Suddenly the power in the room was all on me, and I liked the feeling, despite what just went down.
“W-what are you talking about? I was just chatting with my boss.” She avoided eye contact, as Amelia and Silvia tried to slip into the room.
“Ho-boy,” I said, not ready for the myriad of lies that I was going to have to weave together into a tapestry.
“W-what’s going on with Valkyrie?” Silvia asked.
I took a few more steps up so that I’d passed David’s resting point. “We’re gonna check out the library, and she’s a little suspicious of the new people in the magical community and–” I peered through an odd angle at Valkyrie as she walked straight towards Fumnaya.
“You know what, screw what we were going to do…” I marched down the stairs and threw the door open.
David, Silvia and Brittney followed, while Amelia looked around, wondering if she should go find Genki.
“My name is Valkyrie Galvos. Your friends mentioned you’re quite the proficient mage, so I was wondering if you could give me a demonstration…”
A glyph formed around the woman, and everyone looked stunned. Fumnaya’s eyes glowed in the evening dimness, and she backed away from the woman’s glyph she’d been standing on.
“Ackio vos galvos…” A small portal-like circle in the glyph turned white, just like summoning glyphs did, after three other circles were filled with the runes for the various things she just said.
A book, old and apparently rotting or otherwise losing its leather covering, lifted up from the circle. The woman pointed at it, an invitation for Fumnaya to pick it up. Fumnaya did so and it opened at her touch.
The pages flipped around, as the sorceress lifted herself into the air and floated back a few meters.
“Let’s see how someone not a part of our community handles something like this.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” I shouted, running up to the edge of the pool’s concrete surrounding area.
“Excuse me?” She glared, her eyes glowing with an orange fury.
“We came here to relax, and now you’re challenging her to a duel because someone said they found a mage out in the street? I’d expect a Galvos to be a better hostess than this!”
I crossed my arms, trying to look indignant.
“E-lis,” Fumnaya said softly, looking at me and to the woman.
“Do you even understand what’s going on here? Or do I have to spell it out for you?” the woman said, her business formal suit turning into full plate armour, with a large, armoured skirt surrounding her legs.
“No person has had magical powers and not been a part of the community. Those who reject us are criminals that we deal with! You two are either spies or things we can’t allow into this world. I am doing my duty!”
I clenched my teeth. There was nothing I could really do to get out of this, and I’d left all my weapons at home. Unless there was a quick and easy set of alchemicals left for her to drink, I was on my own.
“Ready, you wretch?” the Galvos woman asked Fumnaya.
“I don’t know if what you’re saying is true, but I know one thing – no one talks to my best friend like that,” Fumnaya said, holding onto her crystal ball in her off-hand.
I blinked, unsure how she had it for one, and two, where she’d kept it through the day of swimming.
“Fire, earth, Vos vos Galvos!” the woman shouted, thrusting a huge burning boulder out of thin air at Fumnaya.
The barbecue that had been going for several hours was turned off, and the werewolves that surrounded it started to encircle the battlefield. Everyone was on edge now.
The ball went right through the illusionary Fumnaya, hitting a werewolf we didn’t know in the chest.
“W-what?!” she screamed, as just above the surface of the water, another glyph formed.
“Pag-wa, Ensu, ne, ne, Taffeta!” Fumnaya’s voice called out, as a blast of force sent the Galvonian woman flying.
She landed just ahead of the barbecue, near a group of confused werewolves. “Uh… should we do something?” came a deep female voice.
“I told you, no transforming. I don’t want this place wrecked like all other places you infest!” The woman lifted up and it seemed almost as if the weight of her armour pulled down her legs.
I felt a rush of cold air tickle my feet and saw the colours of the far-off area go weird, a sure sign that Fumnaya and an illusion were passing behind me.
Lorenz, who’d run up to join the group in the ensuing chaos, sniffed the air and whispered, “You sure this is a good idea?”
“Eh, so long as Gavin doesn’t do his thing, we should be fine,” I said in a semi-whispering tone back.
