The changes in adults were slower, more subtle. In older people, fat disappeared, replaced by lean muscle. Hair regrew and changed color. Old age was replaced by youth and vigor, but the person who remained looked nothing like a younger version of themselves.
These Changlings, as they came to be called, were shunned by society. Before technology failed, they were singled out on television shows and on the internet. Stories were written, memes created. It was, for a short period of time, all that people could talk about.
The youngest Changlings were taken into custody by the state for their own protection; and for experimentation. Older Changlings, the wisest ones, went into hiding. And then suddenly civilization was no more and the only survivors were these new, altered humans.
Some of them discovered that they could control forces that had once been spoken of only in myths and tales. Those who mastered these powers rose up to strike back at the monsters who had destroyed their race and brought them to the brink of extinction, and to make their own mark on this New Earth.
And thus began a new age: the age of magic.
Chapter 1
Ripples of hot air rose from the surface of the desert sand at high noon. Half buried in the loose, searing earth, surrounded by a circle of broken stones, were five ovoids that absorbed the intense heat. They shone like spheres forged of metal and buffed to a high gloss.
The sky was empty of clouds, a pale anemic blue, and the air was still. It was one of the hottest places on Earth.
A small humanoid figure, translucent and no more than a dozen inches tall, hovered in the quiet air several paces away from the nest. He stared in wide-eyed wonder at the handful of eggs.
“How could this have happened?” he whispered into the silence. “How? The evil dragons are all gone; there are none left to lay eggs and perpetuate their hideous species.”
The air elemental inched closer, continuing to mutter to himself as he tried to understand what he was seeing.
“The argent dragon is male and the last of the Lawful dragons; he could have had nothing to do with this.”
He spun suddenly in a circle, unnerved by what he was seeing and by a sudden crawling fear that something was watching him.
But there was nothing; not even a carrion bird was gliding high above the crushing heat of the desert.
“And the mad queen is on another continent entirely,” he murmured, still cautiously approaching the group of spheres an inch at a time. “This could not be her doing. What is happening here?”
He finally got as close to the nest as he dared and examined the eggs from no more that six feet away.
“But they must be dragon eggs; not even the drakes or wyverns lay eggs this large; by the Four Winds, they must be three feet in circumference, at least.”
The elemental backed away abruptly; had one of the ovoids moved?
“No, just my imagination,” he reassured himself. “But this must be reported. I must tell the wizard what I've seen. He will know what to do.”
Feeling somewhat reassured, the small figure turned his back on the nest and began floating away, still having a conversation with himself.
“Perhaps he will have me lead him back here? Oh, that would be exciting! The greatest spell-caster on the planet bringing a nobody like me on an adventure? Why, no one would believe me back home.”
The air elemental could not be blamed, perhaps, for missing the subtle rumble that made grains of sand begin to roll and shift below his floating form. He was excited, after all. But if he had just been paying more attention, maybe everything that happened after that day might have been averted.
He, of course, would never know. From underneath the sands came an earth-shattering roar and the ground exploded beneath the air elemental. He had time for a single shriek of terror before massive jaws snapped shut and his tiny life was extinguished.
He never even got the chance to see what had killed him.
A moment later, the desert was still and peaceful once more. The huge eggs were the only things moving as they began to shake and quiver. Perhaps they would hatch soon, perhaps not, but what grew within their tough shells would not be known for a very long time; the only witness to their existence was dead.
Sometimes fate turns on the smallest of actions. And sometimes the smallest of actions can change the world.
The wizard covered his eyes with one hand and groaned.
“What is it, master?”
“Kronk, I thought we agreed on three? Three cows was all that we needed, right? And if they had calves, okay, that was fine.”
“But master...”
“Three, Kronk. Not four, not five. Three.”
Simon O'Toole stood at the edge of a meadow in the deep woods, many miles to the west of his tower, and watched as the little earthen and his five brethren herded cattle into the open. There were ten of them, along with two calves.
“But ten? Seriously?”
The little guy had trotted ahead of his cohorts to speak with the wizard and now looked up at him pleadingly, his small fiery red eyes wide with concern.
“But master, they were in a herd together. We could not separate them. It would be like breaking up a family.”
“Kronk...”
“Did you want me to take a calf away from its mother, master? Or rip a female away from her child?”
“No, of course not, but...”
“Just look into their big soulful brown eyes, master, and tell me that we should break them apart, and I will do it.”
Simon stared at the cattle milling about in the center of the meadow, kept in a tight knot by the surrounding earth elementals and he let out a long, slow sigh.
He's got you, he thought ruefully. He played you perfectly and now he's got you.
Finally he looked down at that yearning little face and nodded reluctantly.
“Fine,” he said in surrender. “I have no idea what we're supposed to do with ten cows and two babies, but fine. We'll take them home with us.”
“Woo-hoo!” Kronk bellowed loudly. His cry spooked the cattle and they began mooing mournfully.
”Thank you, master. Thank you! You will not regret it. I will care for them very well. And you will get fresh milk and cream and cheese. And, when you need it, meat as well.”
