[Challenge Entry] Letter M - Mahoshipping
Title: Disappearing Act
Challenge: M Round of the YGO Rare Pair Community
Pairing: Mahoshipping (Espa Roba x Arcana)
Warnings: Genre is horror, although it's pretty mild by my standards.
Summary: A magician never reveals his secrets. / AU Mahoshipping, Espa Roba x Arcana
A/N:This is set in the same verse as FF.net’s Vanishing Act, although all you need to know about that is it also takes place in a vaguely 1950’s carnival AU and involves a similar opposition between a stage magician and an self-invented psychic. I hope you enjoy!
Disappearing Act
.“You’re lucky we have an opening for you,” the manager told him, staring across the table at the man with frosted green hair, barely filling the folding chair he sat in. “Tell me how you do it.”
“I can’t explain it, I told you,” he insisted, settling both hands on the smooth, dark wood of the table before him. “They’re more like feelings…strong insights and intuition. I can read your future now, if you like.” He grinned, spreading his hands, trying to still the shaking in his palms. “Just know that it might not always be good.”
“Ha!” The manager stood, his head nearly reaching the top of the tent. “The customers will expect good fortunes, and if you cannot provide those then I will expect you to lie.”
“I can do whatever is asked of me,” he said. “As long as we settle the matter of my payment.”
“Forty a week,” was the quick reply.
“Forty? I can’t feed four brothers on that. Fifty at least.”
“Done.” The manager gestured towards the entrance, and the man follows him out into the sunlight, the cloudless sky overhead so bright, the blue looking as painted-on as the wooden sets propped up around the fairgrounds.
“I’m a businessman, not a psychic, but I assumed you’d take the job and had your tent prepared for you.” On the far side of the lane, tucked against the side of a much larger tent, he saw the brightly painted sign displaying his name and trade for the public to see, The Psychic Espa Roba Tells your Futures!
“Get ready,” the manager told him. “We open tonight.”
.
“It’ll be my best trick yet,” he said, looking at the giant box beside him, wired throughout and decorated with mirrors. He could see the reflection of one outstretched hand in them, and curled it back into itself in a fist. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, sticking his hair to his skin, but one look from his assistant wiped any unease from his mind.
“The show, tonight,” he added, “is it sold out?”
“It is,” she said. “Every seat is accounted for.”
“Good.” He tested the machine, flipped a switch, and watched as sparks flew from the connections. “Good.”
.
He had his brothers select the marks, at first. Wandering around the grounds, they could easily pick up enough from a person’s casual conversation and gesticulation to make simple prophecies of logic and rationality, enhanced with his own natural gift.
A woman was his first customer, removing her large hat as she entered the tent. He read her palms, divined her long life, and exposed the outcome of her relationship with the man whose photo rested inside the locket around her neck. Espa Roba did not have to work hard on futures like hers-the futures wrote themselves to his eyes, and he merely followed the lines set on his customers’ palms or divined that which they knew but had not yet admitted to themselves.
He did not see many more people, until a middle-aged man enters and sat before him, close to the end of the carnival’s day. When Espa Roba peered into this man’s mind, he saw the strangest vision yet, a glimpse of the recent past instead of the future.
“You…were in a magic show here, weren’t you?” Espa Roba asked, still struggling to grasp the significance of it in his mind. “You were a volunteer. It’s all you’ve been thinking about since. Why is that?”
“Have you seen the show? It’s in the very tent next door, you can’t have missed it.” The man’s voice was oddly melancholy, reflective in a way that had more to do with regret than with mirrors.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” the man said. “Real magic-real magic! I saw it with my own eyes, held it in my very hands as I watched things multiply and vanish before a crowd far bigger than you’ve ever had, I’ll bet.”
Espa Roba held back his own opinions-he didn’t think it would be all that prudent for the carnival’s psychic to have loud skepticism for the magician-they both practiced in illusions, after all, although his own held a dash of reality, and to this man’s mind the stage illusions he had seen were just as real.
“Go,” the man told him. “You will not regret it.”
Espa Roba nodded, his interest already piqued without any additional persuasion, the sign outside his tent already flipped to closed in his mind.
