by Tao Wong
“Men.” El huffed when I finished, rolling her eyes to the sky with her arms crossed. “You almost got yourself killed because of a… quest?”
I paused, giving the question actual thought. In the end, I answered her slowly. “It wasn’t the quest itself. Not really. It was the decision. To stay at home training slowly or go out and do something. Anything. If I didn’t make it, then, well, it was as good as having made it. You understand?”
“No.”
Lily smiled slightly as El glared at me with her arms crossed over her petite breasts. Leaning forward, Lily brought the attention to her as she spoke finally. “Well, that was nice. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
“Why, you...” El snarled.
“Lily! Stop it. She’s my friend, and you need to show her some respect,” I snapped at Lily.
“That little tree fairy? Do you know what she did while you were sick?” Lily spluttered, and I shook my head.
“I don’t care. She’s my friend, and you’re going to be respectful to her, or else you can just stay in the ring when she’s around,” I said, glaring at Lily who returned my glare. We locked gazes for a long while before the jinn broke away, laughing softly.
“Fine, fine. I’ll be nice to the… to El,” Lily said. “But I do need to speak with you. Alone.”
“Not happening,” El said.
“This isn’t for you, pixie,” Lily snapped, and I sighed.
“What’s this about?” I asked Lily who mouthed the word “quest” at me. Oh. I’d finished a quest which meant…
Class: Mage
Level 1 (208% Experience)
Known Spells: Light Ball, Force Bolt, Warmth, Chill, Chime, Breeze
“Nice. I can level up!” I exclaimed, and Lily winced, shaking her head.
“Level up?” El’s eyes narrowed at the two of us suspiciously.
“My wish—”
“Henry!” Lily snapped at me, leaning forward. “Ixnay on the ishway.”
“Oh, come on, Lily. El just saved my life. I think we can trust her,” I said, which caused El to flush slightly and Lily to glare at me more. “It’s my secret.”
“Aaargh!” Lily threw her hands up in the air and then fell silent, which I took for tacit agreement.
“I wanted to be a mage, but I didn’t want my brain dribbling out. So, I made a wish that gave me magic but would only pass the spells on in dribs and drabs as I learned to handle it. We based it off, well…” I hesitated, waving my hands to my books.
“Your role-playing games. I get it,” El said, rubbing her temples. “It is the most idiotic and—”
“Genius plan ever,” Lily finished, nodding firmly. “I know, right? It bypasses most of the problems wishes for magic power have and doesn’t stunt his growth. Much.”
“Much?” I frowned at Lily.
“She speaks of the Wizard Council. They are unlikely to be impressed by your abilities,” El clarified. “The jinn is right. You should not have told me this. You should not be telling anyone this.”
I blinked and then flashed El my patented Smile No. 3, the one that made me look like a kid. Okay, it was my usual smile, but it still normally worked. “But you won’t tell anyone, right?”
“Oh, Henry,” El said exasperatedly. “I won’t. Just… stop being so damn trusting. The hidden world isn’t the same as your mundane one. You cannot just do things like this.”
“Okay, okay. I promise. No more telling secrets,” I said, crossing my heart and flashing another grin. El just rolled her eyes while I turned to Lily. “So, level up time?”
“Yes. Hold still please. This should hurt less than the last time,” Lily said consolingly, and that was when I remembered how much it had hurt.
Oh, hell.
***
“That wasn’t bad,” I said as I rubbed blood from my nose and gratefully accepted the painkillers from El, who had a strange look on her face.
“Next time, do it on the bed,” El said, and I nodded firmly. Passing out at the dinner table and cracking my nose on the table had been a less-than-pleasant experience.
“I hear kitchen tables are quite popular,” Lily said, and El flushed, looking away.
“Wait. Did you make a sex joke?” I said before I shook my head. “Never mind. I don’t want to know. Now, I’m just going to see what you downloaded.”
“Downloaded?” Lily said, puzzled.
I tuned them out as El explained more current lingo to the jinn and focused inward. First things first, my character sheet.
Class: Mage
Level 3 (8% Experience)
Known Spells: Light Ball, Force Missile, Heat, Freeze, Chime, Breeze, Lesser Shield, Heal, Link, Mend
The first thing I noticed was that many of my existing spells had changed name. A brief consideration showed that I still knew the lesser versions of the spells but had instead learned stronger formulas. Those spells in turn allowed me to alter the spells themselves, giving me more options. As an example, I was pretty sure I could actually cast two Force Bolts now rather than a single Force Missile. Though, controlling both Force Bolts and where they would impact would be a lot trickier.
Light Ball had not upgraded, though the intensity and duration of the spell had grown. It was no real surprise—the light spell was a pretty basic spell, and while variants on it were available, most variations were a matter of power rather than formula. The spells that I had not used or practiced, Chime and Breeze, had not changed at all.
Most interestingly, I now knew four new spells. The first was a defensive spell that layered a thin layer of compressed air and arcane energy in front of me. Intuitively, I knew that practice with both Breeze and Lesser Shield would provide me greater understanding of either. It was not a powerful defensive spell, but considering I had started with none, I was grateful for its presence. Perhaps if I’d had the spell to begin with, I would not have been as injured.
