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Dylan’s had a lot of different, equally-terrible ideas over the years. He’s not ashamed to admit it — he’s made several bad calls, missed important information and acted too quickly, and he’s not quick to let go of something after he’s already made his mind up. Every time, though, he’s made it out just fine. By all accounts, with his track record, this, too, should be fine. It’s just — he’s not sure he’s ever had an idea this terrible.
Dylan stares down at the pentacle drawn on the floor of the apartment, four candles in different colours spread out at four of the points — and himself, standing squarely at the head of the fifth.
On the floor directly to his left, situated right before the edge of where the pentagram’s lines come together, is a candle gleaming white, with a flame that burns brightly and hotly. There’s a bundle of sage in front of it, neatly tied with an equally white ribbon, as well as a still-smoldering scrap of paper with the incantation for the Horseman of Pestilence.
On the opposite end of the star is a sprig of poison hemlock, positioned in a perfect mirror image of the sage. Behind it is a black candle, dim and waning, the flame almost entirely extinguished despite the candle being brand new. This side has a roll of paper, equally burnt, with the inscription calling for the Horseman of Famine.
Further back, a little closer to the apartment’s hallway (and really, this is not a good place to be doing a summoning ritual in the slightest, but it’s the only place Dylan has that nobody else knows about, and if something goes horribly wrong and the place burns down at least it won’t be traced back to him) is another candle, this one a deep red, with a flame that flickers wildly as though it’s fighting a non-existent breeze. There’s a twig of yarrow in front of it, and the paper next to it calls for the Horseman of War.
Finally, there’s a pale gray candle between the red and black one, the flame on this deathly still, unmoving. This one has rosemary laid out in front of it, taking up the fifth corner of the pentagram, with a scrap of paper written for the Horseman of Death.
It’s the perfect setup. There’s a weathered old journal behind him, discoloured pages with old, smudged ink so dry it’s nearly crumbling off the pages on its own, some of the passages written in a language indecipherable and incoherent. Sometimes, when he tries to decrypt the strange symbols again, he swears they’ve changed between this and the previous time he’d picked the book up.
He’s not supposed to have it. It belongs to the Eye, really, to the extensive library with all their research on the impossible and the unbelievable, the supernatural and the otherworldly, and none of it’s supposed to be real. He’s not supposed to believe in it at all — he believes in magic, in quick tricks and clever dexterity, in plans so perfectly planned and thought-out that they’re infallible enough to seem like magic.
He believes in strategy and determination, in skill and perseverance and brilliance and in outsmarting anyone who’s ever even dared to look at him — he just also happens to believe in the supernatural.
It’s his father’s fault, really. He grew up on stories of the impossible, on people too talented to be human and occurrences too serendipitous to be coincidental. His father believed, almost to a fault, and he thinks that if his life hadn’t been cut short by that stupid, awful trick that killed him, he’d probably have found a way to bring magic back to the world — to make it real.
It’s not what the Eye wants to see. He’d spent years planning revenge on everyone involved in his father’s death — the insurance company that refused to pay out, and the steel manufacturers that cut corners by using cheap, unreliable metal. Thaddeus Bradley, the man who stood to the side and profited off of his father’s death. He needs them to pay for it — and they will. With the Eye’s resources, he’s going to pull off the trick of the ages — take out every single guilty party in one fell swoop and restore balance to the world.
It’s just that the Eye does not, exactly, know about that latter part.
It’s something he believes, deeply and intrinsically — the world has been out of balance for years, with people starving and dying of preventable illnesses all over the world while a select few people cheat death and sow war and chaos amongst the rest. There’s no harmony, no balance, and no amount of dexterity and strategising is going to fix it. There’s no plan he could come up with that would be enough to pull the world back to its natural state, to equity — and so what he needs is something more powerful.
The old journal speaks of four beings, four entities all-powerful and unstoppable, that will be capable of turning the very world on its axis when brought together. They could shake apart the vestiges of corruption and injustice that infect every corner of the world, could wipe apart any society and start it anew with a clean slate.
They could also simply perform a well-planned, well-thought out trick to expose the cruelty and profiteering behind one man’s death, and bring about the beginning of the end of the capitalist society they live in currently.
That’s what Dylan’s hoping for, at least. It’s a long shot, and the chances of this panning out the way he wishes it would are laughably small — but the latest sting operation with the FBI had him gritting his teeth against the surges of nausea that welled up at the sight of humanity’s depravity, the pure evil that people were capable of — and something needs to give.
The Eye doesn’t know that he’s currently standing in a dingy apartment under his father’s name, chalk and salt and water coating the floor around him, the acrid smell of smoke heavy in the air as he prepares himself to try and summon four supernatural entities that could probably kill him with the twitch of a pinkie.
The Eye knows that he’s planning a world-changing trick, that he’s decided to put together a team of magic-practitioners to perform a show grander than anything else ever seen, and that it involves a stage in Las Vegas and robbing a bank in Paris and a fiery, dangerous stunt on a bridge.
They just don’t know that he’s not actually looking to recruit magicians for it. He’d deliberately said magic-practitioners, because it’s not technically incorrect — not when the people he’s eyeing for the job are, allegedly, made up of magic or supernatural powers and what-not.
He doesn’t particularly care for the details, if he’s all that honest. He cares about the soot staining his fingertips, the metallic taste on his tongue as the air seems to thicken with anticipation, electricity crackling around him as he breathes in slowly and casts his eyes upwards, calling to mind the words he’s memorised over and over for this moment.
