Djinn Tamer - The Complete Bronze League Trilogy

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  The Tandile turned its attention away from Jackson to the immediate, if only annoying, threat of the pesky Magglecaw. But whenever the Tandile snapped at the air or swung its tail, it was always a second too late. Jackson couldn’t help but admire the grit and tenacity of the Magglecaw, even if it was fighting a hopeless battle.

  “What are you waiting for?” Akamu Kaleo called from his Kayak.

  A terrible squawk saved Jackson from answering. The Tandile snapped the Magglecaw out of the air. Long, vicious teeth closed in on one wing and shook the poor Djinn like a rag doll. When the Tandile at last let go, the Magglecaw fell in a heap in front of its enemy’s deadly jaws; its right wing looked completely mangled.

  “Now, kid!” Briggs shouted. “Do it!”

  Jackson raised his right hand and punched the air in front of him. A whip-like beam of white light shot out of the Djinn ring stone. The light wrapped itself around its mark and completely enveloped it. Jackson felt a tug from the energy rope and jerked his arm back, stopping when his hand was at his hip. The Djinn disappeared, sucked into the light which coursed back into Jackson’s ring.

  Jackson felt a faint pulse from the second ring. The stone blinked, changing from a clear diamond color to the look of obsidian. Jackson stared in disbelief. No one else spoke either.

  The Tandile decided it didn’t want anything to do with six humans surrounding it and gave up its dinner. Faster than Jackson would have imagined, it coursed through the swampy ground and slid away into the river.

  “HA!” Akamu’s laugh cut through Jackson’s shock. “I can’t believe it! You captured a freaking Magglecaw!”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I told you he didn’t have what it takes,” Akamu said to his dad, still laughing. “How do you miss something the size of a Tandile?”

  Rather than wanting to punch Akamu in the face, Jackson just felt sick to his stomach. He looked at Kay and Briggs for assistance. Kay gave him a small smile that didn’t have much behind it, and Briggs gestured for him to come over.

  “Let’s head back to the camp,” Briggs said in his usual gruff voice. “Time to get packed up and head home.”

  “Wait, can’t he just let this one go and try again?” Kay said.

  “Maybe with more expensive rings,” Briggs said. “But with the one Jackson could afford, it can only be used on the first Djinn it brings to stasis. For better or worse, this is the Djinn Jackson has now.”

  “Expensive rings?” Kay said, holding up the one on her finger. “Like the one Sunshine’s in?”

  Briggs nodded.

  “Then why didn’t we let Jackson use this one?”

  “If I’m being honest, this was one circumstance I didn’t foresee.” Briggs looked back up at the Kaleos. “Best of luck, you two.”

  “It was good to see you again, Briggs,” Lei called to them. “Stay in touch!”

  Nobody said a word even after they made it back to the truck. Jackson’s insides twisted every time he looked down at the ring. What had he been thinking?

  Once everything was packed up, the three of them and Asena loaded up in the truck and headed back down the forest road. Even with both windows down, the stench of the swamp bog on their clothes and in Asena’s fur made it hard to breathe.

  “We’ll have to take your Djinn to the center on our way out,” Briggs said. “They examine and register every Djinn that leaves the park.”

  Jackson almost winced at his words. He could tell Briggs wasn’t happy, and he hated disappointing his mentor no matter how crotchety he could be.

  “Sorry,” Jackson said in a low voice.

  Briggs sighed. “It’s okay — that asshole Lei got me all worked up. Everyone gets excited on their first taming, let alone with Lei and his brat kid distracting you. It’s no wonder you missed.”

  Jackson swallowed hard. “I didn’t miss.”

  Briggs slammed on the brakes. The three of them jerked forward and Asena crashed to the floor in the back. Briggs looked at Jackson with wide, furious eyes.

  “What do you mean you didn’t miss?”

  “I…I didn’t want the Tandile to kill it,” Jackson said. He felt stupid just saying it. “And…well I looked at the Tandile and didn’t think I could handle it. And that Magglecaw was putting up a good fight all alone, so I thought —”

  “I can’t believe this!” Briggs smacked the steering wheel with his palms. “It’s a five-year wait to get to tame at Rocky Point, kid! You just wasted thousands of dollars on a Magglecaw!”

