself through his skull.
    It was a bit hard to tell if anything had
    happened.
    "Open your eyes."
    Daniel opened them. They widened
    immediately. The color had gone.
    Everything was cast in shades of grey.
    The edges of objects wavered as if made out
    of smoke. He was a spirit in some ethereal
    alternate reality.
    "Very good." Daniel turned. Next to him
    was a shining sphere of light. It pulsed as it
    spoke. "The light is me. You look about the
    same, just so you know. Come. I’ll show you
    your brother, and the Vorid. To move about,
    simply will it. It will happen. Just like
    moving an arm or a leg."
    It turned out to be as easy as advertised.
    Daniel followed Xik’s sphere without
    trouble. They passed right through Daniel’s
    door like phantoms, then floated across the
    upstairs landing and down into the living
    room. Felix was on the couch, watching TV.
    He was a bright fire compared to the pale,
    ghostly cushions, almost painful to look at.
    The Vorid was latched onto his back
    like a leech. Its tentacles wound through
    Felix’s body, wrapping around him in
    patterned, pulsing net.
    And he could see it now—the pattern. It
    reminded him of Xik’s magic, only smaller,
    less complex, a carefully constructed tangle
    of black lines and sigils. A dark cloud rested
    around it, the antithesis of Felix’s white soul.
    Daniel watched it with sick fascination. "Can
    it see us?"
    "No. Vorid spawn have little
    intelligence and no magic of their own."
    "How do I kill it?"
    "Let’s return to our bodies first."
    Xik’s white ball went up. Daniel
    followed. They slipped through the ceiling
    and back into his room.
    Daniel focused on moving himself back
    into his head, and in a moment, he was there.
    He blinked. The color was back. The smoky
    fog had vanished, replaced with the straight,
    solid lines of reality.
    "You’re a natural."
    "Are there any limits on that?" Daniel
    asked.
    "Did you notice how everything
    appeared rather hazy? Indistinct?" Daniel
    nodded to him. "The further you are from
    your body, the worse that grows. If you kept
    going, everything would become a solid blur.
    There’s a certain risk of getting lost, so stay
    conservative when you scry. There’s no time
    limit, and it’s not very taxing, but you still
    need to eat and drink at some point."
    "…what happens if I didn’t come back
    to my body?"
    "It would seem as though you’d fallen
    into a permanent coma. But don’t worry
    about it. As your power grows, you’ll see
    further at a glance. You won’t have to
    physically move your spirit."
    "I still have to sit still though, right?"
    "Yes." Xik waved a few fingers in a
    circle. "Three dimensional movement creates
    ripples in the energetic continuum which
    obscure the senses."
    "…oh yeah, right. Sure. Energetic
    continuum."
    "Sorry. If you moved, you’d just see
    static, so when you scry, keep still. There are
    ways around this, but supposing I could even
    get you one, the inertialess systems we have
    installed on our ships are as large as your
    house. Not very practical for personal use."
    Daniel’s mind spun, but he filed away
    the idea of interdimensional space ships in
    the back of his head. More pressing matters
    were at hand. "So what kind of drawbacks
    does magic have? Just in general?"
    "It will tire you just like any other task,"
    Xik said. "Consider it a muscle. Stronger
    people can do more without as much strain.
    You’ll have to find your limits on your own.
    Be sure to practice regularly."
    "Ok. So." Daniel slapped his hands on
    his knees. "Vorid. Killing."
    "Spawn are easy to destroy, even as
    weak as you are now," Xik said. Daniel was
    a bit miffed at that comment, but he kept his
    mouth shut. "First we