He had a show to catch.
.
The fire burned before them, engulfing everything in sight. He made no move to distance himself from it; already the damage had been done. He could not turn away. He could barely move, but as she approached him, limping slightly, favoring her right leg, he spun and lifted an arm to hide himself behind the charred edge of his black cape. She would not see his failure. Instead of him, she would look at the fire as he did.
“Do not look at me!” he screamed. “Do not look at me!”
.
“Welcome.” Standing on center stage, the man in the mask introduced himself, spreading his arms towards the audience. “I am Arcana.”
The light-bulbs lining the stage began to flicker, and the edges of Arcana’s mask wrinkled above his mouth in the only indication of a grin as the audience began to murmur amongst themselves, a low hush which grew to an excited clamor within seconds. Arcana raised his hands again, and the audience silenced.
“See? That was my first trick.” His honeyed voice drew the audience’s laughter, and as he straightened his tuxedo jacket with gloved hands a woman entered, pushing a tall, three-sided mirror on wheels. “Can I have a volunteer? You, in the front.” He gestured towards a man by the aisle in the front row, who ascended a set of narrow steps to the stage amidst applause.
Arcana turned the mirror so it faced the man, and moved to stand behind him. “Tell us what you see.”
“I see myself,” he said. “I see the audience. Wait a second-”
“Perhaps I should have asked, instead, to tell us what you don’t see.” Arcana’s voice boomed over the stage, and the woman came forward again, a hammer in her hands.
“I will change the very nature of this mirror,” he continued. “I will switch its properties to a new target, but first it must be broken. Break the mirror with the hammer, please.”
Almost gingerly, the man held the hammer in one hand, twisting it and testing its weight. Then, with a groan he surged forward, swinging the hammer to impact the head into the dead center of the mirror, producing a ring of cracks spiraling out across the glass, denting its reflection even more.
“Very good,” Arcana said. “Some applause for our volunteer.” As he began to head off stage, Arcana stopped him with a hand on his arm and a few whispered words. “Stay for the end.”
He twisted the three sections of the mirror around, spinning them so the cracked side faced away from the audience. “And now!” he called, “the real magic begins!”
The lights began to dim again, and as Arcana spun the mirror on its wheels the lights extinguished entirely, plunging the hall into darkness. A second later they were back, the bulbs burning almost impossibly bright, washing the stage in artificial light as Arcana straightened out the mirror again, displaying the perfectly intact glass.
“Face it again,” he told the volunteer, “and tell me what you see.”
As the man faced the mirror, he gasped, stepping back and glancing towards Arcana in disbelief. There, for the entire audience to see, was Arcana’s masked reflection. “Or perhaps I should have asked for what you can’t see.”
The mirror was entirely void of the man’s reflection. From his position at the back of the large tent, Espa Roba could barely see through the crowds seated in front of him, but he could see enough of the mirror to know that there was only one reflection in it. He had, indeed, switched the two in it.
Arcana raised his arms again, gesturing towards the mirror and bowing as the audience applauded again, his bow repeated double in the mirror behind him.
“Now for my next trick, I’ll need another-”
Espa Roba turned and exited the tent. He’d seen enough.
.
“Is it ready?” he asked, any attempt to keep the breathy enthusiasm from his voice futile. When not projecting on a stage, his voice sounded normal to his own ears, and he took every opportunity to make it cinematic and golden. “Tell me, is it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It will work this time. The mistakes have been fixed. I…just wish I knew what went wrong the first time.”
“I have changed it.” His voice was more confident now, and a few of the light-bulbs around the stage dimmed as more of the fair’s electricity was re-routed towards the machine. “It is not the same trick. It is so much better than before-the best trick I’ll ever perform. The best magic…”
He laughed, the sound strange and muffled underneath his mask. “Now, all we need is a volunteer.”
.
Over the following weeks Espa Roba’s popularity grew as fairgoers heard about his talent for true predictions-and with a little help spreading rumors from his brothers-and with everyone who wanted to see him, he was moved into a new, larger tent across from the main exhibition hall. He put on shows of his own, competed with the magician’s audience, and resisted the urge to attend another of his performances.
