by Randall Pine
Llewyn beckoned the other two men forward. They glanced uneasily at each other, then cautiously approached the basin. “This is a map of Templar,” the wizard said gruffly. Virgil opened his mouth to point out that it didn’t look like a map, and Llewyn must have sensed what he was going to say, because he hurriedly added, “It’s not a map exactly, but a spherical representation. See the orange areas?” The other men nodded. “Those are meta-power signatures. They measure the magical strength of different entities.”
“There are that many magical beings in Templar?” Simon asked, startled. There were easily a few dozen orange spots on the map.
“It’s surprising,” the sorcerer agreed. He pointed to one of the larger orange spheres on the far side of the globe. “This one, here…that’s Asag, the demon on Evergreen Street. The demon you two apparently decided to engage.” He raised an eyebrow in Simon’s general direction.
“It was his idea,” Simon replied, pointing across the basin at Virgil.
Virgil scratched the back of his neck. “Templar needs heroes,” he said uncomfortably, because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Templar needs warriors who are trained in magic,” Llewyn snapped. The gruffness of his voice was so powerful that Virgil shrank back, and for a second, Simon was worried he might accidentally step off the platform completely.
“We didn’t know what it would be like,” Simon admitted, bowing his head in embarrassment.
Llewyn shot him an annoyed look. “Obviously,” he snarled. He turned his attention back to the globe. He pointed to another sizeable orange orb on the other side, across from the demon. “This is our location, here.”
“Your energy isn’t much bigger than the demon’s,” Virgil pointed out nervously. “Is that…bad?”
Simon expected an explosive reaction, but when Llewyn replied, his voice was calm. “Asag is an especially powerful arch-demon. He’s ancient, with a long history of worship, and he holds a high rank in hell.” The sorcerer sighed. “You would have had a hard time picking a worse demon to confront.”
“He sort of made the decision for us,” Virgil pointed out. “He came to us. We just…tried to do something about it.”
“Try not to, until you’ve learned how to harness your energy,” Llewyn said.
Simon cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Harness…what energy?” he asked. “We’re not magic, we’re not…we’re not sorcerers, or witches, or anything.”
“Warlocks,” Virgil corrected him. “Guy witches are warlocks.”
“We’re not magic,” Simon repeated. “I’m thinking it’s probably best for us to just…not fight demons anymore.”
Llewyn placed his hands on the globe and pulled them apart, and the section of the map with his light zoomed in and expanded. His power orb grew to the size of a fist, and Simon and Virgil could see two other dots, much smaller, but unmistakable, hovering near the larger energy signature. “See those?” the sorcerer asked. “Those two magic signatures, there?”
Simon furrowed his brow. “Who’s that?” he asked.
Llewyn turned and looked at him gravely. “Those sources of magic are the two of you.”
Chapter 13
“Those are us?” Simon asked, incredulous.
“They’re not very big,” Virgil pointed out with a frown.
“Why do they exist at all?” Simon demanded. “We don’t have magic powers!”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a good point,” Virgil decided.
The sorcerer grunted. “Apparently you do.”
Simon tilted his head, his face pinched in confusion. He backed away from the basin, raising his hands defensively, and moved along the platform toward the door. “Wait. I’m sorry, wait. Are you saying…are you saying that we—Virgil and I—are magic?”
“I’m saying you have no idea how to use it, and I can’t even start to speculate how on earth it got there. But yes, you’ve got magic in you. Both of you.”
Simon’s knees turned to water under his own weight, and he fell down, collapsing on the walkway. “We’re normal human beings,” he said quietly, more to himself than to anyone else. “Normal humans don’t have magical powers.”
“They do if they’ve had it transferred into them—by a magical creature or a spell, or by a totem or a familiar. Some get the curse from spirits of the dead. Whatever the reason, you have power. Both of you.”
“Whoa,” Virgil said, his eyes wide. “This explains so much.”
“It doesn’t explain anything,” Simon countered. His voice was shrill and tight. He scraped his hands through his hair, holding tight, trying to pull himself together.
