[AC] Anthology 2: Johann Weisz, Magenta: Everything Dies (Lost Legacies Part I)

[Artifice Comics]

>>From Artifice Comics:
http://www.artificecomics.com

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Feathers slowly came to rest on his body.

More littered the soft grass around him.

Johann simply laid there staring up at the slender form that hovered
above him framed by near blinding rays of sunlight.

All he could think of as his retinas were slowly scorched into
uselessness was neither of the constant, agonizing pain nor the
alluring silhouette of alabaster wings but the fact the Sun was
completely ablaze at 3AM.

Come Johann, your mother awaits us.


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Lost Legacies
Johann Weisz, Magenta
"Everything Dies"
by Matthew Cavazos

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He was blind.

This he was sure of.

He was blind and he was being led around by something straight out of
a tabloid: an Angel.

Or what he thought was an angel.

And for intents and purposes an angelic figure is normally a good
thing, but not in Pacific City.

He was reading the residual energies of the battle that took place at
some park in the middle of Pac City when the being swooped down and
called forth the vibrant rays of the Sun.

Mysteria was dangerous alright.

With the might of Metatron she smote back the Imperial Magistrate.

Manly wasn't too shy in the power department but he wasn't his target.

She was.

She had the scarab.

Thus she was dangerous. 

He needed an edge against her or rather against Metatron.

Metatron was -- is an angel, from what he could recall from a brief
stint within a parochial school.

The highest of the high, king shit of fuck mountain... or something like
that.

His mind wandered a bit more as he felt unseen winds dry his open,
unseeing eyes.

Johann could smell the ocean far beneath his feet then the aroma of
forested wilderness.

The sound of car horns and commercial jetliners flickered briefly into
his range of hearing.

Fast.

Whatever it was that picked him out of Pacific City was traveling
either very fast in some kind of semi-permeable bubble.

Or.

It was some otherworldly means.


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Everything seemed to stop at once as I found myself sitting in a place
with very old, very stale air.

It was quiet, too.

Absolutely silent, save for my own breathing, and I know this cause my
ears are ringing from all the day to day city noises.

Then laughter broke the silence.

The dry, hacking laughter of a worry smoker.

An ex-smoker.

My mom.

My dead mom.

Three years since I last saw her.

That time is still clicking by since I still can't fucking see her.

Blindness blows seven kinds of ass.

Wait, scratch that.

This time it just might be a blessing.

Camphor and brimstone singe my nostrils with every breath. I take it
my mom didn't head toward the light after all.

Delving into the nether regions of the occult 'll fuck you over like
that, ya know.

I try not picture rotting flesh and chalk white bone, all I see is the
woman who held me when I was afraid. The woman who tended to my every
whim up 'til her death. The woman who started me down the road of a
true magician.

Long chestnut curls, deep cerulean eyes, peaches and cream flesh, and
desirable in every Freudian way imaginable.

That's how I'll always remember her.

A million questions roll through my mind and that angel thing that
brought me here answers the foremost one.

I brought you home, Johann, to talk to your Mother and for you to hear
the truth of what you're trying to do.

I try to face the being with my head turning all directions in vain.

 "I know exactly what I'm doing. You didn't need to bring my mother
back to tell me that!" I spat.

I stopped my fruitless search and let my head rest against the dust
coated sheet that the entire length of the rocking chair that sat in
the corner of my childhood home.

"Johann", my mother began, "I know what I told you before, about the
scarab and your father, that is all true. Its your destiny to take the
name and the charm but that not all you need."

She paused.

You'd think all this time in the much over hyped pit of the fiery
abyss she'd have thought this little speech completely through.

Mrs. Weisz, please continue. He must hear everything you have to say.

"Son, you have to realize that the name and the charm are just a
crutch that Albert used. You can be -- you are so much more than that.
>>From what this woman says you're already recognized by
the-powers-that-be of this era as strong enough to be either threat or
ally."

"What?"

Yes, Johann, I've been watching you.

All of you.

Since the very first of your kind.

I've seen men and women rise and fall under the banner of truth and
justice.

You're part of a new coming, almost a renaissance of sorts, an
uprising of individuals with the power to rock the very core of this
universe.

"Groovy."

It was all I could say.

Seriously.

"JOHANN!"

An all too familiar tone rocked my own very core.

"Yes, mother?"

"LISTEN TO HER!"

"Yes, mother."

A few years and a difference in states of existence couldn't break our
mother-son routine.

"So from what the two of you are saying is I'm not just some cog in
the machine of things but a big fuckin' cog."

I'm acting childish, yes.

But I'm temporarily blind and talking to my dead mother, so sue me.

Yes, I suppose so.

"So, Mom, who is this that brought my ass here all the way from the
'down undah', hmm?"

She's gone now.

"Great, wonderful, splendid! Just like every other person in my life."

I'm extolled for the amount of patience I so freely exercise...

"Jeez lady, I just want a name."

My name is no longer applies to me for I am no longer the being I once
was back when you're father wielded the scarab and Millennium Man
first took to the skies.

"And so this has exactly what to do with me?"

I was an American woman who died and came back as something else,
chosen to watch over the world to witness acts of sheer evil and
that's what brought me into contact with your kind.

I've seen much human suffering, selfish acts of wickedness, unholy
atrocities, the ravages of war, and the needless deaths of Earthbound
titans.

>>From this I've learned much and you're playing a most dangerous game.

Johann tapped his the toe of his shoe impatiently on the foot of the
rocker.

I can no longer exist between the veils of this realm or the next so
as my final act I'm going to ask you something.

For half a breath he continued, as he had for the past hour or so, to
see nothing.

"Yeah?"

For the latter half he knew his sight was restored whence he took in
the sight before him.

Kill me.

An angel trapped in the mortal husk of Victoria Burke.

His one true nemesis of his own devising.

The keeper of his legacy.

Metatron.

Standing in his old family sitting room with her back to fireplace his
mother used to heat chamomile tea over the dying embers.

Its arms outstretched offering a blade that no doubt slew countless
enemies from many realms.

"Is that all?"

Yes.

He kept up his best poker face as he resisted grabbing the weapon from
its hands and striking it down with all the fury he contained.

"You're fucking with my head. Is that what you're powers were? Back in
the day, that is."

The simulacra faded and left standing in its place was an aged beauty
swathed in silken, white body wrap with long silvery hair cascading
down her shoulders, ashen coloured eyes, and a mouth framed by full
rosy lips.

If she wasn't so undead, maybe ten years younger, and hadn't filled
him with such rage just seconds ago he would've had no problem asking
her to bed.

You're quite right, young man.

When I finally learned of my other abilities I was able to effect
these events I was forced to bear witness to. One of these powers was
to let my prey see what they truly feared.

But for you, it was to see nothing at all.

"So, I take this was all just a test or do you still want me to kill
you?" the magician asked as he raised himself from the dusty rocking
chair.

The woman's pale form shimmered for a moment before she returned a
thin smile.

No.

Time is passing, as am I. My era is ending and a new one is beginning
and you are part of it. I'll fade away just as the others have and
someone else will replace me.

And as for your question, no it is not going to be you. You're soul is
old enough.