He sent his younger brothers instead, disguised, until the point where they reported that Arcana had chosen one of them as a volunteer, and had sealed the youngest up in a box and had him vanish only to reappear at the back of the auditorium.
Espa Roba considered it a challenge. He would rise to it.
That day he saw several more young women and young men sent on dares, and an old man with a wrinkled, tough face, the skin mottled in a most unattractive way. The next patron more than made up for it, a beautiful woman in a red dress, and Espa Roba did not need to hear her introduction to know exactly who she was.
“You’re the assistant,” he said. “Arcana’s assistant. What are you doing here?”
“You’re the psychic. Tell me instead.” She shot him a smile that he didn’t return, glancing uninterestedly to the side. Boring. Divining her mind would prove no challenge.
“He sent you. Am I wrong?”
“No,” she said.
“Then why-”
“Leave,” she spoke up suddenly, the tears forming in her eyes doing as little to move him as her red-lipped smile had been. “Leave this place. He won’t stand for the competition, for anyone challenging him or his power. You do that.”
“I don’t care.” Espa Roba leaned back in his chair, wishing it was more comfortable for all the time he had to spend in it. “You can tell him I think his magic is a sham, and that my psychic abilities are more than a match for it.”
Looking closer, she seemed genuinely upset, and while comforting others was not a path he was familiar with-he’d stuck to his promise of only telling positive fortunes-he did not want to see her cry.
“Here.” He plucked a handkerchief from one pocket and tossed it to her, and she dabbed at her eyes with it, blonde hair falling across her face.
“What does he look like?” Espa Roba asked, hoping to take advantage of her condition and see if he could garner some information. “Underneath the mask.”
“I don’t know.” Her words were muffled by the handkerchief. “He won’t let me…not since the trick that went wrong.”
“Wrong? How?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “It’ll be the greatest of his career, he says.” She wavered over each word, her voice still subdued and wreaked by intermittent sobs.
“Tell me,” she continued, “if you really can see the future-will he succeed?”
Espa Roba concentrated, hoping that he could do this much for her. He saw it-the look on her face, an empty backstage, the light-bulbs lining the perimeter overloaded and broken. He saw success.
“Yes,” he said. “It will succeed.”
.
It was enough that Arcana sought out his brothers when he should have been challenging Espa Roba himself, and that evening after his last show he snuck into the closed-off tent and into the auditorium’s backstage, amidst half-glowing lights and a bizarre collection of equipment and machines, all unfamiliar to his amateur eye.
He ducked a banner-the spectacular magic of Arcana-and continued deeper backstage. He was determined to find the creation he’d used on his brother and either break it or expose it so Arcana could never use such a trick again.
“If only it wasn’t so dim back here,” he murmured, the words barely out of his mouth before every light in the theatre burst into life, glowing so brightly he had to raise a hand to his eyes to shield them from it.
“As you wish.” The golden voice was unmistakable, and as Espa Roba turned he saw Arcana, one arm propped against a tall, black box.
“It is a shame we will have no audience for this performance,” he continued. “Tell me, Espa Roba, can you see your own future?”
He took a small step backward, trying to keep the confusion from showing in his face, wishing for the first time that he had a mask like Arcana’s to hide behind for situations like these. “Why do you ask?”
“I suppose the answer is no, then,” he said. “You can’t, can you? That makes this so much more interesting.”
“What do you mean?” Espa Roba glanced towards the box, to Arcana’s fingers which tapped an arbitrary rhythm out on its surface.
“I need a volunteer for this next trick, and I’ve chosen you,” Arcana said.
“The greatest of your career?” Espa Roba quoted, his eyes widening as he glanced around the narrow backstage. “Your assistant, where is she? Where is Catherine?”
“She will come in time for the finale. You show such concern for her!” This close, he could see as the stripes on the mask wrinkled in time to Arcana’s facial expressions. He categorized this one as amusement. “You should really be more concerned for yourself.”
The lights blinked again, synchronized with his laughter. In the distance, Espa Roba could still hear the calliope music winding down, and the uneasy feeling deep in his stomach grew as Arcana swung the door of the box open.
