The ground was firm and the grass was soft. Both warmed the back of the young vagrant who lay there. The bank on which he lay sloped down towards the Thames river that flowed past him. With his hands supporting his head, Yorick Berkley was able to watch the sky and the bulbous clouds drafting overhead.

  He glanced down at his makeshift fishing rod, a worn solid branch with twined rope attached at the end, and waited for the fish to take the bait. Yorick had lost count the hours he had spent at this part of the riverbank. He always seemed to find his way to the same exact spot. The bank was sloped at such an angle that it made his relation comfortable enough to rest on without the worry for sliding into the river. The ground were never worn rough by people’s feet and the grass always grew in vibrant quantities to provide suitable bedding for him. Furthermore, it was remote meaning no interruptions nor distractions from his trails of thought.

  All in all, Yorick had found the perfect fishing spot.

  The sun kissed his forehead and hissed at his bare skin, at his hands, knees, shins and neck. The thin woollen shirt and trousers were the only clothes he had. During this time of the year, that resulted in no worries. He was warm in the night as he was in the day. But when winter comes, Yorick knew that he had to be prepared.

  The fishing rod had not moved nor twitched for an hour since Yorick arrived. He didn't seem to mind at that point. He had an issue to address in his mind and a solution he had to come up with.

  His lover, Frida… His dearest starlight was pregnant. Heavily so and both prospective parents knew that the time was soon coming. Yorick had to be alone to think.

  He was concerned on whether he was going to be a good father. He never knew his father. So he had no experience nor fatherly lessons to pass on. Only his own lessons that he had gained from a lifetime of surviving and determination. Would that be enough for his child? Yorick had no way of truly knowing.

  Frida had no qualms of being a mother. She was ecstatic for it. Yorick wished he shared her enthusiasm for the future. But he was hesitant. He was unsure that he was even ready for it.

  Before her pregnancy, they had both talked about their future family together. Yorick nodded while Frida talked and talked. Yorick entertained the notion of children, but he never thought that it could happen… so soon.

  Yorick sat up and rubbed his face.

  He desperately loved Frida. It mattered not that she was a whore. She was his everything. But love could only bring them through life so far without money.

  Yorick had to make his wealth. Being a fisherman, a layman and a jack of all trades served him well when he was alone and caring for only himself. But he had children coming. That had to change. Yorick nodded.

  There was only one way to make a decent living. Become a soldier in the King’s army. That way, he had could make enough to pride for his family and secure a decent life for them all. Yorick smiled. That was the way forward. That was the path for true joy and contentment.

  His fishing rod twitched.

  Yorick reached slowly for the rod, gently pulled it out from the hole that he stuck it into and gave the rope a singular and violent tug. The rope became taut and Yorick had his prize. After a few minutes of fighting, Yorick lifted a trout from the water. It flapped and flicked for all its worth and continued to do so after he placed the fish into his empty wicker basket.

  Yorick opened the small wooden box by his basket and lifted a worm from the squirming mass in the box and hooked the creature onto his barbed steel. He flung the bait into the river and jammed the rod back into the mud.

  He needed to marry Frida. He would not allow his child to be born a bastard. If they did that, then God would look down upon them with assured love and gladness. Maybe then, He would bestow good fortune upon then for their deference-

  A twig snapped behind Yorick, making him turn around to see an old man in robes watching him.

  The old man, with whitened hair and beard and a skinny form, travelled down the slope to reach him.

  “Good morning.” Yorick said.

  The old man nodded and smiled. “Yes. It is. Good morning. May I join you?”

  Yorick gestured a spot beside him for the old man to rest his feet. The old man nodded and slowly lowered himself. He winced as he did.

  “Oh- Oh dear… Damned legs are giving up on me.”

  “Ah, old age is an enemy for us all…”

  “For mortals… yes. Not for the divine.”

  Yorick smiled and returned his eyes to the river. Yorick was not a learned man, otherwise he would have recognised the old man as John Dee. But he did not. To him, John was merely an old man travelling the country.

  John looked over at the basket. “You caught one. Trout, I take it?”

  “Yes. I was very lucky. God willing, I shall catch a few more before the sun sets.”

  “And if you do not? What then?”

  “The I shall make do with what I have for food. God wills it.”

