by Eric Ugland
Something scurried away, faster than I could see it. I had no idea what it was. Immediately my hand went to my belt, and I pulled out Krakentooth. I waited, ready to attack, but nothing happened.
I saw an elevated area about a hundred feet distant, and a gentle dancing orange glow made me think there was a fire going up there.
I kept the dagger at my side, and walked, calmly, toward the stairs. My footsteps were quiet on the floor, and I hoped I would see someone before they noticed me.
No such luck.
“It is interesting that one who thinks of themself as a mage would pull a dagger when danger is perceived,” came an old-sounding voice behind me and to the right.
I spun, holding Krakentooth out and—
My hand was empty. I was just holding my hand out like an idiot. And, like an idiot, I stared at my empty hand, very confused.
In front of me, a very old man was examining my dagger. He peered closely at it, holding it so near his eyes I was worried he was going to poke himself. White hair came out of his head at seemingly random angles, and a large nose dominated his face. It was big enough that it made his normal-sized glasses look slightly absurd. A long white mustache drooped over his mouth. He wore blue robes that looked like they might have been made out of denim. No hat, but he had soft fuzzy slippers on his feet.
“Interesting dagger,” he said. His voice was higher-pitched than you’d expect, but it sounded old. “Real kraken tooth.”
He tossed it up and over his shoulder, and it disappeared in between his release and, well, all I know is that it never hit the ground.
“Hey—“ I started.
“You are the one who sought me?” he asked.
“Are you The Fayden?” I asked.
“I am.”
“Then, yes. I, uh, sought you.”
“Here I am.”
“I was wondering if you would be my teacher.”
“Ah,” he said, and he twirled one end of his mustache. “No.”
“No? Are you, can I—“
“Where is the glass of water?”
“The one from the, uh, I used it to put out the flame so I could put the key—“
“Did I not make it clear that you should not spill a drop?”
“I mean, uh, if you want to be technical about it, I didn’t spill a drop. I purposefully poured all of it out exactly where I wanted it to go.”
He frowned.
“I’m not sure it works like that,” he said, turning from me and starting to walk away, his soft slippers making the barest noise as he went.
“I’ve got some skill,” I said, “and some highly unusual spells. I could really use some help.”
“Hrm,” he grunted. “Everyone can use my help.”
“Will you help me?”
“No, I don’t think I will.”
“There’s nothing I can do will change your mind?”
“Begging certainly won’t. You did not complete the test, I see no reason—“
“LIAR!” a voice called out loudly, amplified by the giant, empty hall we were in. “LIAR!”
A beautiful woman, tall with dark hair, stomped down the stairs, her blue gown trailing out behind her.
“You are a liar!” the woman said. “He passed the test and you know it!”
“He poured the water out--“
“He got in here! That is the test. That is the test you designed — that someone who wishes to speak to you must come through that stupid gauntlet of yours, and he came through exactly as you said, and now you don’t want to speak with him? Why? Because you are afraid—“
“Quiet, witch!”
“I’m not a witch, I’m your wife!”
“Yeesh,” I said. “Not wise.”
“See? He knows—“ the wife said.
“Stay out of this,” The Fayden said.
“You know what? If he refuses to teach you,” the wife said, turning her back on her husband, “I will.”
“You cannot teach him magic,” The Fayden said.
“And why not?”
“You do not know as much as I do.”
“That might be the case, it might not be the case. When was the last time you even paid attention to what I know?”
He pulled a fireball out of the air and launched it toward one end of the hall.
She did the same, toward the other.
He froze her fireball.
She froze his feet.
He fell over.
“Not fair,” he said from the ground. Then he shot a blast of power out of his finger that blew apart the ice.
“Was it not you who said all is fair in a wizard’s duel?”
“Are we even dueling?”
“See this,” the wife said to me, getting close enough that I caught a whiff of some delightful flowery perfume. “This is called losing and trying to lie about it.”
“There is nothing to lie about,” The Fayden said in his scratchy old voice. “We are not done.”
A great roar sounded as a massive hand reached through a portal in the floor. Fingers so large I couldn’t really conceive of what I was seeing. I moved backward instinctively.
The wife rolled her eyes. Then she rolled her fingers, chanted something quietly, and then there was something almost like a glitch in my vision, and the arm was gone.
“Wait—“ The Fayden said, “what just happened?”
“So maybe I do know as much as you—“
“Knowing different things is not the same as knowing more.”
“Bah. I moved your portal.”
“Where?”
“Are you worried you will not be able to control what you have summoned? Hrm?”
“I — maybe.”
“Perhaps you should pay more attention to what you summon then, eh?”
“Tell me where, woman!”
“The mountains north and west of here. It will be fine.”
The Fayden barked out a laugh. Then he closed his eyes, turning around a few times. “There you are,” he said. “Not so fast.”