“Horseman of Pestilence, I summon thee. I require thine pervasiveness, thine unstoppable contamination. Horseman of War, I summon thee. I require thine fury, thine unholy wrath. Horseman of Famine, I summon thee. I require thine hunger, thine neverending ache. Horseman of Death, I summon thee. I require thine inevitability, thine inescapable fate. Horsemen, come forth, and show yourself! I summon thee!”
The words are a bit stuffy, he has to admit. It feels a little silly — all that’s missing is his pointy hat and a long, graying beard, but he can’t risk changing any of the words and this not working. The chances are already infinitesimally small — he needs all the luck he can get.
The static in the air seems to grow, and the scent of smoke increases, a bitter taste burning in the back of his throat, until it grows cloying and thick. The room grows darker, the shadows cast on the walls by the flickering of the flames expanding until they’re all-encompassing, and suddenly it’s like something snaps and the flames go out.
Thin wisps of smoke trail up from now-extinguished candles, curling up lazily into the air — and Dylan’s barely had the time to realise what’s happened when suddenly there’s a sharp exhale, piercing the silence in the room, and the smoke swirling up from the red candle, belonging to War, suddenly disappears.
“Man, it’s been a while, huh. Has no one bothered to update the summoning rites? Thine, thee — what is this, a rip-off Shakespeare play?”
It’s a raspy voice, underlined with a steel, cutting edge — and Dylan’s head snaps up towards the source. Off in the furthest left corner of the room, perfectly perpendicular to her own section of the summoning pentacle, is a redhaired woman leaning back against the wall, eyeing the brown leather gloves on her hands with disinterest. She’s the very picture of casual, and it’s only after she sighs and rolls her eyes that she looks up to meet Dylan’s shocked gaze. “What?”
“You’re here—” It’s not the most eloquent of greetings, he’ll admit, and he immediately takes a step back, breaking away from his place on the pentagram. “You’re War.”
“Ding, ding, ding!” She tilts her head at him, and even though she’s shorter than he is, the way she’s studying him makes him feel impossibly small — like he’s a bug under a microscope, and she’s trying to figure out how best to take him apart. “You get a gold star.”
She grins at him, and there’s no warmth in it. Dylan swallows thickly, and glances around the room for any potential exits — only to meet the steely grey gaze of a tall man, wrapped up in a warm, black peacoat, standing directly behind the white candle. Pestilence.
“He-ey,” Pestilence drawls, a distinctly Southern accent colouring his voice, and his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles and nods, his hat remaining firmly glued to the top of his head. “Fancy meeting you here, guys. What a coinky-dink!”
It’s an absolutely ludicrous thing to say — and Dylan isn’t the only one to think so. There’s a disapproving scoff from the other side of the room, directly across from Pestilence, and Dylan turns to follow the noise to see a pale, lanky guy, all sharp angles and fluffy brown hair pushing himself away from the wall, crossing his arms stiffly. “Pestilence. What an entirely unpleasant surprise.”
He’s slightly shorter than Pestilence, which becomes even more noticeable when he stalks across the room swiftly, sidestepping the black candle on his side of the room to stop in front of the other man, raising his chin slightly to stare him down before lifting an eyebrow. “What misery have you inflicted upon us this time?”
Pestilence, to his credit, doesn’t seem impressed in the slightest. His smile widens, looking for all the world like he’s entirely content to be here, and he leans a tad closer with a bemused expression. “I really wish I could take credit for this, buddy,” he grins, one hand coming up to seemingly poke at the other’s face (and quickly being slapped away in irritation with a withering glare) “but I’m afraid I have no hand in this.”
Famine huffs impatiently, turning to the side and scowling at Dylan with all the annoyance of a short-tempered cosmic being. “You, then. What have you done?”
That’s… not easily explained, and for all that Dylan had practised his rousing, persuasive speech in the bathroom mirror roughly forty times before coming here, it seems like the words are drying up on his tongue. “Uh—”
“Great,” Famine snaps, cutting him off before he’s even managed to get a single word out, “He’s useless. Well, I have more important things to do — like my job. Goodbye.”
He pivots sharply and walks back to the corner whence he came — stopping short in front of the wall where he appeared. He seems to study it for a moment, looking the plaster up and down before his shoulders slump ever so slightly, a helpless little shrug as he seems to realise that for all that Dylan’s managed to pull off the first successful summoning ritual in roughly four centuries, if the Eye’s journal is to be believed — he’s also very much still standing in a crappy New York apartment, and the drywall on the walls does not actually contain any magical properties. It’s just… walls.
“Something wrong?” War closes the distance between her and the summoning circle, heels clicking on the creaky floors, and she flashes an innocent smile to Dylan as Famine knocks experimentally on the wall, still seemingly determined to disappear back to wherever he came from. “Ooh, you added black salt!”
She’s inspecting the lines drawn on the floor, Dylan’s realising, and he shifts his weight from foot to foot as she reaches down and plucks the yarrow from the floor, leveling him with a flat look after a moment’s consideration. “Bad man’s nettle? Really?”
“We, uh, call it yarrow, nowadays” Dylan offers lamely, gesturing to the journal on the desk behind him. “The journal didn’t specify which type, so I just…”
“Right.” She tosses it back onto the ground and spins around to face Pestilence. “Haven’t seen you in a while, not since— Yunnan, was it?”
“The eighteen fifties, that’s right,” Pestilence grins, pointing at her, and then he tilts his head. “I was doing the Plague rounds again. You were there for the rebellion, right?”
“Taiping,” War agrees, “crazy that it’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, though. What have you been doing in the meantime?”