  “I’m sorry!” Jackson said. He wished he could escape the cab — sitting right next to Briggs in one of his rages was the last place he wanted to be right now. His stomach still churned. “I’ll pay you back, I promise.”

  “Pay me back?” Briggs let out a forced, dry laugh. “Oh, that’s a good one. You don’t have a dime to your name! Did you forget why we came out here? So you could find a Djinn to help you compete in the Bronze League. What do you think you’re going to do with that Magglecaw?”

  “I’ll work with it,” Jackson said. Now Briggs had him fired up. “It’s not like it can’t become stronger.”

  Briggs rolled his eyes and started the truck again. “What in the hell have I gotten myself into?” he muttered.

  The silence continued until they reached the Djinn registration office inside the Rocky Point National Preserve Visitor’s Center. By now, Jackson’s ring blinked repeatedly, indicating the Djinn inside was in severe distress. The Djinn clinicians rushed them back into the emergency room and instructed Jackson to let the Magglecaw out of stasis.

  A grayish light sprang from the ring and the shape of the Magglecaw materialized on the table. Before the Djinn could react, a glass dome rose around it and enclosed it within. The very second it came to its senses, it flapped and threw itself against the glass. Throughout the fit, its right wing hung limp at its side. A moment later, a light mist filled the glass globe and settled on the Djinn. The Magglecaw swayed and then collapsed on the table. The dome retracted, allowing the doctors to examine Jackson’s newest Djinn.

  “Looks like most of the Tandile’s teeth just went through the feathers,” the head doctor said, feeling the Magglecaw’s wing with his gloved hands. “The wing isn’t broken, it’s just been dislocated.

  Kay was in her element, gaze darting at everything from the fancy equipment to the doctor and his deft hand movements as he popped the wing back into place. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jackson stared dully at the table, still half-wondering what he’d been thinking when he captured the Magglecaw.

  Once the wing was in place, the doctor did a quick overall examination of the Magglecaw and then administered a series of vaccines to prevent the spread of any potential diseases.

  “Magglecaws are hardier than you think,” he said. “This one probably would have healed itself given enough time. I must say, it’s been a while since I’ve worked on one. In fact, I don’t think I can recall a Magglecaw ever being tagged out of Rocky Point.”

  Briggs fixed Jackson with another icy stare. “Well, I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

  The doctor tactfully ignored the exchange between mentor and student. “Well, that’s that. He should be good as new in a couple of days — although you might want to leave him in stasis until then — the injury recovery won’t go over as well combined with the Bonding process.”

  Keen to avoid Briggs disapproving look, Jackson’s eyes darted back to the table to find the Magglecaw…gone. At the same moment, he saw the tip of a cream-colored tail disappear behind the corner of the examination table. In the hustle and bustle to get the Magglecaw treated, Jackson hadn’t returned Asena to her ring. He’d been so caught up in reaching the doctor that he hadn’t noticed her follow them in from the truck.

  “Asena!” Jackson called, feeling his face flush. Bringing a Magglecaw in for an exam was bad enough, now his other Djinn was wandering around the operating room. “Get over here!”

  The Lyote didn’t respon
d. The doctor frowned. “Normally we don’t allow any Djinn to roam free in the office, apart from the patients.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jackson said as he walked around the table to recall Asena into stasis. “She’s normally very well — ARGH!”

  Asena sat on her haunches behind the exam table, the poor tranquilized Magglecaw hanging from her mouth. Her wagging tail and the look in her eyes suggested she thought she’d been doing Jackson a favor. Jackson whipped out his ring and recalled the Magglecaw at once, before the Lyote could decide she was hungry.

  “Bad girl!” Jackson said.

  Asena whined before she too disappeared in a flash of light.

  The doctor gave a no-so-polite cough. Jackson turned around, a sheepish grin on his face and muttered an apology.