He made a motion, and I heard was a little pop.
“Problem solved,” The Fayden said. “And for the record, were the beast to have been summoned here, as I had planned, it would have been completely under my control.”
“Also, for the record,” his wife said, “you focus too much on big flashy things and not enough on effective dueling.”
She snapped her fingers, and the stones underneath The Fayden turned to liquid.
The Fayden didn’t move, just sort of hovered in the air.
“Overconfident as always, my dear,” he replied.
Then, from above, a torrent of water rushed down, straight into the hole in the floor. It was a tremendous amount of water, enough that I couldn’t see through it, and The Fayden disappeared into the hole with a loud “YUUURP!”
Then the water shut off like someone had turned a tap.
A door opened up in the wall, where there definitely hadn’t been one before, and The Fayden stepped out in a rush of water. But he was remarkably calm about the whole thing. He just stepped through the door like he would into a house, calmly closing it behind him. Then he stood there, dripping.
He inhaled a great breath.
“Might want to get behind me,” his wife murmured to me. I did as I was told.
All the water exploded off The Fayden. Then there was a very sharp crack as it froze into ice in mid air, and then crashed against everything in the room with surprising force.
The Fayden’s wife — Mrs. The Fayden? — put out something of a shield of energy, radiating blue stripes about seven feet long coming out of her wrist and wrapping a little around the two of us.
She dropped her shield, and took a quick look around the hall.
“Honestly? You make such a mess during all of this.”
“Me?” He motioned at all the water.
She just sighed, and gestured politely. Mops sprang up out of the floor and began to clean on their own.
“Bah,” The Fayden said, and pointed at the mops. Intense fire poured out of the ceiling, incinerating the mops and, incidentally, drying up the floor. Of course, that left piles of ash behind.
Mrs. The Fayden blew a kiss, and a great wind flew through the hall sweeping the ashes, and also all the pillows, away. The Fayden leaned into the wind, holding his glasses with one hand.
“You could have left the pillows,” The Fayden said dryly, resetting his glasses on his nose.
“If you are going to just ignore the test results, why must we have that eye-sore in view?” Mrs. The Fayden asked.
“The test is there for a reason—“
“What reason could it be?”
“You know the reason.”
“You refuse to accept that anyone passes it, so why—“
“No one does pass it.”
“He passed it,” she yelled, pointing at me.
“Did not,” The Fayden said quietly, crossing his arms over his tiny chest.
“Oh? And why? The water?”
“It says—“
“You accept he passed the test and you accept him as your pupil, or I am going to go on a little trip—“
“You would never.”
“I would. I am tired of this, Maximus.”
“That is NOT my name!“
She sighed, and shook her head. “I’m tired of this, Maximus,” she repeated, softer, like there was more truth to the statement this time. “You are afraid of new people, which I can understand. I feel that way too. But this is not the answer.”
Mrs. The Fayden walked his way, and they spoke quietly.
I probably could have gotten closer to them, but that didn’t seem particularly wise. The sheer volume of magic used in the last five minutes was stunning. I was willing to bet that was the reason the air felt like it was thrumming.
Something tugged at my leg.
I looked down to see a small creature standing there, holding up Krakentooth. It looked a bit like a miniature dragon, though not like a kobold. Its head was bigger, with a very large lower jaw that took up more of its head than the upper. Small eyes hid under protruding ridges, and, like all dragon type creatures, I suppose, big teeth. Small scales covered it in a shimmering blue-violet hue. Pretty in a way, but also a bit disconcerting because even standing still, it made it look like the creature was in motion. There were small wings on the creature’s back, but they looked too small to be anything but vestigial. My dagger was held in small hands with tiny claws, looking almost like a two-handed sword against the little guy.
“Uh, thanks,” I said, taking the dagger and sliding it into my scabbard.
The creature nodded.
“Snickers!” the old man shouted. “Get away from him. We have no idea know where he has been.”
The creature looked at me, then shrugged. It dropped onto all fours and moseyed its way over toward the stairs.
“I’m not diseased,” I said.
“You have a malodorous funk about you though,” The Fayden said, walking up to me and looking me over. “It offends the senses.”
“Might be from swimming through your fetid well,” I replied, “and then getting cooked in your test.”
“Hrm,” he sniffed, “does smell a bit like roast pork.”
He was a few feet away from me, looking me up and down.
“You fancy yourself a mage?” he asked with just a hint of a sneer.
“Not yet,” I replied. “Do you?”
“Ha. I am a wizard.”
“Not a mancer?”
“A ridiculous term. I hate it.”
“I’ll see what I can do to keep from using it.”
“Should you truly want to be my apprentice, you will kindly jettison that word from your vocabulary.”
“Noted.”
“I did not say you are my apprentice, I—“
“I got it, we’re still in the testing phase. Perhaps an interview?”