Whatever Pestilence is about to say is interrupted by Famine whirling around again, snapping his fingers impatiently at both of the others. “We’re just gonna play catch-up, are we? Surely the fact that this random guy managed to summon us and we’re now stuck here isn’t a cause for concern — really, I’m glad you guys are having a nice chat. That’s good for you.”
“You’re just jealous nobody asked you,” War rolls her eyes, rising to the challenge in an instant. Her eyes light up like a wildfire, blazing and violent, and she stares Famine down viciously enough that he shrinks back marginally. “Why are you still here, anyway? I thought you had better things to do, like your job?”
She raises her voice in a mockery of his, clipping her tone in the same way, and before he can reply, she continues. “Unless… oh, dear. You don’t actually have anywhere else to be, do you? Otherwise you’d have been pulled there already.”
“I’m actually just staying to make sure you guys aren’t doing anything stupid,” Famine grits out, a blatant lie, and Pestilence huffs out a laugh.
Can these guys teleport? Given the fact that Famine seems infuriated over the fact that he’s stuck here, apparently, Dylan would say no — but War just implied that they can teleport if they’re pulled towards a place they’re needed. It’s a fascinating mechanism, really, and it’s something Dylan needs to examine closer. “How does your teleporting work—?”
“— Not now,” War and Famine both reply at the same time, and given the withering glare they share afterwards, neither of them is happy about it. War purses her lips sharply. “At least Pestilence knows how to hold a conversation—”
“Is no one gonna ask why we’re here?”
It’s a soft voice from a forgotten corner of the room, and Dylan’s eyes snap up immediately towards the sound. It’s coming from a figure leaning against the far back wall, half-hidden in shadows, the gray candle gleaming in front of him. Death.
Death takes a step forward, and Dylan inhales in surprise as the light catches the side of his face. He’s young, seemingly barely out of his teenage years, and though there’s a weathered, hardened line in his posture, something world-weary and unconcerned, his eyes catch the light and there’s still a sparkle in them — something lighter.
He’s unassuming — brown, close-cropped hair and a leather jacket give him a modern look, but there’s something about the way he carries himself that instantly puts Dylan at ease, even if it takes him a second to unfreeze himself from the floor. He’d known he was summoning four Horsemen, four beings capable of razing down buildings and societies alike — but where War seems to draw attention effortlessly, a loud, visceral presence in the room, Death seems to avoid it. He’s quiet, and unnoticeable, and even though Dylan knows he’s looked in his direction before, his eyes had passed right over him — and he huffs quietly to himself. If his superiors could see him now, he’d lose his job.
“That’s a good suggestion,” Pestilence agrees immediately, grinning wider when Famine grinds his jaw down loud enough it’s audible, and then he eyes Dylan a little closer. “You summoned us, yeah? So, what — you want three wishes? A quest most epic? A better-fitting shirt?”
“What are you, a genie?”
Famine’s tone is clipped again, irritability rolling off of him in waves, and Pestilence eyes him nonplussed, shrugging as he turns to look back at War. “I don’t know. War, do you grant wishes?”
War squares her shoulders and takes a step closer to the both of them and smiles sweetly. “I don’t know — do you wish to be punched in the face?”
For a group of timeless, ancient beings, they sure are behaving like children. Dylan watches them squabble back and forth, turning his head between them as though he’s watching a tennis match, right up until he accidentally catches the eyes of Death — who smiles at him, almost shyly.
“We haven’t been summoned in a while,” he says smoothly, stepping forward and right through the brewing argument between War and Famine, both of them parting around him as though they’re magnets in like fields. “It’s impressive. We usually only get pulled somewhere for our jobs. It’s not your time yet, so you must want something of us.”
“Uh,” Dylan says, once more the very epitome of eloquence, “I sure hope it’s not. No, it’s— I have an offer for you. A question, really. A request.” God. He used to be better at his.
He’s usually not bad at interviewing the suspects and criminals that get served up before him in the interrogation rooms, has a reputation of being precise and determined and just the right amount of demanding to get the answers. He doesn’t stumble over his words, or falter, or hesitate — and yet, in the face of the apocalypse-bringers standing in his father’s old, crappy apartment… he feels a little bit like a kid, again.
“An offer.” It’s not a question, really, and Pestilence raises an accusing eyebrow. He’s been friendly so far, amicable — between War’s ruthless intensity, Famine’s spectacularly short temper and Death’s quiet, unassuming air, he’d categorised Pestilence as the most friendly of them all, not-quite approachable but perhaps the most likely to hear him out.
The way Pestilence is studying him, though, that suddenly feels a little like a misinterpretation. Pestilence takes a step closer, and he loses a little of his easygoing quality as his eyes sharpen, inspecting Dylan close enough that he feels like the man’s staring into his soul.
Hell, for all he knows he is — his research has been notably vague about the Horsemen’s actual powers, claiming their abilities range somewhere between “spreading disease, conflict, hunger and death through their touches” to “power over a fourth of the Earth to kill by sword, famine, plague and by the wild beasts of the Earth”.
It’s all sufficiently unspecific, which means Dylan has little to no idea what he’s actually dealing with. Pestilence narrows his eyes at him a little, and then tsks. “There is a disease in you,” he says gravely, “a disease not of the body, but of the mind. A deep-rooted darkness, a thirst for revenge — and for justice.”
Dylan blinks, mouth dry against the sudden solemnity of the room, and his throat clicks when he swallows thickly. The scent of ozone hangs heavily in the air, acrid and sharp on his tongue, and Pestilence looms in front of him as he looks Dylan up and down. “You want us to help you achieve it.”
