Magic Born

by Caethes Faron

  “You know, it wouldn’t kill you to actually make an effort, have some real friends outside the game.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I never understood the appeal of other friends. Bonding with other people invited disappointment and heartache.

  “And cook?” Thick disbelief coated Grey’s voice. “I didn’t realize toaster pastries qualified as cooking now.”

  I couldn’t allow her to demean my skills. “Hey, you can burn a toaster pastry. If you can burn it, it qualifies as cooking.”

  “You clearly missed your true calling as a home economics major.”

  “Do they even have such a thing?” It sounded slightly horrifying in a Stepford wife kind of way. “Hey, do you mind if I do my daily first? I don’t want to forget.”

  “No, go ahead. I’ll be here killing forest pixies until I’m fifty at this rate.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be quick.” Each day players got a random daily quest to complete. They were usually simple, if annoying, and the rewards definitely exceeded the effort put forth. The game awarded bonuses for maintaining a streak, and I was up to a two-hundred-forty-seven-day streak. I didn’t want to blow it by losing track of the time as GreyMist and I talked.

  I retrieved the quest from my in-game mail and read through the instructions.

  Elemental magic has run amok!

  These elemental magic quests were getting boring. I’d already had this one a few times.

  Call the ice to you as you harness the power of elemental water. Feel the power of the ice coursing through you. Now take this ice spell and show the flame monsters of the Western Ridge who really controls the elements! Collect ten of their cores for your reward.

  A wave of shivers went over my body and goosebumps emerged on my arms. The power of suggestion had me realizing I needed to turn up the heat in the apartment when I finished the quest. I equipped the ice spell in my spell bar and teleported to Western Ridge.

  “Which one’d you get?” GreyMist asked.

  “Fighting off some fire monsters at Western Ridge.”

  “Oh, so it should just take a minute then. In chat, people are saying the drop rate is pretty good today.”

  I hoped so. When I arrived in the area of the flame monsters, a scroll popped up to let me know that I’d reached the zone for my quest. One of the more annoying features of these daily quests was that players couldn’t start blasting right away like normal. The spell locked for a few seconds, probably to force players to read the scroll.

  Feel the elemental power of the ice coursing through you. Cast your frost storm on one of the monsters and see whose power is strongest.

  As I read, cold enveloped me. Nausea churned in my stomach and my head ached. Had that chicken at lunch been bad? If so, did salmonella really hit this fast?

  The instructions were repeated in the strange fictional, universal language of the game. Some fans went so far as to learn the language, but my interest lay more in killing and collecting loot. As my eyes scanned over the foreign print, my teeth chattered with the chill. What was happening? I looked down to my chest where the cold concentrated around the amber medallion. The skin around the amber stone had turned purple from cold. What the hell? The heater must have broken again and jewelry stayed cold, making it feel like the source.

  I read the last line of the scroll while waiting for the spell to unlock. Little bits of frost formed where my hands sat on the mouse and keyboard—actual little ice crystals. This wasn’t an issue with the heater. “Shit.”

  “What is it?” I jumped at the sound of Grey’s voice. “Some rare spawn giving you trouble? Do you really need my help on a daily?”

  Crap, I’d forgotten I was on an open chat line with her.

  ”No, sorry. I just forgot about something. I’ll be right back.” I muted my mic. Be right back? What on earth made me say that? What could I possibly do that would make this better in a few minutes? I had ice coming out of my body, onto my computer. No time to think about potential water damage now. It was too little to do any harm anyway. I took a hard look at the stone resting on my chest since it seemed to be the epicenter of the cold that had taken over my body. It didn’t appear to be anything special or out of the ordinary, just an amber stone connected by a little setting to a gold chain.

  I felt my way around the chain, searching for the clasp. Removing it would test my hypothesis that the necklace caused the cold. My fingers didn’t find a hook, and the chain was too short to draw over my head. Pulling with all my strength against the thin metal only resulted in little chain-link imprints in my palms.

  This wasn’t right. Either this necklace somehow caused my body to form ice or I was hallucinating it. I honestly didn’t know which would be worse. All I did know was that Alex had some serious explaining to do. I fished his number out of the trash and gave it a call.

  The number rang and rang and rang. He must not have set up his voicemail. That was his problem, because I was getting answers if I had to let the phone ring all night.

  “Hello?” The mysterious accent sounded over the line.

  “Yeah, is this Alex? The creep that showed up at my door stalking me?”

  “My name is Alex, yes. I’m assuming this is Kat?”

  “Do you stalk multiple women?” Him acting as if I was calling to chitchat angered me. “You have some explaining to do.”

  He drew in a quick breath. “The necklace. It did something, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, and I can’t get the damn thing off. Since you seem to already know about it, you should have no problem explaining it to me. I don’t know what’s going on or what you’re playing at with this, but I want answers from you.”

  “Good, because I want to give them to you. That’s all I’ve wanted since I found you. I would’ve told you everything last night if you’d only let me in.”

  “You coming into my apartment is out of the question. I don’t know you. We can meet somewhere public.”

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be wise.” He spoke slowly, as if considering his words carefully. “If the necklace is doing things outside of your control, it might be dangerous to go into public.”

  “What do you mean, dangerous?” Panic leapt to the front of my mind.

  “What did it do?”

  “Oh, it only made ice come out of my hands.” Angry sarcasm filled my voice.

  “And you had no control over this?”