  “I think we’d better get going,” Briggs said. “Thanks for your help, doc.”

  Kay hung back asking several questions about the instruments and equipment while Jackson followed Briggs out of the exam room, feeling distraught. He’d been hoping the doctor’s exam might reveal some special or rare quality about this particular Djinn that he could use to justify the capture to Briggs. Instead, his fears were confirmed. He’d wasted what was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity on a Djinn he could have captured in his own backyard. At the front desk, the receptionist handed Jackson a tablet with a number of registration forms.

  “It’s not too late,” Briggs said. “Until you sign those papers, you can apply for a release back into the wild. Given the injuries the Magglecaw suffered, you might even get the appeal through.”

  Jackson’s stylus hovered over the first page where he would sign his name, officially making the Magglecaw his own.

  “Putting your name down doesn’t just mean you’ve got another fighter on your team,” Briggs said. His voice took on a gentler tone which caught Jackson off guard. “You’ll Bond with this Djinn — establish a special connection with it. That’s something extremely hard to break if, down the road, you need to bring another Djinn on your team because the Magglecaw and its future forms aren’t cutting it. And I’m here to tell you: a Magglecaw ain’t going to cut it in Silver and Gold Leagues. You need to think about your career, not just where you are right now.”

  Jackson stared down at the registration form. He’d never really stopped and considered the implications of what he would be doing when he aimed at the Magglecaw. He thought of his Bond with Asena, how special and unique it was. It was hard to imagine another Djinn sharing that same relationship with him but he knew, one day, if his dreams came true, he’d have as many as seven Djinn on his team. Was a Magglecaw really one of just seven Djinn he wanted to help take him to the top?

  “I…”

  “You’d have to buy another ring, but we can go back into the preserve. I can’t stress how important this is that you consider every option here,” Briggs said. “Just let them know you’ve changed your mind and don’t want to tag out. It’s rare they allow a release, but given the circumstances I think we can make it happen.”

  “And would they let us back in to catch another one?”

  “Honestly,” Briggs said, “It’s possible. But definitely not before Training Camp. The bureaucracy will see to that. The smart thing would have been to leave the Magglecaw to nature and try again. But that ship has sailed.”

  Jackson nodded. He admittedly felt a little better hearing that. He didn’t think he could have left the Magglecaw there if he wanted. But did he actually want to keep this one?

  Jackson stuck the stylus back in its magnetic holder on the side of the tablet and bit his lip. He recalled his first months fighting in the Underground. Sure, he had a rare and powerful Djinn in Asena, but their rocky relationship made him the worst of the worst tamers. He couldn’t even say how many times he’d been beaten not just by bigger and stronger opponents, but better ones. In spite of this, he’d still kept going back, driven by a desire to help his grandma.

  While he doubted the Magglecaw felt any convictions other than filling its belly when it attacked the Tandile, Jackson couldn’t help but notice its spunk; a small, weaker Djinn taking on what twenty of its flock-mates had failed against. Jackson picked the form up off of the reception desk.

  “You’re probably right,” he told Briggs. “A Magglecaw definitely isn’t what we came here for, and it’s not what I ever imagined I’d take with me to training camp. But I’m not going to dismiss it just because it doesn’t look like the best option on paper. If we went by that, I wouldn’t have a place in Training Camp, either.”

  Briggs rolled his eyes. “You know, this whole underdog complex you’ve got going is a real pain in my ass, kid.”

  “Tell me the truth,” Jackson said. “Do you think I’ve got a chance with Asena and the Magglecaw?”

  After a long moment of thought, Briggs shrugged. “I ain’t gonna lie to you and tell you that with a lot of hard work and dedication you’ll be just fine, because I can’t promise that. That’s a speech I would have saved for when you brought back a Groggle or Tandile. On the other hand, raw ability is only half of what makes up a good Djinn. A good tamer goes a long way. We’ll just have to see.”

  Jackson grinned. It’d been a hell of a couple of days and he knew it wouldn’t be the last time he second-guessed himself about the Magglecaw. But just like when the bank foreclosed their house and Jackson had his back to the wall with Asena, the only option was to take things head-on.