He says it matter-of-factly, without judgement, and there’s a strange urge to spill his guts, to make them understand why, to share the aching grief of his father’s death and the loss of his mother, the years spent on his own staring at the shadow of Thaddeus Bradley cast over everything he does, the injustice of Arthur Tressler getting richer and richer every year while people struggle more and more each year to get by, completely at the mercy of the people at the top of the food chain. Pestilence cocks his head at him and Dylan wants to share the thing clawing in his chest, the ferocious, howling entity that’d taken up root when the dark water closed over his father’s safe and turned it into a coffin. It’s pushing against the back of his teeth, itching to spill out and make itself known to Pestilence, to War and Famine and Death and to spread—
“You seem well-intentioned,” Pestilence says, taking a step back and it’s like the spell breaks — Dylan blinks, and that strange compulsion is gone. “You don’t want to hurt people — you want to make it better.”
It’s— freaky, Dylan decides faintly, even as he struggles to pull himself back together in time. There is a disease in you, Pestilence’s voice echoes in his mind, and though he’s never thought of it like that, never considered the determination and righteous fury in his veins to be anything corrosive, anything infectious — Pestilence seems to have seen through him easily, and somehow nearly drawn it out of him.
“Oh, well, that’s just great,” Famine snarks, startling Dylan out of his reverie, “the guy who summoned us is pure of heart. Fascinating.”
Death takes another step closer, curiosity sparking in his eyes as one side of his mouth quirks up into an earnest smile. “So what’s your request?”
“It’s simple,” Dylan says, even though it really, really isn’t. “The world is out of balance — has been for a long time. The top few people get richer and richer, hiding away in their skyscrapers with the best food, the best healthcare, letting other people fight their wars for them without any risk to themselves — all while the majority of people fight to survive. Major companies wring the masses dry of their funds, stealing their money and refusing to part with any even when people are owed. Illness, hunger and war is rampant — and none of it’s right. We need to startle the world back into place.”
“You want to bring about the apocalypse?” War bares her teeth in a bitter grin, eyes glinting dangerously in the low light, and she cocks her head at him. “That’s… ambitious.”
“Not the apocalypse,” Dylan disagrees, shaking his head dismissively, “a societal reset. Something to scare the people on top of the foodchain, the ones beating down on the rest of the world. We need to show them that they’re not untouchable, that they’re not infallible. They might be comfortable, away from the hunger and despair of rough life, out of reach of illnesses and violent deaths — but they’re not invincible. I want to show the world that there’s a way to take them down, and if it’s done right — it’s going to set an example for the rest of them.”
Dylan stares them all down fiercely, feeling a familiar determination settle back onto his shoulders. This is what he’s made for — rallying people, bringing fire back into the world where it’s needed. This is everything he’s worked for all those years — dreaming of the magic his father spoke of, formidable beings brought together for a single cause. The Horsemen don’t need to bring back the apocalypse, but he needs them to shake the world, to rattle it in its place, and he needs them to believe. In him, in his cause, in themselves — in everything that lies just within their grasp.
He meets Pestilence’s calm, steely gaze, the man’s face eerily devoid of emotion, and he holds it easily. There’s no uncertainty, no strange, exposed feeling prickling at the back of his neck — he meets the Horseman’s eyes, and he feels like an equal. “I’m talking about a show, a magic show — disguised as nothing but a team of performers, achieving the impossible in front of live audiences, always staying several steps ahead of everyone else in the world. Everything’s already in place, the target picked, the safehouses secured — all I need is a team of people more capable than any others in the world.”
War crosses her arms, one eyebrow perfectly poised as she stares him down. “Sounds like you already have it all planned out.” Her hair billows like a flame as she tilts her head, glancing to the side to let her eyes land on Famine briefly. “What if we say no?”
Dylan follows her gaze to Famine, the other Horseman staring back at Dylan intently with his head cocked, eyes narrowed calculatingly as he tracks Dylan’s every movement. “Then I’ll find someone else,” Dylan says, “though I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to.”
He breathes in deeply, tastes the ozone on his tongue, and continues. “You can walk away from this. You have every reason to — but I don’t think you will. You are the Horsemen, the keepers of the world — you maintain the balance in nature. The world’s never been more out of balance than it is now. This is a way to kick things back into order, without spreading more death, more disease, more war. No lives need to be lost for this — it’s a perfect plan.”
Famine’s eyes narrow, shoulders pulling back until he’s standing perfectly upright, posture taut and ready to snap. “You’re playing a dangerous game,” he says, his tone frigid, and he’s closing the distance between them before Dylan can blink. “The world needs death. It needs disease, and war, and famine — our job is to spread it. Your plan hinges on denying us our very nature, our purpose of being — and you have no idea what it’s like.”
He’s right in front of him, blue eyes burning with something glacial, something empty — and all of a sudden, Dylan feels cold. There’s something gnawing on the inside of his ribs, a deep, insistent ache that spreads up like lava, corrosive and burning and searing as it eats away at his insides. There’s a fervent need in his bones, pleading, screaming with him to do something, to chase it away, to fill it and indulge and end it— and he sucks in a sharp breath as the world grays out at the edges, his vision shorting out for a second as he blinks against the sudden onslaught of hunger. Sparks race up and down his skin, a jittery, unwelcome feeling, and he shivers against the urge to twitch, to move away. Famine leans in closer, and the feeling gets worse, surges up and up until it’s all he can think of—
“That’s enough,” War snaps, and heat sparks across his skin where she brushes Dylan’s wrist as she shoulders Famine roughly to the side, a trail of fury blazing up his veins where her touch lingers even as Famine curses under his breath. “He’s human. Of course he doesn’t know what it’s like — and that’s the point. He’s not like us. No one is, and no one can deny us who we are, what we do. But he’s right, whether you like it or not. The world needs to be reordered.”