“It explains why that candle protection spell worked,” Virgil pointed out. “Even Asag said it was pretty good.”
“You cast a protection spell?” Llewyn asked, his face brightening with curiosity.
“We lit a candle and said some words, and the demon couldn’t get close while we held the candle,” Virgil said proudly. Then he added, “Is that…good?”
“It’s surprising,” Llewyn said. “And it reinforces what we see here. You two have a gift.”
Simon buried his face in his hands. He shook his head slowly, trying desperately to process all of this information. “This is just…” he started, trailing off into nothing. He sighed heavily, then tried again. “This is too much.”
“It’s amazing,” Virgil countered. He hurried over to where Simon had crumpled on the walkway and crouched down to his level. “Dude! Seriously! Do you understand what this means?” He held out his hands, and he stared down at them in wonder, as if they were glowing with their own light and power, which they most certainly were not doing. “We are actual heroes of Templar!”
“You are inexperienced novices who have no idea how to manage their strengths,” Llewyn interrupted. “But you have power. Abby felt that. That’s why you’re here.”
“I’m sorry, Abby felt that?” Virgil asked, returning his attention to the sorcerer. “What does that mean?”
“She’s an empath,” Simon said.
“She’s an extraordinarily powerful empath,” Llewyn corrected him. He stabbed his finger against the globe, next to an orange light that was about the size of a pea. “This is Abby.”
Virgil squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Abby is a sorcerer?” he cried.
“No!” Simon replied quickly, and passionately. Then he remembered that he actually didn’t know much about her at all, and he drew back into himself. “I don’t think so,” he added quietly.
“She’s not a sorcerer,” Llewyn confirmed, sounding irritated. “She’s an empath. Metaphysical powers manifest in different ways.” He shot Virgil a look, and the light from his right eye burned darkly. “You’re not a sorcerer either, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” Virgil lied.
“Abby is an empath, and her powers are unique. Extraordinary, really. She can’t see your emotions unless she touches you, but she has an uncanny ability to sense feelings from an unheard of distance. And she has additional powers as well…” Llewyn’s voice trailed off, and he suddenly looked troubled and lost in thought. After a few moments of silence, he shook his head to clear away whatever was troubling him. He blew on the globe, and the entire map disintegrated, the orange and asphalt-grey orb breaking into flakes and falling into the bottom of the basin. He turned and strode along the platform, toward the door. “Coming?” he asked over his shoulder.
Virgil gripped Simon at his elbows and pulled him to his feet. “Coming,” he replied, and together, they stumbled along behind the sorcerer.
“The strength of your demon is startling. He needs to be stopped.” Llewyn pushed through the door at the end of the walkway and passed out of the chamber. Virgil and Simon hurried after him. He led them back into the parlor, and he plopped down on one of the two flo
ral-print sofas sitting on the plush rug. The springs groaned beneath his weight. “I felt him from half a world away.”
Virgil led Simon to the other couch and lowered him onto it. He looked like he was in shock. Virgil sat down next to him, leaning forward with interest. “I don’t want you to smite me or anything for asking personal questions, but since you bring it up—the part about you stopping him and everything—can I just ask, if your power signature is about the same size as the demon’s, then…I mean…not to be disrespectful or anything, but why aren’t you fighting him?”
Llewyn gritted his teeth so hard that Virgil could hear the squeak of it from across the room. The sorcerer’s face darkened. “I’m inhibited,” he said through a clenched jaw. He shrugged off his coat and gripped the hem of his shirt. He pulled it up to his neck, revealing a pale but well-defined stomach and a powerful chest. A solid streak of what appeared to be shiny, black stone bisected his breastplate, creating a lightning-bolt shape that started at his clavicle and ended just above his abdomen. He tapped the skin next to the streak, and it pushed in a bit, enough so that Simon and Virgil could see that his skin was wholly separate from whatever obsidian thing bisected his chest. Simon blenched.
“Don’t you throw up,” Virgil whispered, clapping a hand over Simon’s mouth.