“And now…the lights.”
The lights cut out again as the room was plunged into darkness, the suddenness of it so disorienting that Espa Roba immediately flung out his arms to keep some idea of awareness in the narrow space. One arm hit a table, knocking its contents to the floor, and as something-the hammer?-hit his foot he twisted to the side to avoid the rest, stopping once he realized he could no longer sense Arcana, and the only thing he could even hear was his own breathing.
He extended both arms again, leaning to the right in hope of finding the wall. Arcana was blocking his path to the stage and from there, to the door, although now Espa Roba had no idea where either of them were. With a sigh of relief his fingers touched metal, and he continued to walk along it, using his fingertips and the edges of his feet to search the ground and find his path. His feet hit something else-the threshold of a door?-and he went around it, one hand outstretched in front of him. He swore he could see a light, glowing faintly in the distance, but as his fingers touched cold, smooth metal he knew he’d just walked straight inside Arcana’s box.
He spun, his feet sluggish and unsure, and forced his arms out again only to slam them into the door as Arcana swung it closed, clicking a lock into place. Espa Roba kicked out, the noise deafening to him, bracing himself against one wall and trying to locate the lock so he could kick it open.
He heard voices from the other side, and then the lights all blossomed back into life, barely visible through the slats in the hinges other than a bright, vertical shine.
“And now this box for me,” Arcana said, stepping inside a neighboring box to the clang of metal.
-“Tell me, tell me, will it work?”-
The lights all grew so bright as to burn, and in the next second all of the carnival’s power was re-routed to this machine. As the sparks flew and a loud, electric whine filled the air, Arcana imagined the sounds substituted for applause in his ear, tuning out even Espa Roba’s screaming as he pounded on the door with both fists, the sound dying abruptly as he lost consciousness-
.
Catherine stepped across the stage, careful of the broken glass from the dozens of shattered light-bulbs littering the wooden floor. Before her stood a man, lifting slim fingers to remove a striped mask, revealing the face of Espa Roba.
“Do you like my trick?” he asked hoarsely, the voice not at all like the one she’d remembered, the voice of a performer. “I created a whole new identity for myself. A whole new face to replace the old one. Isn’t it grand?”
Horrified, she could only look on as he stepped towards her, looping one arm around her waist and leading her off the stage as the two walked together, down the central aisle and out the door.
.
He woke dizzy, his whole body crumpled at the bottom of the glorified metal locker Arcana had locked him in. He had no idea how long he’d been out, but his whole body ached, his skin hot. He shifted again, raising his arms, confusion making way for grand apprehension.
He hadn’t been wearing a jacket before.
He stood and tested the door, finding it unlocked. Pushing it open, he stumbled across the floor, surprised to find the backstage area almost completely empty.
It was not all that bright backstage, but he still had trouble seeing, and as Espa Roba raised both hands to his face, the skin he encountered was rough and not his own, all scar tissue and the mottled remains of burns, stretching across his entire face and disappearing under his neck and the collar of his shirt.
Beside him, the mirror from Arcana’s first trick had been left behind. He glanced at it now, finding the face familiar. The same man had come to him earlier for a psychic reading, and he knew now that it had been Arcana’s real face, the one he hid behind his mask.
Espa Roba glanced at the machine beside him, and as he checked the pockets of his jacket he found two hundred dollars, payment for all of the work he’d done, and the two together was enough for him to start his new work, to rise to the challenge Arcana had left for him. To find him, and repay him.
Now, it’s his turn-focusing as intently as he can, Espa Roba divined Arcana’s future once more. Just this once, he’ll break his promise and tell an adverse fortune.
.
End.
.
.
Notes:
1) This takes place before the events of Vanishing Act in my mind, but they're pretty standalone, too. If you enjoyed this you'll probably like that, too. Also, in the 1950's what he was given was actually quite a bit of money.
2) The "mirror" trick was inspired by the "Harmonia Mirror" Trap Card and the final trick was inspired by the "Interdimensional Warp" Trap Card.
3) I would appreciate and value your comments! Thanks for reading!