“And, what, that needs to be us?” Pestilence plants his arms in his side, one leg jutting out as he levels them all with a disbelieving look. “This all sounds great, and all, but a magic show? We can’t exactly unleash our powers on an audience, not unless you want another plague Bible-style, and we all agreed we wouldn’t be doing that again.”
“Not actual magic,” Dylan disagrees, “I’m talking sleight of hand, cardistry, mentalism — performance magic. We’ll teach you to throw cards, to hypnotise people, to redirect and misdirect people’s attention. It’ll be a live show, actual entertainment — no plagues involved.”
Pestilence laughs, a throaty chuckle, and then shakes his head. “You want us to be magicians? ‘Pick a card’-type of stuff? Good luck with that.” He reaches up to pluck his hat off his head and holds it against his chest, the expensive fabric of his coat crinkling slightly underneath when he bows mockingly. “We came, we saw — and we conceded. Goodbye. Good luck finding your next Houdini, though.”
He turns to face the wall he came from, turns back to raise his eyebrows imploringly at Famine — and then shrugs. “Staircase it is, I guess.”
He’s barely started moving back towards the front door when Death takes another step forward, wordlessly halting Pestilence when he holds out a hand carefully. “We aren’t part of this world,” Death says, a rueful smile on his face. “We can’t interfere with it, nor can we just… deviate from our responsibilities. Even if we wanted to perform with you, we can’t risk our earthly duties for it. Not even for a modern-day apocalypse.”
He’s— solemn, Dylan decides, an air of despondence shrouding the other as he steps a little further into the light. There’s a worn leather jacket around his shoulders, seemingly hand-stitched back together at one of the shoulder seams, and he scuffs one of his shoes across the floor when he looks back up to meet Dylan’s eyes. “We get pulled to where we are needed. Your summoning brought us here, but it can’t keep us — we have tasks across the world we need to attend. Still, though — it was good to meet you. It’s not often we find someone who dares to look us in the eyes.”
His eyes are startlingly brown, Dylan realises — he’s sympathetic, more than anything, and there’s solace in it even as something in his chest fractures a little at the rejection. He stares Death in the face and even though the realisation should be chilling, should be terrifying, frankly — all he feels is a weird, comforting warmth. Death isn’t— cold, the way he’d imagined it to be. If he stares at the other for too long, his face starts looking a little familiar, as though he’s staring at an old friend. Death shrugs, and Dylan purses his lips.
“Alright,” he says, trying not to let any of the dejection he feels reflect in his voice. “Yeah, that’s— that’s fair. It was a long shot, anyway.”
Famine steps away, not saying anything, but War turns back, a scowl on her face. “That’s it? Wow, I’d thought— You seemed like a pretty determined guy, the way you stood here, how you spoke — and now you’re just gonna give up?”
She’s eyeing him up and down, sizing him up once more, and suddenly there’s a spark of belligerence taking root, sizzling up and down his spine. “I’m not giving up,” he spits, “I’m adapting. Sorry if it takes me a second to pivot to my next plan — but I’m not quitting now. I’m never giving up.”
He breathes in deeply, feels his chest expand, and he draws himself up to his full height almost subconsciously. How dare she. She doesn’t know him — doesn’t know anything about him. He’s waited for years to get here, to find a way to realise his plans, to get back at everyone who failed his father and anyone who hurts the people depending on them, all the billionaires and morally bereft CEO’s that step on the people below them. Determination burns behind his ribs, a red-hot, blinding fire, and he feels it linger in the back of his throat, cloying and acidic. “I’m going to take them down no matter the cost — and I don’t need you for that. I’ll find a way.”
War inches closer, standing tall in all her five-foot-two glory, a furious look on her face — and then it melts into a triumphant, searing grin. “There you go.”
The infuriated, unbearable heat of hostility dies down, simmering into a low, smouldering warmth. He watches as War flicks her hair back over her shoulder and steps away, looking for all the world like smugness personified. “Keep that fight. You’ll need it — but don’t let it get you down.”
For a moment, she seems impossible tall, powerful and shining brightly enough that he’s not sure how to look away, as though she’s unbeatable, invincible, an unstoppable force — and the he blinks and the moment passes, the red of her hair swaying back and forth as she walks towards the front door, glancing back over her shoulder one last time. “It was nice meeting you.”
Then she’s gone, disappearing down the hallway and out the front door, and Dylan stares after her a little forlornly as the eyes of the others weigh heavily on him. “Thank you for coming, at least,” he mutters, belatedly realising that they didn’t exactly have much of a choice in that — and Famine scoffs.
“I wish I could say it’s been a pleasure,” he bites out, “but it really, really hasn’t. Goodbye, human. Hope not to see you again.” The words are unkind, slightly formal — but the ice in his gaze seems to have thawed out a little, and Dylan reads between the lines all the same. Seeing Famine again would be… well, it wouldn’t be good, not for Dylan at least — and he nods at Famine while the other turns around, all long limbs and gangly strides, and heads for the door.
Death tilts his head slightly as he stares at Dylan, then raises one hand in a cheerful wave. “See you around,” he says, which — shouldn’t be reassuring, given that it’s the literal Horseman of Death saying it — but there’s comfort in it, all the same. Death is inevitable, and at least now Dylan knows what’ll happen when he dies — who will come for him. There’s worse people to see.