Llewyn didn’t seem to hear him. He was too preoccupied with his own sadness, staring down forlornly at the black streak. “Two years ago, a dark mage named Morilan cast this into my chest. I had gone to the Carpathian Mountains to release the people there from the evil will of Morilan, and we struggled. Greatly. We were locked in battle for three days, and three nights. Near the end of it, we were both exhausted. I thought I would preserve my mana a bit by letting down my shield, only for a few moments.” Llewyn’s shoulders sagged, and his entire body tilted forward as he lowered his eyes in the defeat of the memory. “Morilan sensed it. He seized on it. With my shields down, he cast a dark blade, and it hit home.” He traced his fingers thoughtfully over the external edge of the obsidian, lost deeply in thought. “The spell was meant to destroy me. It would have destroyed a lesser mage. But I refocused, I sent my strength into my chest, to hold the dark blade in place where it had sunk into my chest. It does not touch my heart, but only because I hold it at bay. If I were to let up on my focus, the blade would instantly slice through, wedge itself through a chamber of my heart, and I would die.” He lowered his shirt, and he pulled his coat back over his shoulders, staving off a shiver. “I focus most of my energy now on this dark blade. It takes almost everything I have to hold it where it is. I’m not strong enough to remove it…I doubt the strength to do that exists on this plane. If I give up my fight for one instant, my life is over. What magic I have leftover, I use to the best of my abilities. I currently use a portion to provide a comfortable dwelling in a modest environment. I use a greater portion to send out a signal, here, from Templar, in an attempt to draw in other creatures of power, so that we might band together and defeat the extraordinary evil that is gathering here, in the dark recesses of the city. Your friend Abby answered the call. And now, you two have as well.”
Llewyn reached forward and pulled the coffee table closer to his seat. Simon noticed for the first time that the table was actually a huge chest, with iron bands crossing the lid. The sorcerer placed his hand on the lock, and it fell open with a loud CLUNK. He pushed open the lid. Inside the trunk were hundreds of pouches and trinkets and fabric and jars, all cluttered together haphazardly. The sorcerer dug through the mess until he found the two pouches he was looking for. He pulled them out by their drawstrings and closed the lid. He tossed one navy blue pouch to Simon, and the other to Virgil.
Virgil caught his easily. Simon was still reeling from pretty much everything that had happened in the last 24 hours, and his pouch bounced off his chest and hit the floor. He snapped to attention and picked up the bag. It was light; whatever was inside weighed practically nothing at all. He pulled open the drawstring and shook the contents of the bag into his open palm.
Out tumbled a thick, metal wrist cuff. It appeared to be old, and made of iron, at least two inches wide, and a quarter-inch thick. It looked like it should have had some heft to it, but it felt as light as a feather in his palm. A hinge bisected the cuff, allowing it to break open so a person could secure it around his wrist and close it up again.
“I don’t wear bracelets,” Virgil said, frowning down at the cuff in his hand. It looked like Simon’s, except instead of a dark gray metal, his was a lighter color, almost the color of ivory, but it, too, appeared to be made of a heavy, solid metal. “Not really into the whole jewelry thing.”
“They’re not bracelets. They’re manacles.”
Virgil looked doubtfully at the bracelet. “I’m not really into manacles, either…”
“Not manacle, mana-cle. Emphasis on ‘mana.’” He closed the trunk and stood up from the couch. “Follow me.”
The sorcerer strode toward the entrance to the tent. Simon looked at Virgil. Virgil shrugged. He hefted the cuff a few times, as if to see if the lightness of it was real, then he followed Llewyn out of the room. Simon followed.
“You have mana,” the sorcerer said, reaching into the trash barrel and pulling out an empty tin can. “Both of you. You haven’t realized it because the energy is weak. And the energy is weak because you haven’t been taught how to harness it. The energy is too weak to present itself naturally.” He set the tin can on top of the overturned shopping cart, balancing it on the metal grating. “It’s more common than you think. Lots of people are either born with magic in their blood, or they have it transferred upon them, but they never think to look for it.” He turned back to the two young men, and the blue light of his missing eye gleamed with mischief. “Let’s see what happens when we look for yours.”