  John chewed his teeth. “God does not hold dominion over everything. You can continue to fish and still find your food even after the night comes.”

  Yorick gave John a look. “God is good. He chose the fish to take my bait. I have him to thank for that. And for everything else that had happened to me.”

  John sighed. “Do I have God to thank for everything that has happened to me? Maybe… I am sorry. Forgive the musings of an old man. What do you have to be so thankful for?”

  Yorick smiled and began talking about his child.

  John marvelled at the man’s honest nature. His straightforwardness and open heart. He seemed so happy. How did this man achieve such a state of goodness with so little in his life to begin with? Was he born with the happiness in his soul? Did he create it for himself? Did God give that to him or did he take it?

  Yorick had a simplistic and optimistic view of the world. John had a darker, pessimistic one of it. Two men, John understood at that point, who have led two different lives within the same country. John wondered if he could have that happiness? And if he did, would he have still accepted Lucifer’s offer?

  No. No, he would have still taken the deal on offer. John had his goals. He had his ultimate destiny to achieve that no amount of goodwill and genial thoughts to supplant.

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  That was then that John began developing the oddest feeling as he watched Yorick.

  He felt it in his chest. Upon his left breast… the scarring began to throb. It throbbed like a separate heartbeat. And it throbbed the hardest as John locked his eyes on Yorick himself.

  John had to catch his breath. It was him. He was the one John had been looking for. Two years of searching. Following. Listening and dreaming… It had led him here. It drew him here.

  To a simple fisherman, unknown to all save for a few vagrants. John was surprised by this. He had expected the Monas, a sigil of great power and potential, to lead him to the presence of a great ethereal being of massive power.

  Not this normal human who was most likely born of a woman with no name to a father who was dead… An ordinary human with no real prospects.

  But john could not be picky nor irritated by this anti-climatic revelation. John had to find a host. A specimen who fitted the hunger of the Monas. And it was hungry.

  For months, it pulled at his insides with claws made from rose thorns, accompanied with the pain that description implied. It needed an outlet, it needed sustenance. It needed release. It needed a catalyst. John clenched his fists. This was it. His final step. His final chance to achieve his mission.

  Yorick grabbed the rod and pulled hard. He laughed heartily as another fish seemed to fly out of the water and landed on the grass.

  “Well! I think that should be enough for now. I’ll come back tomorrow. Two fish are better than none, I’d say. Good sir, why don't you come with me to meet my woman? Perhaps she can learn from your great tellings of the world? I can tell that you are a man that has travelled.”

  John shook his head. “I cannot. I have matters that must be attended to. I thank you.”

  “So be it.” Yorick shrugged and placed the fish into his basket.

  Bust as he stood back up, Yorick stumbled.

  “Oh…I- I do not-…” he muttered before he fell down onto his back. “I do not feel so well.”

  Yorick did not see it. For he could not.

  John had his hand out, pointed at Yorick. And a tendril of blackness, invisible to the eyes of those not connected to magic, had reached out and latched onto Yorick’s chest and pressed him down. It was not powerful and it was non-lethal. But it was enough to weaken John’s quarry for his next move.

  John scrabbled towards Yorick and grabbed his neck. He pressed down onto Yorick’s throat and squeezed as hard as he could. Yorick, desperately weakened by the magic, could only twitch and squirm like a lame dog.

  Yorick’s eyes were wide and filled with terror.

  John widened his eyes and focused on his sigil.

  The Monas burned with hot iron as John willed the Monas to create a passageway between his soul and that of Yorick’s.

  The passageway began to form into a rope of light that connected the two.

  “Cease your struggle.” John hissed as he now straddled Yorick’s body to hold him in place. “I beg of you, stop your fighting. This is for the greatest of good.”

  Yorick reached up and grabbed John’s hands. If he could speak, Yorick would have said “Please…stop…” But all that came out were wheezes and gasps.

  The passageway was formed! John took a deep breath and sighed heavily. “Let me in, host… let me in…”

  John’s plan was to enter Yorick’s body, into the cavity of his soul and take root. He would then force the host’s own soul out whilst taking the years it has liven for his own. While this killed the host it would only be a momentary death. The host, now commandeered by John, shall live on. John Dee will live on. Within a new body with his new years to dispense with as he saw fit. He would leave his decrepit body behind forever.