“Gavin has a thing?” Lorenz asked. Fumnaya also seemed to not remember what I said, despite everything.
“Where are you?” the Galvonian woman asked, as her eyes locked on our little group.
The rush of air quickly left, but the woman’s eyes didn’t seem to follow. She was looking at me, the next target on her list.
“Fire, air, Damnation vos Galvos!” I didn’t know what kind of rune damnation was supposed to be, but I was bolting as soon as I heard it.
The flaming ball landed and exploded, sending me forwards quite a way.
Fumnaya grunted, clearly wanting her grimoire of the blood mage to show this woman what was what. I heard the shuffling of pages as Fumnaya tried to find a useful spell to cast.
“Emaway garc ne ne Taffeta!” she shouted and two yellow shackles sprang up from the ground and wrapped around the sorceress’s waist and neck. It didn’t seem to do much around the armour, and with her hand still free she called out the damnation spell again, launching it at where Fumnaya had sent hers.
The thing hit her straight on, and she fell back the illusion shattering. At least, that’s what I thought before the actual projectile hit a few meters behind where that scene was going on.
Miriam had made her way onto the scene, no doubt sent into a panic at the sound of explosions.
I could see on her face when she first came in that she was expecting some of us to be the aggressors, but seeing Fumnaya’s illusion of Fumnaya on the ground and the Galvos woman she was attempting to restrain, she switched her tune.
“Valkyrie! Just what do you think you’re doing?” she yelled out.
The Galvos woman put her hands to the chains and said a few short words. The chains became fuzzy like they were out of focus. Then with a grunt, she tore them off like they were made of cardboard. The magic fizzled and turned into a few sparkling bits surrounding Valkyrie.
“Miriam, I didn’t hear you come in. How… good to see you,” the woman said with some sarcasm splattered all over it that made me jealous.
“These are a hardworking team of magicals that our community center needs. What do you think you’re doing trying to kill them?”
“I’m not trying to kill them. I’m just trying to prove they don’t belong… and then I’ll be trying to kill them. This invisibility trick isn’t doing you any favours.”
“Bitch,” I said under my breath, as I got up and tried to muster up any and all courage I could.
Fumnaya put a hand on my shoulder, still floating around and invisible. Miriam walked up to confront the Galvos woman.
“What asinine rumour made you think they weren’t regular magicals?” Miriam asked.
“Oh, the fact that they are, and I quote, new, the fact that they are using two kinds of magic at once – you know who can do that? Demonic creatures and Fae, two creatures we don’t want on this plane!”
“Are you forgetting that this is a team?”
“Your point?” A spell circle was glowing and fading underneath her like she was going to smash Miriam with a spell for just being there.
“A team with a witch on it… One who’s worked with Fumnaya before…”
I was wondering if Melisa was on this trip, to better make this lie a reality, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember, despite the fa
ct that across from the action from me she was standing out in the open, trying not to pull her own eyes out at the possibility that she might be implicated in this whole mess.
“You’re saying that someone is interfering in our duel?”
“You said this wasn’t a duel, you were investigating, which was obviously shorthand for unleashing the legendary Galvos temper you inherited from your mother and father.” Miriam folded her arms and gave the woman a glare, the dim light of the gas lamps and tiki torches having the same effect on her as Valkyrie inside.
“Fine then. I’ll leave the intelligence-gathering up to you, will I? And if it’s lacking in any way, I’m sure my brother won’t hesitate to be rid of you.”
“Ha, Leonardo needs her like a fish needs water,” I said, probably a bit too loudly.
The Galvos woman went inside the manor, and the werewolves slowly composed themselves. Fumnaya appeared out of nowhere and closed her grimoire.
“Christ almighty,” Miriam said, pinching the bridge of her nose, and taking in a deep breath.
“Okay, before you yell I’d just like to–”
“For once, Elizabeth, this is not your fault and I am not going to yell at you.”
