Djinn Tamer - The Complete Bronze League Trilogy

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  Djinn: Magglecaw

  Level: 10

  Name: N/A

  Element: Wind

  Species Rarity: Common

  Master: Jackson Hunt

  HP (Hit Points): 32/192

  EP (Elemental Power): 3/72

  XP (Experience): 104 to Next Level

  DJP (Djinn Points): 0 Unallocated

  Attack: 39

  Defense: 40

  Speed: 108

  Accessories: None

  Items: None

  Status: Recovering

  Bond: 5%

  Move Set: Swipe Left to See More >>>

  Jackson forced a grin on his face. It was a start, but they still had a whole lot of work to do.

  Chapter Twelve

  Briggs insisted on driving through the night, saying something about wanting to get a stiff drink and wake up in his own bed like the whole thing had been a bad dream. By the time they pulled into the driveway, the rising sun marked the following morning.

  Jackson had been so angry at Asena for trying to eat the Magglecaw that he’d left her in the ring for the ride home. As a result, Kay sprawled out across the back seat, still fast asleep and drooling when Briggs put the truck in park at Jackson’s driveway. When Jackson opened the creaking, rusty door, she bolted upright, red hair wild and unruly.

  “Huh — whereweat?”

  “Home, Kay,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes. All of his positivity and false bravado drained away during the long ride home in the uncomfortable pickup. Now he felt almost like Briggs — he wanted to curl up in his bed and hope it’d been a bad dream.

  Kay mumbled something and rubbed her eyes. While Jackson and Briggs unloaded the back of the truck, she stumbled out of the backseat of the pickup and gave a big stretch and yawn.

  “Home already?” Jane said. She’d been checking the mail on the first floor of their complex when she saw the truck at the curb. She opened the screen door to their building, fully dressed, and anxiously joined them on the curb. “How did it go?”

  “I suppose if there’s one good thing, it’s that nothing more could have gone wrong,” Briggs muttered. Luckily, Jane didn’t pick it up.

  “It was…okay,” Jackson said. Jane looked at him, clearly waiting for more information. Instead, Jackson threw his bag over his shoulder and carried it up to their small front porch.

  Surprisingly, he saw Kay following behind him. She tossed her stuff onto the front porch of the complex. “I’ll come get my things later,” Kay said. “My bike too. I can’t ride home on that thing right now.” She looked like she might fall asleep where she was standing, so Jackson told her thanks again.

  “I can drop you off, you know,” Briggs told her.

  “I’m not riding another minute in that thing,” Kay said, staggering away.

  After she started walking home and Jackson had put their stuff away in his apartment, he went back outside and approached the driver’s side of the pickup where Briggs waited, cigar in mouth and truck idling.

  “What now?” Jackson said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the sputter of the engine.

  “Now I go home and drink myself to sleep before I try to figure out your problems again,” Briggs said. Jackson started to laugh then realized he was serious. “Same old regimen — I’ll see you tomorrow after work, and then morning and nights from there on out when available. With any luck, you won’t be completely blown out of the water at camp. But like I said before, I make no guarantees.

  “In all honesty,” Briggs said. “I should dropkick your ass to the curb right now and be on my way. That’s the second time you’ve disobeyed me.”

  Jackson swallowed, growing nervous at where this conversation was going.

  “But I really do want to beat McAllister,” Briggs said. “And perhaps even more than that, I want to smack that smirk off of Lei Kaleo’s damn face.”

  Jackson smirked. It looks like the rivalries of old were starting to reawaken within the previous guard of Djinn tamers — though he dare not say it aloud.

  With that, Briggs shifted the truck into gear and drove off in a cloud of thick black exhaust. Jackson’s thanks to his mentor were drowned out by a particularly loud backfire, but he doubted Briggs would have appreciated it anyway.

  “Did you have a good time on your camping trip?” Jane asked Jackson after he’d lugged his and Kay’s bags into the apartment.

  Jackson vented a long sigh. “It wasn’t a camping trip, Grandma.”

  Jane wasn’t deterred…or just wasn’t listening. “Did you get the Djinn you wanted?”