The Heal spell was, sadly, pathetic. From the spell formula that sat in my head, the spell did little more than increase the speed of my healing by a minor amount, and almost all of it focused on a small area. It was a useful spell for removing bruises and slowing, even stopping, bleeding by having the body’s natural clotting properties act faster, but it was nothing like a cleric’s minor healing spell. On the other hand, it was a channeled spell, with the amount of healing dependent on the amount of time it was active. If it wasn’t for the fact that I would never progress with healing abilities if I didn’t use it, I probably wouldn’t even bother casting it at all since resting had a much more powerful effect.
The third spell was the foundation spell for scrying. At this stage, all it really did was highlight links between two objects. The closer their initial sympathetic link, the longer the range of the spell. Unfortunately, at my level, even a direct connection like blood would only highlight the connection for a few hundred meters. With practice though, the arcane knowledge involved would allow me to scry locations hundreds of miles away. Once I got the appropriate spell, of course.
The last spell was a utility spell, one you didn’t see much in role-playing books because throwing around the power of gods was more interesting than fixing a hole in your pants. On the other hand, for a poor gamer like me, the spell could actually save me a few dollars. I even had a few pieces of old electronics sitting around that I kept meaning to throw away properly. Perhaps the spell would fix them?
“Did you learn anything worth your life?” El asked, and I refocused on the pixie, my lip twisting in a half smile.
“Sort of? Some of these spells might keep me alive longer,” I said, which caused El to roll her eyes again.
“I have to go. I need to reopen the store,” El said finally, standing up and fixing me with a look. “You aren’t going to be going out and doing anything stupid, are you?”
“No. Got a whole new bunch of spells in my head. I’ll want to test them out first,” I replied, and El stared at me i
n an attempt to ascertain the truth of my words. Good thing I was telling the truth.
“Fine,” El said and walked to the door, snatching her coat on the way out. “Just be careful, Henry. You don’t understand the world you’ve entered.”
“Roger!” I said, waving goodbye to the pixie.
Lily snorted at our antics, already deep into her game. I stared at the jinn for a second, trying to decide if I had any questions for her that she could answer and found none that were more pressing than testing my new spells.
As I went back to my bed, I rubbed my chin and tried to work out how to test my spells in my six-hundred-square-foot bachelor’s apartment without wrecking anything. As I eyed the new holes in the apartment walls, I added “anything more.”
***
It turned out that the answer to that question was the bathroom. A pot of water in the bath could steam and boil over without causing damage, and ice, well, a pot of ice really didn’t make a difference where you made it. The tricky part, at least for me, was learning how to control the amount of mana I put into the spell. Unlike its lesser variants, which felt like I was pushing beanbags through rabbit holes, the new spells had a hunger for mana like a jinn’s stomach.
Between waiting for my mana to recover and poking at the new knowledge in my mind, I found myself walking out of the bathroom to talk to Lily. Questions that hadn’t been important till now started creeping into my mind.
***
“That orc called me a wizard, but you call me a mage. What’s the difference?”
“Depends on who you ask, but the somewhat official definitions are that mages are trained to use their gifts, normally starting as apprentices. Wizards, on the other hand, are untrained arcane users who have learned to wield their powers via trial and error.”
“Any other terms I should know?”
“Sorcerers are generally those who have gained their powers via demonic means. Enchanters are specialized mages—and they’re almost always mages—who enchant items and spaces. Alchemists do the same with potions, but they can be wizards too. There are probably more alchemical wizards than mage actually.”
“Probably?”
“Things change. And unless I use my powers, it’s not as if I have a way of ascertaining what is happening around the world.”
“Right.”
***
Later, after freezing the pot of ice, I realized instead of a single ice cube, I’d somehow mangled the spell to create ice chunks. Definitely needed to work on the synchronicity for this spell.
“What about this Wizard Council?” I asked.
“It’s mostly made up of mages, but there are some wizards too. And one sorcerer. Or at least, there was.”
“The way I read it, they’re not happy with me because I’m cheating the system, learning their secrets from you, and refusing to pay my dues.”
“In part.” Lily looked up from the laptop. For a moment, her eyes danced with flame while she spoke. “But it’s more than that. Past history with jinn and mages has been fraught with tragedy. To be a mage, a powerful mage, you have to be willing to sacrifice everything. The apprenticeship itself takes decades, and apprentices are isolated from all family and friends during their tenure. The weak fall away; only the driven survive.”
“And if you’re that driven, you’re probably not the nicest of people.” I rubbed my chin and realized I still hadn’t shaved.
“Yes. Most mages know our limitations to some extent. Their wishes are often more circumspect. Still, many die. Those who don’t are often driven mad.”
“Power-crazy assholes with wishes,” I said for her. “And I’m considered one of them. Yay me.”