I was stunned, rendered speechless. Lorenz, Gavin, Silvia, and David all came to surround the group.
“You alright, Fumnaya?” David asked, putting his hand on her shoulder.
“Yeah, she didn’t manage to hit me, but this grimoire is… lacking. If she’s going to pull that shit again, I’m going to need the grimoire of the bloodmage, or anything that can do that dragon form the demon mage pulled…”
“And I at the very least will need my fat gun,” I said, trying to switch my mind from Miriam not wanting to yell at me.
“Your… fat gun?” Lorenz asked, slowly.
“Fat gun is the alchemical gun, long gun is the sniper rifle. How is that not self-explanatory?”
I could see the thought run through their heads, each picturing it at different rates, but finally realizing what aspects of each gun were being talked about.
“Ohhhh,” they said.
“Anyway, if we had a car we might be able to get to the center and back and get all our stuff.”
“But we don’t have a car,” Lorenz said.
“Bus tickets?” Everyone shook their heads.
“Cash?” Everyone shook their heads again.
“You’d think being half a kilometre from suburbia would mean that we weren’t stranded out in the middle of nowhere.”
“Guess we’re stranded off to the side of nowhere,” Silvia said, unintentionally getting a laugh out of David.
“Hey, she used a summoning rune, right? Perhaps in the library, there’ll be a grimoire with a power source that’ll allow for us to summon things!” I said, getting excited to have everyone looking around the books with me.
“Not the worst plan,” Lorenz said, shrugging.
“Okay, is Melisa here?” I asked.
“Uhh,” Silvia said, trying to think.
“I don’t think so,” David said.
“I’m right here,” Melisa moaned behind our little huddle.
David and Lorenz jumped in surprise. “Ah yes. Melisa. Excellent, I knew you were–”
“Am I really that invisible to you people?” she whined.
“Look, it’s just that you’re new?” I said, looking to everyone in the group, in turn, to try to get some backup here.
“I’ve been at the community center longer than you have…”
“Anyway, E-lis, plan for Melisa, the lynchpin of this whole operation…”
“Right, we’ll need you to watch over her and the doorway into the library, so we have time to read. Fumnaya, being target A, needs to focus on reading grimoires, so she can’t do that.”
“Why’s the plan always focus on the thing Fumnaya can’t be doing at the time?” she whined again.
“Because that’s what happens when you have a setup like this!” I huffed.
“Look,” Gavin said in a soft soothing tone, “Elizabeth hasn’t spent that much time with you and she’s often standoffish when it comes to new people, and yes, typically the use for a witch could be covered with Fumnaya if she wasn’t doing anything else, but having someone dedicated to something is better than splitting someone’s focus.”
“Oh oh oh! Balance of trade!” David said, pointing his finger at Gavin.
Everyone looked at him weirdly, but I was too busy being proud of my doggy boy learning. It even brought a little tear to my eye.
“When there are two things… ah, hold on. So, like, you could spend your time mage-ing or witching and you produce… stuff. I’m no good at metaphors, but there’s like a curve of things you could produce, and how much utility they provide, but when you have two people making that decision, but allow them to trade, utility goes up, even if someone is better at producing both goods than their partner!”
“You remembered stuff from the economics textbook?” Silvia said, as shocked as I was, but unfortunately less proud.
“You’re using Earth economics to try to make me feel better about magic?” Melisa asked.
“Yes,” David said, pointing at her confidently… ish.
“Okay then.” The cutie sighed and we all headed to the library.
6
Chapter 6
Finally at the library at around eleven pm that night, we started to look through things. “Remember a lot of these books, grimoire or otherwise, are fragile, so don’t move this too fast,” Lorenz said, as he went over to one of the grimoire shelves.
David and I went to another shelf, where hopefully there’d be stuff about dragons and their diets, and how to do other stuff with them.
“Dra–” I looked over, and lowered my volume, “gons…”
David sniffed the air, and I assumed that some werewolves might have labelled things with that scent message stuff. Sure enough, he led us out of the magical creator’s section to a bin of returns.