The little guy hesitated.
“From the oldest. When she's about to die anyway. Or dies of natural causes.”
“Yeah, yeah, Kronk. I get it. Okay, can you herd them closer together and raise a temporary wall around them? I can't Gate the whole group unless they are controlled and in contact with each other.”
“Of course, master. It will only take a few minutes.”
The little guy raced off into the meadow while Simon stood in the shadows of the trees and waited. It was a warm day, in what he guessed was early May, and the sun was hot.
“I can't believe you actually just agreed to bring them all back with us,” someone said in an amused tone from behind the wizard.
He continued to watch the earthen herd the cattle with a small smile on his face.
“I blame you, you know,” Simon replied. “If you hadn't found such a large group of cattle, Kronk wouldn't have felt the need to guilt me into taking all of them home. As I recall, I only asked you to find me a couple of cows, not ten.”
A small semi-transparent figure floated into his view, hovering about six feet above the ground. He was human-shaped, with fine features and a well-formed, muscular body and he was staring at the wizard with a wide grin.
“Hey, I'm not responsible here,” Aeris protested. “You're the man of the house, not me. You have to learn to put your foot down once in a while. You certainly seem to have no problem doing it with me.”
“The difference is that Kronk never asks for anything, and he works constantly. So when he does make a request, it's hard to say no.”
“Hang on a minute,” the air elemental said with a puzzled frown. “Does that mean you think that I ask for too much and work too
little?”
“Did I say that? Stop making everything about you, Aeris.”
Simon turned his head to look directly at the floating figure.
“By the way, what's the word on the scouts? I've sent out groups of nine twice now since we defeated the necromancers, just to keep an eye on the world as a whole, but so far no surprises. Think we'll get any this time?”
“Possibly,” Aeris mused as he watched the cows milling about. “That group of humans who were living in that cave came as a surprise, I'd say, as were the ones in that small village in the Caribbean. So was that lone witch in Oregon. Luckily for him, she didn't blast Orriss apart when he surprised her. Honestly, I wonder where his brains are sometimes.”
“Yeah, me too. He means well though. They're scheduled to return sometime this week, so maybe we're in for a treat.”
“Hopefully.”
Transporting the cattle back to his tower was easy enough for Simon, once they had all been rounded up properly. His powers had grown with constant use and he could move a dozen cattle now if he had to.
He Gated directly to the pasture behind his tower, let the cows loose and then got out of their way to allow them to adjust to their new home.
Similar to the first cows that he had caught and domesticated, these new bovines were much different than cattle had been before they Changed into something new. Not only were they huge, easily twice the size of cows that had once lived on the old Earth, but they were more intelligent.
This was evident as the cattle wandered around the pasture and calmly checked out their new home, once they had recovered from the stress of teleportation. They examined the fence and the gate curiously, seemed to accept their situation and began grazing.
“They appear to be pleased, master,” Kronk said as he, Simon and Aeris watched the herd.
They were observing from the back gate that led inside the protective wall surrounding the wizard's tower. The pasture stretched out down a gentle slope to a small lake behind the wall and off to the east and west. A distant fence kept the cows from straying, but they had an enormous piece of land to roam in, rich with luscious green grass and safe from predators; Kronk and his fellow earthen saw to that.
“I hope so,” Simon replied a bit wearily.
It might have been simple to Gate a dozen cattle back home, but it was still exhausting and he needed some rest. However, the pleasant scene of the cows roaming the pasture while the two calves ran and played with each other was worth putting off a nap for a short time.
“You need to eat, my dear wizard,” Aeris told him firmly. “You're turned a delightful shade of gray. Very fetching against the dark blue robe that you are wearing today, I'm sure, but a bit worrisome nonetheless.”
“I'm fine, Aeris. Stop being so fussy.”
“Fine. Collapse then. Spend weeks in bed recovering from your own foolishness while the world crumbles around you. Don't mind the rest of us who depend upon you to protect us from the monsters out there.”
Simon turned to stare at the air elemental.
“You done?” he asked pointedly.
“Almost,” Aeris replied with a wide grin. “Seriously though, get inside, sit down and eat. Kronk will watch over our new additions to make sure that they settle in with no problems.”
“Yes I will, master. Please do get off your feet. You mustn't overexert yourself.”
Mother hens, the both of them, the wizard thought with a mixture of fondness and irritation.
“Fine then, I'll do that. Kronk, call me if you need anything. And come back in once you're sure that the cows aren't going to jump the fence and run off.”
“I will, master.”
“Good. Come on, Aeris. Let's head inside.”
Several days after his foray to round up the cattle, Simon was puttering in the garden behind the tower. He was picking out the stones that somehow mysteriously seemed to reappear every spring. Kronk had tried to dissuade him from performing the manual labor, but the wizard actually enjoyed working with his hands.
“It isn't all spells and magical research, you know,” he'd told the little guy. “If I don't do any physical work, I'm going to get fat and lazy.”