***
My spell book was set out in front of me, a window propped open, and the bathroom fan on as we tried to ignore the smell of melted metal and plastic. I was so not going to get my damage deposit back.
“This sort of makes a bit of sense,” I muttered as I read the line again. Four out of eleven words. Now, if only those words weren’t the arcane equivalents of “and,” “but,” and “then.” Sometimes, I even knew all the words in a sentence. Just not what it meant.
“That’s the equivalent of a level-nine spell,” Lily said without glancing up, a strand of her hair in her mouth.
“What is it for?”
“You tell me.”
“The arcane runes are the same as my Force spell, so it’s a Force something. But there’s bits of it for distance that don’t make sense—there are both distances and limits, height and width definitions.” I flipped the page backward and forward, cudgeling my cerebral engine for a few more minutes, and exhaled. “It’s a Force Wall.”
“Good boy,” Lily said and pointed to the book. “Now, back to reading.”
I blew my nose again, the melted plastic making my nose run and making me truly uncomfortable as it blended with my mana headache. Ah, the glamour of spellcasting.
***
“You ignorant dung beetle!” Lily snarled at the computer as she banged the mouse against the side table she was using. The noise was sufficient to interrupt the silent contemplation of the spells in my head. The silent, closed-eyed, and very still contemplation of spells.
“Hmmmm…?” I rolled my neck to stare at Lily who pointed at the computer.
“They killed me!”
“So? You’ve died before. Restart or go back to your last saved game.”
“No. Not the game. The players. They killed me! Just outside of town,” Lily said, already seated and controlling the mouse.
“What are you playing?” I asked and ambled over to stare at the screen. I groaned quietly as I saw the familiar cartoony images and the half-sized dwarf running along idyllic green hills. “Oh no. You are not pulling anything from that into my wish.”
“It’s fun!” Lily said and stared at me, eyes narrowed.
“Har! Dozens of expansions in, they’ve had to nerf everyone constantly and keep adding expansion packs to just keep people interested.”
“I bet you wish I’d made you heal like these characters do though!”
I groaned, settling in next to her to argue. Some things you just could not let stand!
“And what’s nerf?”
Chapter 7
After my disastrous first quest, El took an active interest in my activities. The next evening, she showed up at my door with an agenda and a refusal to take no for an answer. Lily was not invited on this trip, a fact that the jinn did not seem to mind, other than a request for more shawarma. Over the next hour, I was introduced to the hidden-world denizens of my neighborhood. It seemed that I had, unknowingly, moved into one of the hubs of the supernatural community. While it was not necessarily better, most supernaturals liked to live and work together for convenience. The services and skills they might require—from full-body hair grooming for minotaurs to the specialized diet of dryads—made sense to keep localized.
Before each encounter, El would squeeze my triceps and growl a warning to behave myself, and in just about half the cases, I’d remember not to put my foot in my mouth. The other half generally had me alternating between squeals of geeky fanboyishness and minor eeps of terror, even wide-eyed fear in a few cases.
“Do you think you can hold it together for this next meeting?” El hissed at me as we walked up a staircase.
“It’d help if you told me what I was meeting beforehand,” I said.
“Har! You almost ran away when I told you we were about to meet Leda.”
“She was a medusa!” I said, my voice rising in protest.
“And the best hairdresser in the city. You nearly cost me my next appointment,” El snapped and shook her head. “What? You think if she turned people to stone all the time no one would notice? Leda’s kept her secret for years, but she won’t if a certain someone keeps shouting about it.”
“Sorry. Sorry.” I lowered my voice. “You’ve got to give me a break here. Meeting creatu
res from myth is kind of out my comfort zone.”
“Well, get better. This is your life now,” El said as we finally reached the floor. I had to pause for a second to catch my breath before El led us to the correct doorway. Thinking better of it, El added, “Shane’s a dwarf.”
“Oh…” I relaxed at that. I could deal with dwarves. I mean, vertically-challenged individuals weren’t exactly unusual. When the door swung open, I had a smile on my face, all ready to be polite. “GIMLI!”
Oops. But seriously, beyond the fact that Shane was lacking both his armor, axe, and helmet, he could have passed for the famous dwarf. At least as portrayed in the movies—dark-red hair and braided beard of the same color with deep-set eyes and a thoroughly unamused look on his face.
“Shane, this is Henry. He’s a newcomer to our world. I’ve been showing him around a bit,” El said after she finished extracting her elbow from my ribs.
“Hi. Sorry about that,” I said. “It’s just, you know, you look like—”
The glare that was shot at me shut me up. Shane nodded gravely to El before glowering at me as he spoke. “I don’t have time for this. Charlie’s gone missing again. I was just about to go looking for him.”
“You need to keep your windows closed,” El said. At my confused look, she added, “Charlie’s Shane’s cat.”
“Oh.” I paused and then realized a way I could make it up to them. “Hey. I can help. If you’ve got some fur, I could probably locate him for you.”
El hastily added, “He’s a new wizard.”
“M… wizard.” I nodded and surreptitiously rubbed my ribs. Damn, the pixie had sharp elbows.