“Is there a librarian here?” I asked, tilting my head and taking a look at the bin.
“Kinda. They are more focused on digitizing than organizing. Sometimes a mage will come along and organize it. It never turns out great, which is why I think some werewolves got in here with the special ink,” David explained.
He picked through the pile and found a book, almost as faded and worn as the grimoire Fumnaya was offered for the duel.
“You know, it’d be nice to not have to defend ourselves from our own side. She shouldn’t have asked us what we did for the community. I mean, we saved a bunch of mages from losing their powers and whatnot!” Fumnaya said.
While a good example, it wasn’t exactly something people should know, and other than Gavin and I, everyone was looking at her a little confused.
“What are you talking about?” Lorenz asked.
Fumnaya, unfortunately, became flustered and looked to me for help in this situation. I didn’t want to implicate me or Gavin, so I left her high and dry, and shrugged.
“I mean, we defeated that weird, mutated monster the demon mage became,” she said.
Lorenz looked from Fumnaya to Gavin, and I could see the cogs turning in his head, and I could feel the terror coming off Gavin.
“I think she meant lives, but she was in an E-lis sort of mind, focused on the magical stuff around her,” Silvia offered.
“Oh right, yeah that,” Fumnaya said.
“That’s an unfortunate way to look at yourself and others – a life isn’t just what one can do, or even what one is,” Lorenz said.
I walked over, and grabbed Fumnaya, trying to make it look like a hug to others, while also trying to get her to calm down.
“Hey, uh, David, I’ll start on that book, why don’t you help her find the grimoires and find all the misplaced ones?” I suggested.
David obliged, but seemed a little disappointed that this was the end of me letting him in on the dragon info.
Lucky the panicked Fumnaya didn’t
quite catch that my statement implied that I didn’t have a grimoire in my hands.
The library had a few free-standing shelves, with two tables before them and what seemed like the little sorting area and a third table behind them. The walls were lined with built-in shelves as well, which meant that one was literally surrounded by books.
I opened up the tome that David had retrieved for me and started to look at the table of contents.
This book started out as a journal entry of someone venturing in past the earth elemental plane. It exited to a cavern system, which opened out into a desert. Atop the mountain, the exit was located in the nest of a dragon. It’d been flying around when the adventure exited.
He described it as a feral beast, with nothing but malice in its lizard-like heart. He slew it and brought back some of the eggs for study.
Interestingly enough, the eggs were normal white eggs, that only slightly reminded him of chicken eggs, nothing like the eggs that I’d encountered. Yet the form of the dragon was much like the form of the one that came through the portal.
Another chapter was the journal entry from someone else, from the date, someone much further into the future of the first. While the first had some hallmarks of early to middle English, this new guy was definitely at the start of middle English. He was describing the dragons a bit differently, and he also seemed to have gone a lot further and seen wyverns and eastern dragons.
He didn’t have the knowledge to call them lindworms or even dragons, for that matter. I marvelled at the possibility of someone wandering into a portal and finding another mythology’s monsters. Could that be how some myths that were similar showed up in the world? Or was it the other way around?
Either way, I skipped forwards to see if this was just journal entries. It was not white, or at least, not as off-white as the other pages. The paper with printed text showed a table of contents.
“Modern dragons and what to make of this information.” Was the first part? I tilted my head and moved to the next one. “Those who’ve cared for dragons.”
I started to read, “Many powerful people thought themselves capable of dealing with a dragon. At the start it wasn’t nearly possible, as they seemed to be feral beasts that cared not for rearing, much like lizards do in this world. As time progressed, however, it seemed that they got smarter much faster than evolution could dictate. Following the fact that culture has advanced and there are the dragons of both eastern and western myth in the various realms that the portals connect to, it’s clear to see that mythology, and their biology is linked – although in what direction I cannot tell.”
The Stray Dragon : (A collage age urban fantasy with werewolves werewolf community center book 3) Page 5