Challenge: M Round of the YGO Rare Pair Community
Pairing: Mahoshipping (Espa Roba x Arcana)
Warnings: Genre is horror, although it's pretty mild by my standards.
Summary: A magician never reveals his secrets. / AU Mahoshipping, Espa Roba x Arcana
A/N:This is set in the same verse as FF.net’s Vanishing Act, although all you need to know about that is it also takes place in a vaguely 1950’s carnival AU and involves a similar opposition between a stage magician and an self-invented psychic. I hope you enjoy!
Disappearing Act
.“You’re lucky we have an opening for you,” the manager told him, staring across the table at the man with frosted green hair, barely filling the folding chair he sat in. “Tell me how you do it.”
“I can’t explain it, I told you,” he insisted, settling both hands on the smooth, dark wood of the table before him. “They’re more like feelings…strong insights and intuition. I can read your future now, if you like.” He grinned, spreading his hands, trying to still the shaking in his palms. “Just know that it might not always be good.”
“Ha!” The manager stood, his head nearly reaching the top of the tent. “The customers will expect good fortunes, and if you cannot provide those then I will expect you to lie.”
“I can do whatever is asked of me,” he said. “As long as we settle the matter of my payment.”
“Forty a week,” was the quick reply.
“Forty? I can’t feed four brothers on that. Fifty at least.”
“Done.” The manager gestured towards the entrance, and the man follows him out into the sunlight, the cloudless sky overhead so bright, the blue looking as painted-on as the wooden sets propped up around the fairgrounds.
“I’m a businessman, not a psychic, but I assumed you’d take the job and had your tent prepared for you.” On the far side of the lane, tucked against the side of a much larger tent, he saw the brightly painted sign displaying his name and trade for the public to see, The Psychic Espa Roba Tells your Futures!
“Get ready,” the manager told him. “We open tonight.”
.
“It’ll be my best trick yet,” he said, looking at the giant box beside him, wired throughout and decorated with mirrors. He could see the reflection of one outstretched hand in them, and curled it back into itself in a fist. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck, sticking his hair to his skin, but one look from his assistant wiped any unease from his mind.
“The show, tonight,” he added, “is it sold out?”
“It is,” she said. “Every seat is accounted for.”
“Good.” He tested the machine, flipped a switch, and watched as sparks flew from the connections. “Good.”
.
He had his brothers select the marks, at first. Wandering around the grounds, they could easily pick up enough from a person’s casual conversation and gesticulation to make simple prophecies of logic and rationality, enhanced with his own natural gift.
A woman was his first customer, removing her large hat as she entered the tent. He read her palms, divined her long life, and exposed the outcome of her relationship with the man whose photo rested inside the locket around her neck. Espa Roba did not have to work hard on futures like hers-the futures wrote themselves to his eyes, and he merely followed the lines set on his customers’ palms or divined that which they knew but had not yet admitted to themselves.
He did not see many more people, until a middle-aged man enters and sat before him, close to the end of the carnival’s day. When Espa Roba peered into this man’s mind, he saw the strangest vision yet, a glimpse of the recent past instead of the future.
“You…were in a magic show here, weren’t you?” Espa Roba asked, still struggling to grasp the significance of it in his mind. “You were a volunteer. It’s all you’ve been thinking about since. Why is that?”
“Have you seen the show? It’s in the very tent next door, you can’t have missed it.” The man’s voice was oddly melancholy, reflective in a way that had more to do with regret than with mirrors.
“I’ve never seen it.”
“It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” the man said. “Real magic-real magic! I saw it with my own eyes, held it in my very hands as I watched things multiply and vanish before a crowd far bigger than you’ve ever had, I’ll bet.”
Espa Roba held back his own opinions-he didn’t think it would be all that prudent for the carnival’s psychic to have loud skepticism for the magician-they both practiced in illusions, after all, although his own held a dash of reality, and to this man’s mind the stage illusions he had seen were just as real.
“Go,” the man told him. “You will not regret it.”
Espa Roba nodded, his interest already piqued without any additional persuasion, the sign outside his tent already flipped to closed in his mind.