Kronk had laughed at that. Simon was still as skinny as a rail and would never be lazy; he simply had too much nervous energy to just sit around. Besides, sitting around was boring.
“If you insist on helping, master, then I thank you. But call me if you need any assistance.”
Well that guarantees that I won't be calling him, Simon thought with a grunt as he dug.
He was forcing out a particularly stubborn rock and managed to split a nail in the process.
“Damn it!”
“Having fun rummaging in the dirt?” a sardonic voice asked.
“Now is not the time, Aeris,” the wizard growled. “If you have any common sense at all, now is definitely not the time.”
“If you say so. I'll just let the scouts who returned a few minutes ago hang around in your study for the next several hours, shall I?”
Simon pushed himself to his feet and brushed damp soil off of his knees. As usual when gardening, he only wore a simple pair of old shorts.
“They're back?”
“They are, yes. All brimming with news, I'm sure.”
Then Aeris hesitated, looking perplexed.
“All but one, actually. Corriss hasn't returned with the others.”
Simon walked out of the garden and picked up a towel and a bar of soap that he'd left nearby; he always washed up in the lake after working in the dirt.
“Corriss? Oh right, the one whose name made me laugh.”
“That's him. But is it really funny to you that his name and the word for a group of singers sounds the same?”
The wizard walked across the yard and out the back gate, Aeris floating along beside him.
“It wasn't just that, although that did tickle my funny bone. It's also that his name rhymes with Orriss' name. Yes, I know that they're related in some weird, elemental way that I wouldn't understand, even if you tried to explain it to me yet again. But Orriss and Corriss? Really?”
Aeris just stared at him, obviously holding back some biting comment.
“Anyway, do me a favor and tell the scouts that I'll be there in a few minutes, would you? I'll get washed up and be in shortly.”
“Will do. And I'll leave a clean robe at the front door: if some of my people see a wizard wearing those,” Aeris looked disdainfully at Simon's over-sized brown shorts, “they'll implode.”
The wizard laughed as he reached the lake.
“Might be worth keeping them on just to see that.”
He removed the offending shorts and waded out into the water.
“Ten minutes,” he called back to Aeris.
“Got it.”
“Did you tell them that there are other humans still alive?” Simon asked.
He was sitting in his study an hour after his swim, sipping some chamomile tea and listening to the reports of the eight air elementals that he had sent out to scout the world several months earlier. Corriss was still missing.
“Yes, my lord,” one of them, a female named Wistia, said. “After they had stopped trying to shoot me full of arrows. Naturally they had never seen an elemental before.”
“Naturally,” the wizard said with an understanding smile. “And they're brothers?”
“So they said. Since their Change, they look nothing alike though.”
Simon was taking notes as he always did during these sessions and wrote down 'Chao and Lei' and then added 'Beijing'.
“How so?”
“Well, my lord, Chao is small, no taller than perhaps five feet, while his brother Lei towers over him. The smaller brother is a magic-user while his sibling is definitely a fighting man.”
“A magic-user?”
Simon leaned forward, intrigued.
“Any idea what kinds of powers he has?”
Wistia smiled. She was floating an inch above
the top of the desk while her fellows waited to the side in a group, listening quietly.
“Oh yes. They told me, actually. Chao is a summoner.”
“No!” Aeris said in disbelief. “Really? That's amazing. They were always so rare back in the old days.”
He was hovering next to Simon's right shoulder and the wizard turned to look at him.
“Why is it amazing? And what is a summoner anyway?”
“A summoner, my dear wizard, is exactly what the name implies. They have also been referred to as conjurers, I believe. They can summon mystical beings and creatures to aid them in battle. You have developed into a rather decent elementalist, so you should be able to relate.”
“What kinds of mystical creatures?”
“Oh, the list is practically endless; pixies, wyverns, phoenixes, um...”
“Fire snakes,” one of the other elementals added helpfully.
“Sprites and faeries,” another said.
“Basilisks, chimeras...”
Simon held up his hands to stem the tide.”
“Thanks, folks. I get it. Wow, that is an amazing gift.”
Aeris sniffed a bit disdainfully.
“Well, yes and no. While a summoner can call for help from the ether, he cannot use traditional spells. No fireballs or magic missiles, or anything else for that matter. He is totally dependent upon whatever sorts of creatures he conjures. It's rather limiting, in my opinion.”
“Huh. That's a good point.”
Simon looked at the patiently waiting Wistia.
“And his brother?”
She smiled with pleasure.
“I do believe that we have discovered another paladin, my lord. They are so rare that I could scarcely believe it when I met him.”
“Whoa. Seriously? Liliana will be intrigued to hear that. What makes you think so?”
“The young man wears enchanted armor; armor that gleams like silver but is harder than steel. He told me that he had a dream one night and spoke to a faceless being who directed him to where this suit of armor was hidden. And when he woke the next day and followed those instructions, he did indeed find the armor. And an amazing looking sword too. Quite impressive.”
Tales from the New Earth: Volume Two Page 120