  Another pang of guilt flooded his gut. Rather than deal with Jane’s twenty questions, Jackson toggled the 3D projector on his watch and flipped to the Magglecaw’s page. When the Magglecaw appeared in a miniature computerized form in front of Jane she gave Jackson a puzzled look.

  “Is that it? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen those around Tyle since we moved here.”

  “Yeah,” Jackson said, growing more deflated by the second. “They’re sort of common.”

  He reluctantly told Jane the story of how he’d come to be the Magglecaw’s tamer. When he finished, his grandma nodded in understanding.

  “So you felt bad for it? That was a sweet thing to do.”

  Jackson felt his face flush for the dozenth time in the last two days. “I didn’t — oh, never mind. I’m feeling pretty tired. Can we talk later?”

  When he reached his room, Jackson shut the door behind him and then face-planted onto his bed. He lay there for several moments before finally rolling over with a groan. Although he’d been told to leave the Magglecaw in stasis another day before beginning its training, Jackson felt the urge to see his newest Djinn, almost as if he could confirm some sort of insider secret about the Magglecaw that everyone else had missed.

  Jackson wore the Magglecaw’s ring on his right index finger, opposite of Asena’s on his left. It really didn’t matter which finger a tamer chose to wear his ring on, but when Jackson had the new one sized, he liked the balance of one on each hand. Closing his right hand into a fist, Jackson summoned the Magglecaw onto his bed.

  His new Djinn appeared in a gray light and swiveled its head around, taking in its surroundings. Careful not to disturb it, Jackson sat still until the Magglecaw spotted him. It tilted its head sideways and let out a questioning cackle.

  “Hey there,” Jackson said. “I’m your new tamer. My name’s Jackson.”

  He reached forward slowly to touch the Magglecaw. Recalling how his first few weeks with Asena had been, Jackson gritted his teeth, prepared for the Djinn to nip at his fingers or fly in his face. Instead, the Magglecaw leaned forward and rubbed the side of its feathered head against Jackson’s outstretched finger.

  “That’s a good boy,” Jackson said. The Magglecaw squawked and hopped closer, still keeping its injured right wing tucked against its side. The wing looked like it was in pretty good shape to Jackson, but with Training Camp looming closer, he thought he’d better play it safe and give his new Djinn a few days’s rest. Any injury acquired by the Magglecaw or Asena would severely impact his chances of making it through camp. Djinn injuries took place in all levels of the DBL, and although the world’s best medical trainers and doctors worked to rehabilitate injured Djinn, sometimes freak accidents happened that ruined an entire season or even a career for a Djinn and their tamer.

  Jackson pulled up the Djinn’s stat sheet once again — half to admire the work he’d already done allocating his DJP, half to glance at the “N/A” hovering on the Name line.

  “You seem like a good fellow,” Jackson said, stroking the Magglecaw’s head and back with two of his fingers. “What are we going to name you?”

  Several ideas flashed through his mind until he eventually settled on one.

  “Scrappy,” Jackson said when he’d finished typing in the characters on the stat sheet. “What do you think of that? I’d say you’re definitely scrappy for taking on a Tandile all by yourself!”

 
The Magglecaw — Scrappy — chattered his agreement and hopped around the bed in apparent excitement. Jackson’s holo-watch vibrated and he saw his Bond increase to 10%. He couldn’t help but smile. Bonding with Scrappy was certainly off to a much easier start than it had been with Asena.

  Jackson let the Djinn explore for a few minutes, though he was careful to make sure the Magglecaw didn’t try to fly anywhere. With the door and window shut, there wasn’t much too worry about. The room in his new apartment was so small the Magglecaw could take it all in without much moving required.

  “Hey!” Jackson said. “I just realized you haven’t met your teammate yet — well, not consciously, anyway. I’d better introduce you.”

  Asena appeared in a flash of light on the floor near the closed door. As soon as she materialized from stasis, she gave Jackson a reproachful look. He hadn’t let her out of her ring since the incident in the medical room the night before and Asena hated being confined to her Djinn ring any longer than she had to. Jackson guessed it was a result of the long years she’d spent trapped inside stasis — though, as far as he knew, when a Djinn was in stasis, time virtually stood still. He could add it to the list of things he still didn’t fully understand about the world.