  John laughed. Yorick’s soul was a large one. It had strong and filled with vibrancy. A worthy soul to take and use. And a body in good physique to be a vessel. John thanked himself, not God, for dissevering such a find.

  John felt tension however. It started in his hands. Not because of the host’s feeble attempts to throw him off. But was a tension in his muscles. A spasm that began to travel up his arms, through his shoulders and settling on his chest. John found it hard to breathe.

  John coughed. The tension felt like… resistance. No- It was blockage. Something, somewhere in John’s body or in the host’s, was holding his soul back.

  The Monas was too weak. The Monas was weakening! Too weak!

  An explosion of black lightning, the likes of which John had never seen before, erupted from Yorick’s body. Its tendrils leapt from his chest and slammed into John’s body like a swing of a wind-driven branch.

  John fell back and landed with a winded stomach and a pained back. He watched in stunned awe as the lightning whipped and lashed at the ground and grass. It began to singe all it touched. It burned the fish in the flaming basket, set alight the host’s clothes and fried the grass into blackened charcoal.

  And as quickly as they had arrived, the black lightning vanished instantly.

  The host, Yorick Berkley, breathed in and out, in and then slowly, slowly out. He died and the hopes and dreams he had for his wife and child died with him…

  John panted and rubbed his face. His scar, throbbing only slightly, burned like a single candle.

  A figure suddenly appeared from the tree line by the bank and descended towards Yorick’s body and utterly ignoring John himself.

  The Monas throbbed suddenly in response to this presence. John watched as the figure, who seemed to resemble a - woman? - knelt by the corpse and plucked a hair from the body’s head. John felt a chill in his bones.

  This was Death?

  John stared at the ethereal being in sheer wonderment.

  It this Death? Surely not… A woman cannot be Death…. No. She must be a worker for Death. And she took a hair. Why? Is that his soul? Why a hair?

  The woman turned her steely gaze towards John. She seemed to look right through him. And then she vanished.

  John sighed with a shudder. He had seen Death, in a form of such that would put some at ease certainly. But it was Death all the same. And his Monas throbbed in response to her presence.

  Wait. Perhaps… Perhaps there is a way I can resolve this… I must find a way.

  John stood up and approached the dead man with burning clothes. He turned the body around and allowed the bank to roll the body down into the river. The current quickly took away the floating body downstream. John lifted the basket, box and rod and threw them all after the body.

  He stood there and watched his failure drift away. He shook his head.

  Why did that fail? Where did I go wrong? Was the Moans just not strong enough? Is MY body just not strong enough? Perhaps I need a willing host… Or… John smiled. Or someone so utterly removed from the living world that the laws of such do not apply.

  John nodded and began his walk back up to the pathway that would lead him back to London. John knew exactly what he must do next.

  He had to prepare. To study, work and eat well. To regain and maintain his strength for the time to trap that ethereal. To trap that worker of Death.

  And John knew, in a moment of grim determination born from a life mired spite and ignorance, that there was only one lure that he could use for his plan to truly work… himself.

  What John Dee did not know was what the will of the universe works in ways that we do not foresee nor comprehend. There is an indefatigable law to the universe. A structure that can only be bent so far until it snaps back into its preordained form. But of course, everything has a limit. A limit that John smashed through. In response to what happened on the riverbank that fateful day, the structure of the universe did not just bend, it twisted with irrevocable results.

  The black lightning was that result. A combination of magic and power, power from two souls of great potential. Both slamming into one another and resulting in such an explosion, that it reverberated from Yorick’s body and struck at the time stream that was stitched into the universe and the Schedule itself.

  Now, it was not violent enough to draw the attentions of the Elementals. Hence why Death failed to see it coming.

  If it had, none of what transpired would have taken place. But it was powerful enough to affect the Schedule in ways that no one could foresee.

  Like electricity attaching itself to copper wiring, the black lightning of magic wrought from John Dee’s sheer iron will to live, the exploding magic charged through the ages of time.

  On it sprang forth, all along the varying strands of Yorick’s family line and the families that are linked to it through marriage.

  The magic jumped like a gazelle and flew like a falcon.

  It skipped generations upon generations, landing only five times into the souls of five random humans. There, the power nestled in those souls, untapped and undiscovered.

  It is through this magic which originated from John Dee’s attempt to play God with his fate, that these five souls were connected forever more…