Virgil perked up at that. “We’re going to actually do magic?” he asked.
Llewyn shrugged. “We’ll see.” He nodded at Virgil’s cuff. “The manacle goes on the wrist of your non-dominant hand.”
“Isn’t your dominant hand stronger?” Simon asked, though he pulled open the cuff and clasped it over his left wrist anyway.
“Strong enough that you use it without thinking. The non-dominant hand takes more focus. You’ll need that focus to channel your energy.”
Virgil closed his cuff around his right wrist. He held up his arm in the dying sunlight and flexed his fingers. “Feels like magic,” he decided.
“I don’t feel anything,” Simon frowned.
“That’s what magic feels like,” Virgil replied.
“Quiet,” the sorcerer chided.
Both men looked down at their feet, embarrassed. “Sorry,” they murmured in unison.
Llewyn crossed back over to the tent and stood next to them, facing the cart and the can. “The manacle acts as a harness. Strictly speaking, you don’t need the manacle to manifest your energy, but it will help you control the power. Without the manacle, you run a great risk of causing injury and death, to others and to yourself. Understood?”
Both young men nodded.
“The manacle will collect your magic, store it, and hold it until you decide to release it.” He pushed up his left sleeve and revealed a manacle of his own, a solid circle of dull black metal. He closed his hand into a fist, and the cuff began to glow a deep orange. Tiny streaks of light flowed toward the cuff through the sorcerer’s body, flicking beneath his skin like embers and collecting in the metal of the cuff, which grew brighter and brighter as more grains of magic flooded down his arm. He turned, reached toward one of the cinder blocks, and opened his hand. Three concentric rings of orange light exploded out from the cuff, encircling his wrist. They rotated lazily, each spinning oppositely of the next, and the space between the rings was filled with ancient runes, written in orange as if they had been stamped in the air with fire. Then the rings pushed themselves outward, moving past his hand and lining themselv
es up in order from largest to smallest so that they looked like a mystical telescope in reverse. Then Llewyn’s palm began to glow with a hot orange ball of light, and when he flicked his fingers, the light burst forward, rocketing through the tunnel of orange rings and screeching toward the cinder block. It exploded on impact, blowing the concrete brick to dust.
“Whoa!” Virgil cried, jumping behind Simon for cover. “That was awesome!”
“We can do that?” Simon breathed, his mouth open in awe. He stared down at the cuff on his own wrist, incredulous.
“Not yet,” Llewyn said gruffly. “But maybe someday, with the right training.”
“I want to try,” Virgil decided, his voice firm and definite. He stepped out from behind Simon and rubbed his hands together. “I want to blow up a brick.”
“We’ll see how you fare with the can,” Llewyn smirked.
Virgil held up his wrist, inspecting the cuff. “How does it work?” he asked.
“Make yourself mindful of your energy,” the sorcerer instructed, crossing his arms and assuming the role of teacher. “Feel your depths. Find your mana.”
Virgil frowned. “I…don’t know how to do that.”
Llewyn sighed. He tried again. “Close your eyes.” Virgil did. “Imagine a ball of energy in the pit of your stomach. Imagine you can feel its warmth. Take your happy memories, and your friendships, and your family, put them all into that ball. Can you feel it?”
Virgil concentrated. He pictured a ball of bright light glowing in his stomach. He didn’t know how to put happy memories into a place, so instead of trying, he just let them sort of wash over him. Keeping the ball of light in his mind, he thought back to the time when his dad had taken him to Kings Island for his twelfth birthday…and the time that Suzie Grafton had kissed him next to the bleachers in high school…and the times he and Simon had gone camping on Camelback Mountain, when they had spent the evenings roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, and telling ridiculous ghost stories. Virgil smiled, and the ball of light in his stomach grew brighter in his mind, and warmer.