  “Asena, this is Scrappy. He’s the new member of our team!”

  The Lyote let out a low growl from down on the floor. On the bed, the Magglecaw spread its wings and let out a wave of angry chatter. Apparently, some part of Scrappy had been awake enough to realize Asena had tried to eat him the night before.

  “Hey, calm down,” Jackson said. The last thing he wanted was for Scrappy to re-injure his wing. “We’re all on the same —”

  Asena’s growl rose to a bark and she leaped onto the bed. Scrappy jumped away just in time, and shot straight up on his wings into the air. With the low ceiling, the Magglecaw couldn’t quite escape the Lyote, though. Jackson was tempted to recall them immediately, but he knew that if they were to work together, they’d probably need to start interacting, and fast.

  As Jackson tried in vain to get his two Djinn to calm down, Asena snapped at Scrappy, only to catch air. After each miss, Scrappy swooped down and pecked Asena on the head.

  Jackson’s room descended into chaos. Asena barked and howled, and Scrappy cawed and shrieked. The two chased each other all over the bed in a whirlwind of destruction, knocking pictures off the walls, items off of Jackson’s nightstand and clothes out of the closet.

  “Knock it off!” Jackson shouted.

  But the pair ignored him. After several more attempts to restore order, Jackson begrudgingly returned the Magglecaw to stasis. Scrappy disappeared in a flash leaving Asena standing in the middle of the floor amidst a shattered picture frame and dirty clothes, panting. Jackson shot her a stern look. Asena whined and cowered down lower.

  “Well, I guess his wing is feeling better,” Jackson said.

  He looked around the destruction of his room and felt overwhelmed at the task ahead of him. Not bothering to clean anything up, Jackson crawled under the sheets and fell asleep. His last thoughts were of how much work it would take if he had any sort of chance of making it through the Bronze League Training Camp.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jackson watched his hometown of Tyle flash by from the monorail window. Fortunately, the camp was too far for Briggs’s trusty pickup, and with Training Camp being so close to one of the stops, it allowed them to travel there in the relative comfort and ease of the electromagnetic train.

  As the trees whisked by, Jackson recalled one of the last few trips he’d taken on the train — the one where he and Kay had snuck away from home to Cormick so Jackson and Asena could participate in the Vance McAllister Invitational.

  It had been several months ago, but at that moment, it felt like a lifetime had passed.

  Over the past couple of weeks, Jackson had worked hard with both Asena and Scrappy to prepare for camp. They’d soon found out that both he and Asena had gotten a little soft over the winter in spite of their continued training with the local kids. Either that, or Briggs had decided to take things up a notch. Jackson figured it was probably both.

  The first dozen days or so proved to be grueling as Jackson and Asena got back into fighting form — Briggs insisted that a tamer should be as fit as his Djinn to improve their connection during battle and to keep both parts of the duo sharp. Scrappy, while used to a hard life in the wilds of the preserve, needed additional conditioning. To make things a little more difficult, they needed to take things slowly to ensure recovery from his injury — yet not so slow that they couldn’t overcome the steep learning curve of a recently-tamed Djinn.

  The training had tested the limits of Jackson’s patience, and that was aside from the fact that Asena and Scrappy could hardly be within ten feet of one another without brawling. Jackson thought it was strange, but it almost would have been easier to come up with a solution for the problem if both of the Djinn were as belligerent when they were apart as they were together.

  Without Scrappy around, Asena behaved just as well as she ever had. She could almost anticipate Jackson’s commands in battle before he gave them. Their mental connection had never been stronger, especially after Briggs shook off the rust. However, any time Jackson added Scrappy to the mix, Asena only cared about getting in a cheap-shot against her new teammate. As a result, it affected her connection with Jackson as well.

  Part of it, Jackson knew, came from the fact that Asena had been his first Djinn, and for several months, she had Jackson all to herself. There was no way around it — Asena was a proud, jealous creature who would die for her tamer. She saw Scrappy as nothing but a threat, no matter how much one-on-one time Jackson gave her.