Death disappears, too, and when Dylan looks back to Pestilence, the other’s got his eyes squeezed close, looking— well, he’s not sure how to categorise it, honestly. “Are you… okay?” he asks, hesitantly, and Pestilence blinks up at him, faint amusement crinkling in the corners of his eyes.
“Just trying something,” he says, and at Dylan’s puzzled look, “Did you use anything strange in the summoning components? Mispronounce any words?”
He seems genuinely curious, if a little confused, and Dylan shrugs. “I don’t think I’d know if I mispronounced anything… is something wrong?”
Pestilence shrugs, closing up his coat a little further and sighing to himself. “Nothing to worry about. We just… usually feel this pull, that tells us where to go, lets us travel to where we’re needed the most. It’s a little like a string being pulled, and that’s what got us all here — your ritual. There’s usually a few at the same time that are palpable, to tap into — but there aren’t any, now. I’m wondering if your ritual messed with our… mojo.”
“Is that why Famine tried to go into the wall?” It is, perhaps, not the most eloquent of ways to put it, but Pestilence laughs, a gruff chuckle that somehow feels a little approving.
“I assume he was trying to go somewhere else, but that he couldn’t find anything, either. You’re making us walk down the stairs to get away, Rhodes. That’s hard to forgive, in my old age.”
Pestilence claps him on the shoulder, a friendly yet slightly-too familiar gesture, and Dylan stumbles a little as Pestilence begins walking away. “Stop, stop— how do you know my name?”
It’s something he hadn’t told them yet — and though he wasn’t aware of the extent of their powers, mind-reading hadn’t quite made it to his list of considered abilities. There’s a flash of concern of oh, god, what do they know before Pestilence snorts. “It’s that, uh, mentalism thing you were talking about. We’re real magic. Oh, and it’s also on the back of your bag. Might want to put that away, next time.”
He gestures to the brown messenger bag half-hidden behind the desk, and Dylan breathes out slowly. “Right, yes. Sorry. Have a safe trip.”
Have a safe trip. He ignores Pestilence’s smirk as he turns back to face out the window, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. He hasn’t fumbled his words as much in close to a decade, and there’s something akin to embarrassment taking up root in his chest. This was— well, to be fair, it went better than expected, on account of the still-being-alive thing and no world-ending disasters currently in New York, but they’re not participating, and everything he’s staked his future on is suddenly slipping out of his hands.
He’ll have to find new people — ordinary people, every-day magicians, and even though he knows the trick will still work, that it hinges on figureheads and people on the stage to distract from what’s happening behind the scenes — he’d been so set on getting the actual Horsemen involved, to restore balance on a much, much bigger scale.
He’ll have to come up with a new plan.
He stares back at the candles still scattered across the pentagram on the floor, the journal left half-open on the desk, and finally does bury his face in his hands, sighing deeply. He’s going to have to pivot, and pivot fast, and he’ll make it work — he always does, but he’s taking just a little moment to lament the sheer inconvenience it’s brought him.
Anything to distract from the disappointment slowly spreading in his blood, heavy and corrosive, a stark reminder of the fact that all the stories his father told, the wild tales he’d grown up with — they’re all real, and they’d been so close, almost within his grasp — and he’d lost it, all the same.
He opens one window against the bitter scent still lingering in the air, burned herbs and ozone and something metallic all mingling unpleasantly on his tongue, and leans against it. He’ll figure it out.
Figuring it out, as it turns out, is a lot more difficult than freaking out about the surprise appearance of a Horseman in the middle of your living room.
Dylan freezes in surprise as he blinks, his previously-empty living room suddenly no longer empty as War stumbles into the floorboards, heels echoing slightly on the worn floor. She regains her balance within a half-second, squaring her shoulders and frowning at the walls of Dylan’s apartment before she seems to notice him in her periphery, rounding on him with a furious look. “Why have you summoned me again?”
“Uh,” Dylan stammers, a faint sense of déjà vu as he struggles to find the words, “I didn’t. You just…. showed up.”
“No, I didn’t,” War cuts back instantly, before turning around and letting her eyes roam around the now-empty floor. The candles are long gone, as are the herbs, and the pentacle he’d drawn on the floor is now half-faded, only two edges still visible after Dylan had given up on trying to clean it all in one day. Dylan shrugs.
“I just made coffee.”
“You threw me off,” War accuses, then, and she steps closer to inspect Dylan. “I was needed somewhere, I felt it — there’s no reason for me to be here.”
There’s… not much Dylan can do about it, honestly. Do they have all-powerful navigational tools? Is there a Biblical Google maps? “Okay,” he says, instead of any of that — he might have lost some of his proficiency with words, but he’s not stupid enough to accuse an actual, apocalyptic entity of taking a wrong turn. “Uh… see you around?”
“I assume not,” War says pointedly, raising an eyebrow, and there’s a beat of silence between them as she stares at the far wall, seemingly concentrating before breathing in irritably. “Did you ward these walls? I’m getting really sick of your stairs.”
“Sorry,” Dylan apologises, half-heartedly, “we don’t have an elevator. And no, uh— I didn’t ward anything. Really, I didn’t do anything.”
She eyes him closely for a moment, seemingly searching his soul for a grain of dishonesty, or whatever it is that all-powerful beings do — and then she shrugs. “I’ll choose to believe you. Don’t summon me again, or we’re gonna have issues.”
“Absolutely,” Dylan nods, and watches her walk out the door for the second time in less than an hour. What the hell.
The front door clicks shut behind her, and he hears her footsteps echo down the hall. Down the stairs again, he thinks ludicrously, and the visual is almost enough to make him laugh. He’s not sure why the apartment seems to disrupt their magical signal, whatever tether Pestilence had spoken of — but he’s hoping it doesn’t happen again.