  Once they’d piled into Briggs’s pickup and hopped onto a main highway, Jackson pulled up the new stats for his Magglecaw. What had he gotten himself into here?

  GENERAL STATS AND INFO

  Djinn: Magglecaw

  Level: 10

  Name: N/A

  Element: Wind

  Species Rarity: Common

  Master: Jackson Hunt

  HP (Hit Points): 32/170

  EP (Elemental Power): 3/65

  XP (Experience): 104 to Next Level

  DJP (Djinn Points): 18 Unallocated

  Attack: 28

  Defense: 24

  Speed: 64

  Accessories: None

  Items: None

  Status: Recovering

  Bond: 5%

  Move Set: Swipe Left to See More >>>

  Jackson grimaced. While it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, there was still a lot of work to be done. On the plus side, with its Bond at 5%, it looked like the process was well underway. The Magglecaw had awful Defense and Attack, and was lacking Elemental Power. It more than made up for it in the Speed category, though, and one big silver lining was that he had 18 DJP to allocate from when it leveled up over the course of its life. In the wild, Djinn had no tamers to allocate these and, as such, tamed Djinn were often much stronger than their wild counterparts.

  Djinn would often go their entire lives with untapped potential — a potential that was only unlocked in recent centuries by tamers. Some called it unethical, but what it came down to was taking advantage of the potential already inherent in the Djinn’s DNA.

  But before Jackson could figure out how he’d allocate the DJP, he had to look at the Magglecaw’s move set. He swiped left on the menu.

  Move Set

  Wind-Elemental: Mocking Wind (3 EP), Feather Needle (5 EP)

  Plain-Elemental: Attack, Cackle Call

  None of those were anything to write home about, but it wasn’t a bad start — it was certainly a better place than he and Asena had started several months back.

  Jackson scratched his chin with his free hand and swiped back over the General Stats and Info section. Considering its high level, the Magglecaw was seriously lacking in four of the five main categories: HP, EP, Attack, and Defense.

  Jackson thought back to when he started with Asena in the Underground. His strategy there against a bunch of novices was to overload the Lyote’s Attack and overwhelm the opponents who were more than likely to throw in far too many DJP into their Defense, creating a relatively weak Djinn.

  “I know tha
t look,” Briggs said, glancing over from the driver’s seat. “Figuring the best way to allocate those leftover Djinn Points, are we?”

  Jackson nodded and gave Briggs the short version of the Magglecaw’s current stats.

  “Fighting the urge to pile on its Defense and Attack, huh?” Briggs said.

  “So it’s the wrong move?”

  “Ehh…” Briggs’s voice faded as he mulled over the question for several seconds. “Yes and no. Magglecaws have a lot of Speed, but not much else. Yes, it’s important to make sure you have a Djinn that can both take and deal a hit, but it’s also important to recognize a Djinn’s strengths. Having amazing Speed isn’t an invitation to invest your Djinn Points in something else until they’re all leveled out. That Djinn is naturally predisposed to be fast, and tamers should do their best to retain each Djinn’s strengths, because in a pinch, they never know when they’ll need said strengths — in this case, Speed. Plus, the last thing you want to do is squander their potential.

  “At least, that’s my two cents on the matter,” Briggs added. “But there have been many successful tamers out there who have thought otherwise and work to level out their core stats as much as possible.”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Jackson said, though it didn’t help the small pang in his stomach. He’d definitely considered leveling out his other stats so that they were closer to the Magglecaw’s Speed, but Briggs’s comments made a lot of sense.

  Jackson forced out a quick breath and quickly added 7 DJP to Speed, moving as quickly as possible so he couldn’t rethink his strategy. Immediately, the Djinn’s Speed hopped from 64 to 108 — a substantial jump.

  He glanced over the other core stats and dropped 2 DJP into each one. This left him with 3 more DJP left, which he eventually allocated to HP, Attack, and Defense. He hoped he wouldn’t regret these decisions.

  GENERAL STATS AND INFO