  Likewise, Scrappy made great progress when on his own. When Jackson could coax Asena into her ring and train solely with the Magglecaw, Jackson found him a quick learner. There were definitely some changes in tactics with a flying Djinn, but Scrappy aimed to please. In the last month, Jackson had already managed to teach the Magglecaw two new moves: Dive Bomb and Mini-Twister.

  Unfortunately, Scrappy proved to be a troublemaker and naturally fed on Asena’s dislike for him. Whereas Asena saw a competitor for Jackson’s attention and love, Scrappy saw a target to unleash his mischief. Even when Jackson managed to get Asena to stop trying to eat the Magglecaw, Scrappy took every opportunity he could to sneak in a surprise peck at Asena’s tail or ear. It didn’t stop even when they were in the midst of battle.

  Like always, when Jackson trained with Briggs, he faced off against Midnight. When it had just been Jackson and Asena, Briggs scaled the competition back just enough to provide Asena with a tough challenge. Because of that, Jackson got it into his head that Asena might actually be a match for the Hurricanther despite the severe gap between their levels. As soon as Scrappy entered the mix, he realized how wrong he’d been. Midnight was a Gold League-caliber Djinn through and through, no question.

  Although the Hurricanther was well past middle-aged, even in Djinn years, he moved like black silk. Even with two Djinn bearing down on him, he hardly ever took so much as a scratch from their scrimmages. When they fought, Briggs always looked like he was on the verge of falling asleep. He examined the Djinn under heavy eyelids and showed no sign of movement other than an occasional flick of his finger or whistle to Midnight. The amount of Bond it must have taken mentally floored Jackson.

  “How’s it going with the two misfits?” Briggs asked. He’d been asleep, snoring with his head pressed against the monorail window for the better part of an hour. Jackson felt pretty sure his mentor had been sleeping off another hangover but knew better than to ask. It wasn’t that Briggs wouldn’t tell him, it was that he had enough problems of his own that he didn’t want to think about going into the Bronze League with an alcoholic trainer — no matter how brilliant Briggs was.

  When Jackson didn’t answer right away, Briggs raised his eyebrows. It bothered Jackson because the question was rhetorical. He’d trained with Briggs
just three days previously and knew his mentor didn’t expect some great change to come over Scrappy and Asena in the meantime.

  “Neither of them have killed one another. So as long as that doesn’t happen, I guess it’s progress,” Jackson said. His nerves were already at boiling point thinking about reporting for training camp — the reminder about his inability to get two Djinn to work together didn’t do anything to help.

  Briggs snorted. “Don’t worry about it too much, though. It’s a common problem at your level. There’s going to be plenty of tamers here that have just tamed their second Djinn like you. It’s not a simple process to add another Djinn into the mix — remember how hard you worked with just Asena? You can’t bring in a new factor like a third partner and expect there to be no friction. Like I say, if taming was easy, everyone would do it.”

  Jackson didn’t know what to say. Briggs rarely offered praise and never tried to make Jackson feel better when he struggled with some aspect of taming. All he could do was nod. Briggs didn’t push the conversation further, so Jackson returned to staring out the window, fingers absently running over the Djinn ring on each hand.

  On the plus side, there had been some levels gained in the past couple weeks. Asena gained two whole levels and the Magglecaw a whopping four levels. As it stood, both Djinn were about as strong as Jackson could have asked for, given the circumstances. The only downside he noticed was a decrease in his Bond with Asena. Clearly, she wasn’t taking the introduction of the Magglecaw too well.

  Jackson skimmed through her stats.

  GENERAL STATS AND INFO

  Djinn: Lyote

  Level: 16

  Name: Asena

  Element: Fire/Earth

  Species Rarity: Rare

  Master: Jackson Hunt

  HP (Hit Points): 235/272

  EP (Elemental Power): 90/125

  XP (Experience): 452 to Next Level

  DJP (Djinn Points): 2 Unallocated

  Attack: 101