He wrings out the dishcloth that’s been left forgotten in the bucket of lukewarm water he’d used to scrub the pentacle off the floor previously, and groans to himself as he sinks back down to his knees. He might as well get the whole thing off, now — maybe that’s what’s interfering with them. He’s fairly lucky that he’d gotten War, in any case — which is a crazy thought, given that she’s supposed to be the personification of conflict, but she’s been surprisingly reasonable so far.
Hot-tempered, sure, but reasonable — unlike Famine, who’d snapped from essentially the moment Dylan had even looked at him, War didn’t mindlessly rise to any bait thrown her way, but she’d stood up for Dylan when she’d deemed it necessary and turned her powers on him not a moment later. She’s not in it to fight, Dylan realises in an instant — she’s in it to win. To make it out on top, to reach victory — war is for triumph, for victory, but at its core it’s about survival. It’s to keep going even when your time’s up, to cling on a little bit longer even when it feels like you’ll fall apart. She’s not off-setting her own irritation the way Famine seemed to have — the way he’d fidgeted, never seeming comfortable in his form, quick and jittery and short-tempered — but she’s choosing her battles and winning them all, deciding pre-emptively exactly what outcome she’ll need.
It’s why she’s a lot less friendly now, he supposes — she’s already decided this wasn’t hers to fight, and finding herself back in the apartment is throwing a wrench in her plans. It’s not like he had much say over it, given that he’s also not quite sure why she’d shown up here, but it seems like it’ll be in his best interest, as well as that of the apartment, that she doesn’t appear again.
He hums to himself as he scrubs the rag over the floor again, Death’s corner of the pentacle fading out a little bit more — when there’s a dry cough from behind him.
“Jesus—!” Dylan can’t stop the curse before it spills from his lips, and as he whirls around, Pestilence is leaning against the far wall once more, seeming completely at ease despite the fact that he was very much not summoned.
“Nope, just Pestilence,” Pestilence grins, but when he pushes off the wall and stalks a little closer, there’s a cold glint in his grey eyes. “Say, you didn’t happen to pull any more tricks, did you?”
Dylan drops the rag, leaning back and sitting up to at least gain a little bit more height. Pestilence is hovering over him, looming, and he’s suddenly realising just how tall the other is. “I’m just trying to clean up,” he says by way of explanation, and then gestures to the floor behind him. “Pentacle’s almost gone.”
“Curious,” Pestilence mutters, and then leans around Dylan to look a little closer. “Did you rig this?”
“I didn’t rig anything,” Dylan sighs out exhaustedly, grabbing his dishrag and dropping it back into the bucket with a wet splash. “Seriously, first War, now you — I didn’t do anything. I don’t know why you’re here, but I’d really prefer for you not to be.”
“War was here?” There’s a contemplative undertone to his voice, and Dylan watches as the corner of Pestilence’s mouth twitches minutely. He knows something.
“Left just now,” Dylan says, “why? Do you know what’s happening?” The journal didn’t say anything about the ritual lasting any longer than just its actual performance, but if it’s somehow turned his apartment into a magical focal point for biblical beings, he’d really prefer to have known this beforehand.
“I have a suspicion,” Pestilence says, and then ambles over to the sole chair at the kitchen table. The apartment is… not all that well-furnished, Dylan has to admit — the living room is mostly empty, aside from a single desk table and a bucket that he’s currently using to wash away the pentagram, and the kitchen has a kitchen table with one chair. The apartment used to belong to his father, and Dylan hasn’t actually lived here in years. It just means that it’s good to perform secret magical rituals in, though. “I’ll just stay here and wait, for a bit.”
“Could you also… not do that?” It comes out a little flatter than intended, and Pestilence raises an eyebrow as Dylan flounders for a moment. “I mean — I’m sure you have better things to do than live in my apartment.”
“So I thought,” Pestilence shrugs, a smug smirk playing at his lips, “but I might not. It all depends on what happens next.”
“And what happens next?” Dylan peers at the floor, at the last traces of the pentagram still on the floorboards, and sighs as he reaches for the bucket again. There’s not much left to go, but his knees are aching, disagreeing with his current choice of action, and it’s a tedious task. “If you’re doing something, I really do have to ask—”
Dylan cuts himself off when there’s a thump behind him, and then there’s a sharp intake of air before someone’s striding over to where he’s sitting, blocking his light. Dylan turns back only to stare right up at Famine, an irritated scowl on his face as he crosses his arms brusquely. “Can you stop summoning me?”
“Can you stop showing up?” Yelling at entities that could probably kill you within the blink of an eye is probably a bad idea, but Dylan’s just about had it with this day. “I didn’t summon you, I don’t want you here and I don’t know why this is happening. Can you all just leave?”
“Man,” a new voice says from the corner, and Dylan fights against the urge to either roll his eyes, sigh deeply enough that his lungs come spilling out of his body or simply pinch the bridge of his nose and never let go. “I only just got here.”
“Death,” he greets, and he looks up — and finds that some of the irritation melts away at the other’s friendly disposition. “What can I do for you?”
“I think that’s not quite relevant,” Death says, and then looks to the other end of the room. Dylan doesn’t even need to look up to sense the shift in the air, seeing the way Famine tenses up minutely — War has arrived, again, back in the corner that she started in. “I think the question is what we can do for you.”
“Really?” Annoyance drips off her voice, and Dylan turns to look at her apologetically as she plants a hand in her hip and glares fiercely. “I had just gotten down the stairs.”