“An interview? I suppose that might be one way to—“
The creature, Snickers, tugged at his elbow, interrupting him.
“What is it?” he asked gruffly.
Snickers tugged at his sleeve again.
“I am looking at you, I can see you. What do you need?”
The creature laid down.
“Oh,” The Fayden said, “right. The pillows. I, uh—“
“Do not blame that on me,” Mrs. The Fayden called out from somewhere else.
“She is always listening,” The Fayden, or Maximus, said, almost conspiratorially. He sighed, and did a little thing with his fingers that I couldn’t even begin to follow. A couch seemed to just raise up out of the stone.
I fell back as something knocked into the back of my knees. Suddenly I was sitting down in a chair.
Maximus The Fayden sat down on the couch. His little buddy hopped up next to him, circled twice, then laid down contentedly. I watched as Maximus, likely unconsciously, reached over toward Snickers and scratched the creature’s head.
A tingle rolled over me — Maximus was taking a look at my character sheet.
“You have a rather intriguing selection of spells, Master Hatchett, though I have to wonder at your level.”
“It’s a bit of a mystery to me, as well.”
“Might need to do something about solving that mystery.”
“I agree.”
He leaned forward on the couch, the velvet under him squeaking ever so much. “You want to tell me about your drain spell?”
I sighed. “I was trying to save someone, trying to use my healing spell on him, and it somehow wound up sucking his, uh, abilities and whatnot into me, and he, uh, he—“
“Died?”
I nodded.
“Is this something you’ve used since then? Or just the once?”
“A few times.”
“I can see how something like that might be hard to turn off. To ignore.”
“It’s a bit powerful.”
“I would daresay it is overpowered considering your ninth level status.”
“Maybe.”
He leaned back again, and his hand returned to petting the little dragon guy.
“And the outsider spell?” he asked after a moment of silence.
“A trade.”
“Interesting. I assume someone has given you some basic instruction.”
“Yes.”
“You have very interesting mana channels. Rare to see someone willing to open them up everywhere.”
“I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to do that. So I just, uh, did it.”
He stood up, and walked about twenty feet away before spinning on his heel and coming back towards me. Pacing.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes I think better while moving. Bit old, the blood tends to pool and thicken. Does not get to the head as well.”
“You look great for your age,” I said, thinking a little flattery couldn’t hurt.
“Ha,” he barked, “if only you knew how old I was.”
“You don’t look a day over fifty.”
“He could look however he wants,” Mrs. The Fayden said, slinking down the stairs in her gown, a small tray held in her hands. “So commenting on his looks is rather foolish.”
“She is the same age,” Maximus said, pointing over at his wife.
“She looks a little younger,” I said.
“I love the way I look,” she replied. “I never understand why Maximus thinks it best to look like an old decrepit man.”
“No one expects anything from an old man,” Maximus called out. “I look old so I can blend in.”
“If you ever left this hall, maybe I would understand that. But who else do you ever see but me?”
“Snickers,” Maximus said, pointing at the creature.
The mini-dragon thing picked its head up and looked around before seeing the tray. Its mouth opened and a large tongue flopped out.
I glanced over at the tray and saw four cupcakes, a teapot, and three tea
cups.
“You can have one, Snickers,” Mrs. The Fayden said.
Snickers happily snatched a cupcake and began to eat it. Starting with the frosting, as you do.
“You see,” Fayden said as he paced back and forth, “for the longest time, I could not understand why dragons were such loners. Why they are isolationists to an incredible degree. I thought it was foolish arrogance, belief in their own supremacy over all others. It was my third century alive when I started to understand their motivations Magic does strange things to life. To those of us living. And those of us who are—“
“Is this a dangers of immortality speech?” I interrupted to ask. “Because I’m an elf. I know I’m going to be—“
“Ah, you think you know. You know why elves go off on a suicidal quest when they get into the half-millennium? Because they begin to lose count of the friends they have lost. And the pain that comes when you lose a friend you have had for over a lifetime. Elves are so interesting in that they do not really age, but they are just as easily killed as a human. Imagine what that means: that a creature can have lived a thousand, two thousand years even, and might still just be stabbed one night in a drunken bar brawl. There goes a millennium of experience. I tell you this because my wife is right — I have probably begun to get scared of the world. Of other people. I can control things in here, to an extent, of course. But I have not met anyone new for, well, a long long time.”
He stopped pacing and stood in front of me. I was struck by his height, or lack there of.
“Magic is a binding of chaos,” he said. “Actually, let me dial that back a little. I need to ask you a quick question before we progress.”
“Where am I from?” I guessed.
“Matters little to me, I’m sure it will come out. I take it, however, you’re an Imperial citizen?”
“Does that matter?”
“Only insofar as I was one of the fools who set this Empire up, and—“