m<a class="postlink" href="http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/086/b/e/more_marlo_by_jawbone_ashtray-d4u57f7.jpg">http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/ ... 4u57f7.jpg</a>m<br/><br/>A power flux across the telephone wires was all that alerted him to change.<br/><br/>A distant buzz of a strange, almost vocal, static energy rattled through his bones in the same way a train arriving shook old stations with tin roofs. To put it in a more human context, it was the kind of sensation one felt rippling up from sticky nightclub floors with heavy bass lines or like standing close to electric pylons. It set the fine hair on the young mages skin on end and made him anxious.<br/>This wasnâ€™t wholly unusual.<br/>The phone lines changed their tone with every call, which, once upon a time was an event that happened on a minute-ly basis, these days mobile phones had uprooted the old system and changed the nature of the game. Calls (no matter how full of emotion the folk on either end of them were. Because THATâ€™S what you picked up on, emotional energy, regardless of how the electric translated them into its own crude language, it all boiled down to emotion) were slightly rarer these days and their magic muted as a result.<br/>Something told him this way different though.<br/>Call it a hunchâ€¦<br/>There were too many fluxes in too small a period of time. Things like this only happened when trouble struck town or good gossip was afloat. On that fateful day when the planes had struck the towers and the lines were jam packed with terrified relatives his skin felt as though it was on fire for almost three days straight. To a novice these fluctuations of energy might have been something similar, maybe a train had crashed or a bus had ploughed into a building, but Marlowe had been lucky enough to have been trained of one hell of a mage and to him it felt likeâ€¦ excitement?<br/>A tinge of curiosity maybe?<br/>You could never be certain, but he was 90% it wasnâ€™t panic generating the strange change.<br/><br/>Maybe 80%.<br/><br/>Scratch that. 70%. His track record was a little iffyâ€¦ and heâ€™d never been good at taste testing emotion.<br/><br/>Marlowe hunkered down, perched on the roof of the city Library, toes of his boots jammed certainly into the concrete ledge, one spindly hand clenched tightly enough around the thick, dark chord of the phone line that his knuckles were white, battered jean (mostly from the various climbs heâ€™d made in his efforts to read the cities ebb and flow) clad knees apart for balance, stomach eating itself with nerves. Heightsâ€¦ eeesh, heights were the enemy!<br/>No one noticed the boy on the roof.<br/><br/>For starters it was on rare occasion that civilians ever spared more than a glance skywards, let alone studied long enough to realize that the hunched shape was a human figure, not a gargoyle or a strange feature of modern architecture .<br/><br/>And Marlowe didnâ€™t blame them either!<br/><br/>â€˜City livingâ€™, as the glad rag magazine called it was a jading experience for most. Only the few that had slipped the cagey call of the rat race or taken tutoring in urban magic had the time to develop a lax outlook and take in their urban jungle.<br/>To anyone high strung (like most, for they are DRIVEN there, what with all the business meetings, predatory cabs, newspaper vendors dryboards screaming rape and bloody murder, shrill hissing and acidic stench of too many fast food joints merging into one super villain of calories, endless commercials for shit you donâ€™t need and why your life sucks ass without it, clueless tourists milling around so slowly they could be going backwards, deadlines, parking wardens, you name it! It was a wonder any poor soul survived without slow cooking their blood pressure!) yes, to anyone high strung the City was a drain on the senses enough. Your best option was to knuckle down, switch yourself off, set your priorities, run on motor functions and otherwise drown that God given gut instinct and urge to inspect your surroundings!<br/>Besides, as far as he could recall (correct him if heâ€™s wrong. Marloweâ€™s memory was like a wad of bubblegum on the underside of a boot, the further it stretched, the thinner it got) curiosity in these parts was usually rewarded with a good mugging or a stabbing. Trust him, heâ€™d been involved with both!<br/><br/>He swallowed dryly and shut his eyes, plunging himself into what peace he could muster from the dark behind his eyelids, desperately trying to will a thread of his own aura to chase the disturbance to its epicentre. It shrank back at first, leaping from the line like it was an electric fence, making him physically flinch, but after a few minutes it gathered itself back up and picked up the patterns of the calls, mimicked it awkwardly and fled the city across the skyline.  Marlowe relinquished the wire, gingerly brushing his hands down on the front of his jumper, feeling the tug of distance on a piece of his own being.<br/><br/>Were he a religious man heâ€™d have called it his soul. No, Marlowe was a mage and this was, instead his aura.<br/><br/>He sighed wistfully and carefully began the awkward climb back through the window. From there on it would be a case of elevators and escalators all the way until he regained connection with that little lost piece of himself. That, little did he know, was how he would find her.<br/>The woman that changed his lifeâ€¦.<br/><br/><br/><br/>By the time he reached the park it was early evening. As he reached the gates, the sliver of aura heâ€™d sent to scout ahead rushed back with all the eager delight of a golden retriever puppy on a diet of sherbet, he felt complete in heartbeat.<br/>This was the place.<br/>The source of the strange power flux.<br/>The disturbanceâ€¦<br/><br/>It didnâ€™t take him too long to hone in on it either, heâ€™d flicked the cabby a bit of extra change for the fare, stepped into the park, skipped a curb and strayed off the path, winding right through the shrubbery. Never had much respect for rules, this boy, it made a semi-decent mage out of him (an â€˜occupationâ€™ that required bent logic and backwards thinking) but made for very pissed off gardeners throughout the breadth and width of the city! One day a gang in green overalls and muddy boots would rough him up with potting tools and heâ€™d probably deserve it, until then if the path wasnâ€™t the fasted way, then by god, heâ€™d cut across the grass!<br/>Then he spotted it.<br/>A crater.<br/>What the hell could have caused this?! Some Jurassic Park level shit going on here! A pale brow leaped up, then caution kicked in. He fired up a crack of magic that stirred restlessly under the flesh of his fingertips, ready to go if needed and crept forwards.<br/><br/>He called the only thing that made sense in this situation, â€œHulloâ€¦?â€