“Sorry,” Dylan offers, “next time you can take the garbage chute. It’s faster.” It’s a joke, sort of — it is faster, but, well — it’s also a garbage chute. War doesn’t laugh. Dylan clears his throat. “Can any one of you tell me what’s going on, why you’re still here? I didn’t summon you. I don’t want you here.”
“Great,” Famine mutters, “that makes two of us.”
Death smiles a little, shuffling a little closer to the rest of them. “Isn’t it obvious?” He looks at them all, one by one, and Dylan’s not sure what he’s reading off his face, but he looks slightly put out by the lack of reaction. “We’re the Horsemen. We always end up right where we need to be.”
“Yeah,” Famine sighs, “except for now — because someone keeps dragging us back to this crappy apartment.”
“No,” Death corrects, weathering the scathing glare Famine sends him for daring to disagree with ease, “because this is where we need to be. What he said was right — we all know it to be true, but this is proof. The world is out of balance, and we need to restore it. We need to do an apocalypse.”
Death, Dylan notes faintly, looks far too excited for a discussion on starting an apocalypse. War, on the other hand, looks a little less amused. “This can’t be it,” she says pointedly, “we have— actual wars, actual discord to bring about, and now we’re just supposed to do a magic trick?”
“I guess so,” Pestilence shrugs, “unless you’d like to try and poof away and walk down that flight of stairs again.”
“No, thank you,” War says, brushing her hair out of her face with a brisk movement, “Twice was enough. Great. So, we’re doing another apocalypse, now? Exciting.”
Her eyes glint dangerously, and Dylan swallows thickly. “Hold on a second,” he grits out, because no one’s asked him, and though there’s a large part of him decidedly gleeful that the plan’s back on, that everything’s coming together — he’s also marginally concerned about the apocalypse part. “We’re not actually trying to bring about the end of the world, right?”
“Right,” Famine says drily, and Dylan feels suddenly, utterly out of his depth. “Okay. Great. Well, congrats, you got what you wanted. We’re in. So what’s the trick?”
Everything’s moving far too fast, Dylan decides, scrambling to his knees, bucket and rag long-forgotten, because the fact that he hasn’t even introduced himself flashes through his head, and he hasn’t even managed to explain everything yet, and yet there’s also an excitement, something giddy and vigorous that he hasn’t felt in a long time at the idea that they’re in, that this is really happening. “Okay,” he begins, and claps his hands, scurrying off to his desk to find the journal. “Okay, so—”
Introductions first. It’s a gamble, honestly, because the origin of the Horsemen has always been a little fuzzy, differs across sources, but referring to them as Pestilence and War and whatnot feels a little stilted, so he might as well try—
“I’m Dylan,” he says, “Dylan Rhodes. Is there any other name that I may refer to you by?”
He sees Famine’s shoulders tense up, disagreement radiating off of him, and Dylan speaks up again before the other can say anything. “You can’t go on stage as the actual Horsemen, have them call you Death or Famine or War or Pestilence. We need names — actual, human names, if we’re gonna pull this off. Did you have names before you were… this?”
It’s a loaded question. Some sources say the Horsemen simply… spawned, that they were made as a way to keep the world in check and never existed before that — but others say that they were human, once. That they were people, lost in the circumstances of their deaths until they became the very thing that ended them — personifications of tragedy.
It’s a long shot, but War breathes out shakily, the fire in her eyes dimming a little as she casts her eyes up at the sky for a brief second before meeting Dylan’s gaze head-on. “Henley,” she says, crossing her arms tightly in front of her chest. “My name was Henley.”
“Henley,” Dylan echoes, trying out her name to see how it feels on his tongue. “It’s nice to meet you, Henley.”
“I was Merritt,” Pestilence says, and Dylan inclines his head to him, too. He, too, looks pensive, the shadow of something old, something grievous glimmering behind his eyes. The way he says it — it’s weighty, ancient, and somehow it suits him, too.
When Dylan turns to look at Death, the other shrugs. “I’m not sure,” he says, with a regretful attempt at a smile. “I think they called me Jack.”
“Nice to meet you, Jack,” Dylan says, and earns a beaming smile in return. He seems a little lighter, here, even though he’s still the same person he’d seen before. In fact, they all do — some of the intensity blazing around War— no, Henley has dimmed, making her seem just that little bit more human, and Merritt, too, seems a little less… untouchable. He seems a little bit more like a person. There’s only one more to go, and Dylan turns to look at Famine expectantly.
“... Daniel,” Famine grits out eventually, pulling his shoulders in close as though to physically shield himself from— what, Dylan isn’t sure, but he tilts his head consideringly and nods.
“Nice to meet you all,” Dylan says, determinedly not calling Daniel out on it, and seeing some of the tension drain from his frame until he no longer seems to be bracing himself. “Thank you for being here. This is— This is a plan years in the making. Everything’s already prepared — all we have to do… is practice.”
He finds the blueprints in his bag and rolls out floorplans across the desk, doling out pictures of the people crucial to the plan — it’s all second nature, and he settles back into himself, barking out information at a rapid speed the way he always does.
The Horsemen stare at him, nodding along in some places and interrupting sharply in others, and Dylan weathers their questions with ease. This— this is what he’s made for. He’s not one for smooth-talking and idle chat, for intricacies and interpersonal relationships and convincing people to stay — but planning, drawing up schematics and moving people around as though they’re pieces on a chessboard, preparing for something big, something great — this is what he’s meant to do.
Dylan Rhodes stands in the living room of Lionel Shrike’s abandoned, forgotten apartment, the harbingers of the apocalypse gathered around him — and between the five of them, a plan is made.