He had a show to catch.
.
The fire burned before them, engulfing everything in sight. He made no move to distance himself from it; already the damage had been done. He could not turn away. He could barely move, but as she approached him, limping slightly, favoring her right leg, he spun and lifted an arm to hide himself behind the charred edge of his black cape. She would not see his failure. Instead of him, she would look at the fire as he did.
“Do not look at me!” he screamed. “Do not look at me!”
.
“Welcome.” Standing on center stage, the man in the mask introduced himself, spreading his arms towards the audience. “I am Arcana.”
The light-bulbs lining the stage began to flicker, and the edges of Arcana’s mask wrinkled above his mouth in the only indication of a grin as the audience began to murmur amongst themselves, a low hush which grew to an excited clamor within seconds. Arcana raised his hands again, and the audience silenced.
“See? That was my first trick.” His honeyed voice drew the audience’s laughter, and as he straightened his tuxedo jacket with gloved hands a woman entered, pushing a tall, three-sided mirror on wheels. “Can I have a volunteer? You, in the front.” He gestured towards a man by the aisle in the front row, who ascended a set of narrow steps to the stage amidst applause.
Arcana turned the mirror so it faced the man, and moved to stand behind him. “Tell us what you see.”
“I see myself,” he said. “I see the audience. Wait a second-”
“Perhaps I should have asked, instead, to tell us what you don’t see.” Arcana’s voice boomed over the stage, and the woman came forward again, a hammer in her hands.
“I will change the very nature of this mirror,” he continued. “I will switch its properties to a new target, but first it must be broken. Break the mirror with the hammer, please.”
Almost gingerly, the man held the hammer in one hand, twisting it and testing its weight. Then, with a groan he surged forward, swinging the hammer to impact the head into the dead center of the mirror, producing a ring of cracks spiraling out across the glass, denting its reflection even more.
“Very good,” Arcana said. “Some applause for our volunteer.” As he began to head off stage, Arcana stopped him with a hand on his arm and a few whispered words. “Stay for the end.”
He twisted the three sections of the mirror around, spinning them so the cracked side faced away from the audience. “And now!” he called, “the real magic begins!”
The lights began to dim again, and as Arcana spun the mirror on its wheels the lights extinguished entirely, plunging the hall into darkness. A second later they were back, the bulbs burning almost impossibly bright, washing the stage in artificial light as Arcana straightened out the mirror again, displaying the perfectly intact glass.
“Face it again,” he told the volunteer, “and tell me what you see.”
As the man faced the mirror, he gasped, stepping back and glancing towards Arcana in disbelief. There, for the entire audience to see, was Arcana’s masked reflection. “Or perhaps I should have asked for what you can’t see.”
The mirror was entirely void of the man’s reflection. From his position at the back of the large tent, Espa Roba could barely see through the crowds seated in front of him, but he could see enough of the mirror to know that there was only one reflection in it. He had, indeed, switched the two in it.
Arcana raised his arms again, gesturing towards the mirror and bowing as the audience applauded again, his bow repeated double in the mirror behind him.
“Now for my next trick, I’ll need another-”
Espa Roba turned and exited the tent. He’d seen enough.
.
“Is it ready?” he asked, any attempt to keep the breathy enthusiasm from his voice futile. When not projecting on a stage, his voice sounded normal to his own ears, and he took every opportunity to make it cinematic and golden. “Tell me, is it?”
“Yes,” she said. “It will work this time. The mistakes have been fixed. I…just wish I knew what went wrong the first time.”
“I have changed it.” His voice was more confident now, and a few of the light-bulbs around the stage dimmed as more of the fair’s electricity was re-routed towards the machine. “It is not the same trick. It is so much better than before-the best trick I’ll ever perform. The best magic…”
He laughed, the sound strange and muffled underneath his mask. “Now, all we need is a volunteer.”
.
Over the following weeks Espa Roba’s popularity grew as fairgoers heard about his talent for true predictions-and with a little help spreading rumors from his brothers-and with everyone who wanted to see him, he was moved into a new, larger tent across from the main exhibition hall. He put on shows of his own, competed with the magician’s audience, and resisted the urge to attend another of his performances.
He sent his younger brothers instead, disguised, until the point where they reported that Arcana had chosen one of them as a volunteer, and had sealed the youngest up in a box and had him vanish only to reappear at the back of the auditorium.
Espa Roba considered it a challenge. He would rise to it.
That day he saw several more young women and young men sent on dares, and an old man with a wrinkled, tough face, the skin mottled in a most unattractive way. The next patron more than made up for it, a beautiful woman in a red dress, and Espa Roba did not need to hear her introduction to know exactly who she was.
“You’re the assistant,” he said. “Arcana’s assistant. What are you doing here?”
“You’re the psychic. Tell me instead.” She shot him a smile that he didn’t return, glancing uninterestedly to the side. Boring. Divining her mind would prove no challenge.
“He sent you. Am I wrong?”
“No,” she said.
“Then why-”
“Leave,” she spoke up suddenly, the tears forming in her eyes doing as little to move him as her red-lipped smile had been. “Leave this place. He won’t stand for the competition, for anyone challenging him or his power. You do that.”
“I don’t care.” Espa Roba leaned back in his chair, wishing it was more comfortable for all the time he had to spend in it. “You can tell him I think his magic is a sham, and that my psychic abilities are more than a match for it.”
Looking closer, she seemed genuinely upset, and while comforting others was not a path he was familiar with-he’d stuck to his promise of only telling positive fortunes-he did not want to see her cry.
“Here.” He plucked a handkerchief from one pocket and tossed it to her, and she dabbed at her eyes with it, blonde hair falling across her face.
“What does he look like?” Espa Roba asked, hoping to take advantage of her condition and see if he could garner some information. “Underneath the mask.”
“I don’t know.” Her words were muffled by the handkerchief. “He won’t let me…not since the trick that went wrong.”
“Wrong? How?”
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “It’ll be the greatest of his career, he says.” She wavered over each word, her voice still subdued and wreaked by intermittent sobs.
“Tell me,” she continued, “if you really can see the future-will he succeed?”
Espa Roba concentrated, hoping that he could do this much for her. He saw it-the look on her face, an empty backstage, the light-bulbs lining the perimeter overloaded and broken. He saw success.
“Yes,” he said. “It will succeed.”
.
It was enough that Arcana sought out his brothers when he should have been challenging Espa Roba himself, and that evening after his last show he snuck into the closed-off tent and into the auditorium’s backstage, amidst half-glowing lights and a bizarre collection of equipment and machines, all unfamiliar to his amateur eye.
He ducked a banner-the spectacular magic of Arcana-and continued deeper backstage. He was determined to find the creation he’d used on his brother and either break it or expose it so Arcana could never use such a trick again.
“If only it wasn’t so dim back here,” he murmured, the words barely out of his mouth before every light in the theatre burst into life, glowing so brightly he had to raise a hand to his eyes to shield them from it.
“As you wish.” The golden voice was unmistakable, and as Espa Roba turned he saw Arcana, one arm propped against a tall, black box.
“It is a shame we will have no audience for this performance,” he continued. “Tell me, Espa Roba, can you see your own future?”
He took a small step backward, trying to keep the confusion from showing in his face, wishing for the first time that he had a mask like Arcana’s to hide behind for situations like these. “Why do you ask?”
“I suppose the answer is no, then,” he said. “You can’t, can you? That makes this so much more interesting.”
“What do you mean?” Espa Roba glanced towards the box, to Arcana’s fingers which tapped an arbitrary rhythm out on its surface.
“I need a volunteer for this next trick, and I’ve chosen you,” Arcana said.
“The greatest of your career?” Espa Roba quoted, his eyes widening as he glanced around the narrow backstage. “Your assistant, where is she? Where is Catherine?”
“She will come in time for the finale. You show such concern for her!” This close, he could see as the stripes on the mask wrinkled in time to Arcana’s facial expressions. He categorized this one as amusement. “You should really be more concerned for yourself.”
The lights blinked again, synchronized with his laughter. In the distance, Espa Roba could still hear the calliope music winding down, and the uneasy feeling deep in his stomach grew as Arcana swung the door of the box open.
“And now…the lights.”
The lights cut out again as the room was plunged into darkness, the suddenness of it so disorienting that Espa Roba immediately flung out his arms to keep some idea of awareness in the narrow space. One arm hit a table, knocking its contents to the floor, and as something-the hammer?-hit his foot he twisted to the side to avoid the rest, stopping once he realized he could no longer sense Arcana, and the only thing he could even hear was his own breathing.
He extended both arms again, leaning to the right in hope of finding the wall. Arcana was blocking his path to the stage and from there, to the door, although now Espa Roba had no idea where either of them were. With a sigh of relief his fingers touched metal, and he continued to walk along it, using his fingertips and the edges of his feet to search the ground and find his path. His feet hit something else-the threshold of a door?-and he went around it, one hand outstretched in front of him. He swore he could see a light, glowing faintly in the distance, but as his fingers touched cold, smooth metal he knew he’d just walked straight inside Arcana’s box.
He spun, his feet sluggish and unsure, and forced his arms out again only to slam them into the door as Arcana swung it closed, clicking a lock into place. Espa Roba kicked out, the noise deafening to him, bracing himself against one wall and trying to locate the lock so he could kick it open.
He heard voices from the other side, and then the lights all blossomed back into life, barely visible through the slats in the hinges other than a bright, vertical shine.
“And now this box for me,” Arcana said, stepping inside a neighboring box to the clang of metal.
-“Tell me, tell me, will it work?”-
The lights all grew so bright as to burn, and in the next second all of the carnival’s power was re-routed to this machine. As the sparks flew and a loud, electric whine filled the air, Arcana imagined the sounds substituted for applause in his ear, tuning out even Espa Roba’s screaming as he pounded on the door with both fists, the sound dying abruptly as he lost consciousness-
.
Catherine stepped across the stage, careful of the broken glass from the dozens of shattered light-bulbs littering the wooden floor. Before her stood a man, lifting slim fingers to remove a striped mask, revealing the face of Espa Roba.
“Do you like my trick?” he asked hoarsely, the voice not at all like the one she’d remembered, the voice of a performer. “I created a whole new identity for myself. A whole new face to replace the old one. Isn’t it grand?”
Horrified, she could only look on as he stepped towards her, looping one arm around her waist and leading her off the stage as the two walked together, down the central aisle and out the door.
.
He woke dizzy, his whole body crumpled at the bottom of the glorified metal locker Arcana had locked him in. He had no idea how long he’d been out, but his whole body ached, his skin hot. He shifted again, raising his arms, confusion making way for grand apprehension.
He hadn’t been wearing a jacket before.
He stood and tested the door, finding it unlocked. Pushing it open, he stumbled across the floor, surprised to find the backstage area almost completely empty.
It was not all that bright backstage, but he still had trouble seeing, and as Espa Roba raised both hands to his face, the skin he encountered was rough and not his own, all scar tissue and the mottled remains of burns, stretching across his entire face and disappearing under his neck and the collar of his shirt.
Beside him, the mirror from Arcana’s first trick had been left behind. He glanced at it now, finding the face familiar. The same man had come to him earlier for a psychic reading, and he knew now that it had been Arcana’s real face, the one he hid behind his mask.
Espa Roba glanced at the machine beside him, and as he checked the pockets of his jacket he found two hundred dollars, payment for all of the work he’d done, and the two together was enough for him to start his new work, to rise to the challenge Arcana had left for him. To find him, and repay him.
Now, it’s his turn-focusing as intently as he can, Espa Roba divined Arcana’s future once more. Just this once, he’ll break his promise and tell an adverse fortune.
.
End.
.
.
Notes:
1) This takes place before the events of Vanishing Act in my mind, but they're pretty standalone, too. If you enjoyed this you'll probably like that, too. Also, in the 1950's what he was given was actually quite a bit of money.
2) The "mirror" trick was inspired by the "Harmonia Mirror" Trap Card and the final trick was inspired by the "Interdimensional Warp" Trap Card.
3) I would appreciate and value your comments! Thanks for reading!