  “I just told you ice came out of my hands, and you’re asking me if I had control over it? I don’t even know what to do with that.”

  “My point exactly. If ice is coming out of your hands without your control and you can’t get the necklace off, it might not be the best idea to go into public where you could potentially freeze someone or at the very least draw the kind of attention I don’t think you want.”

  Good point. This was either actually happening or I was having a nervous breakdown—neither of which I wanted witnessed in public. “Fine. How long will it take you to get here?”

  “A few minutes at the most. I’m nearby.”

  “All right. Knock like a normal, civilized human being when you get here this time.”

  After hanging up, the silence of the apartment overwhelmed me. Inviting the man who had thrust this necklace upon me into my home seemed even more foolish when confronted with exactly how alone I was. I grabbed the largest knife from the knife block that sat on my kitchen counter—because having absolutely no experience or training in physical fighting and self-defense, I figured this would be a good idea. At best, this Alex guy might think twice about potentially attacking an insane woman waving a knife around. My fingers curled around the handle so tightly that my knuckles turned white, but I didn’t feel any more prepared for my visitor.

  Chapter 3

  Standing with the knife firmly in hand, I remembered that while I was alone, I did have a friend waiting. I put on my headset and updated GreyMist. “I’m so sorry to do this, but I’m going to have to bail.”

  “Really? You know th
ese pixies only spawn once every forty-five days. I have to collect eighty-two of their wings, and I’m only at twenty-six. What could possibly be more important than helping me collect pixie wings to craft a Font of Healing robe?”

  Only one thing could possibly excuse this in her mind, and it would also provide me with a little bit of a safety net. “I’m going on a blind date with this guy I met online. I completely spaced that it was tonight; I was so caught up with the interview and with helping you. I’m really sorry.”

  “A date?” The glee in her voice lightened my mood a little. “No need to apologize. Real life always trumps in-game. Just tell me you’re being safe.”

  Telling her about my mad knife-wielding skills was probably not what she meant. “Well, you are the only person that knows about it, so I’ll check in with you when I’m done. It’s really not a big deal. We’re just grabbing coffee, no potential for anything else, strictly getting to know each other.”

  “Okay, well I’m in for an all-nighter with these pixies, so I expect to hear from you before I log off.”

  “I will, I promise.” A light, restrained knock sounded. “That’s him at the door. Gotta run.”

  “Talk to you later. Have fun.”

  Halfway to the door I had to backtrack to pick up the knife from my computer desk. I opened the door a crack, keeping the knife visible in front of me.

  His eyebrows rose at the sight of the knife. “Whoa, I’m just here to talk. You invited me, remember?”

  I stood back and opened the door wider. “Come in.” My hand eventually moved to secure the deadbolt, but I decided against it in case I needed to make a quick escape.

  There he stood, just inside the front door of my apartment, me pointing a knife at him and looking crazy wearing bright green plaid pajama pants with the fancy dark purple blouse I’d worn to the interview and a possessed necklace around my neck. I don’t know what I expected him to do or say, so I just stood there until his lips started to twitch into a grin.

  “What’s so funny?” I thrust the knife in his direction a couple of times as if to emphasize the seriousness of the threat I posed to him.

  “You called me because you learned that you can make ice shoot out of your hands, and it’s a knife you choose to defend yourself with? A weapon that you clearly don’t know how to wield correctly.”

  “I can wield it just fine, thank you.” Pointy end goes in, twist, repeat. Nothing to it.

  Before I even knew what happened, he had my wrist in one hand and the knife in the other. Apparently, there was a little more to knife skills than I thought.

  “I’m going to go put this away, because you’re far more likely to hurt yourself with it than me.” He turned and slid the knife into its obvious spot in my largely unused knife block. “Now, with that taken care of, let’s sit down and talk. You called me, remember? I don’t mean you any harm. Trust me, this is not my idea of fun.”

  Alex moved from the kitchen into the living room. I only had two seating options: a chair and a sofa, both made of the same blue material and identical to most of the other furniture in this apartment complex. Years ago someone must have made a killing selling all the landlords in the area on buying the cheap furniture in bulk. A TV stand and coffee table made out of particle board completed my living room decor.

  Alex chose the chair, leaving me with the sofa. If he wanted to hurt me, he could have several times by now. The only person with answers was him, so I crossed my legs up under me on the sofa and gave him my full attention, although I had no idea what he could possibly say that would make sense of what had happened.

  “How much do you know about Meglana, your real mom?”

  The uncertainty in his disturbing dark yellow eyes gave the distinct impression he was stalling, trying to figure out how to tell me something difficult. “First of all, she’s not my real mom. My real mom died in a plane crash with my dad. I just want to get that straight right now.” He nodded to show he had heard, but he waited for the answer to his question. “I know next to nothing. That’s the first time I’ve even heard her name.” Having her name so casually given to me by a stranger left me with a strange hollow feeling, like the name should mean more to me than it did. “Sometimes I think I have a memory of her from when I was really young, but for all I know it’s just my imagination. To be honest, I haven’t ever really given her much thought other than trying to find her a couple of times out of curiosity. As far as I’m concerned, though, she gave up any rights to my thoughts when she abandoned me.”

  “Wow, so you really don’t know anything.” He rubbed his palms on his black jeans, which did not inspire much confidence. “I guess that makes sense, especially since she gave you up for your protection. I suppose it would defeat the purpose if you had much information about her.”

  “What do you mean, for my protection?” My parents had always insisted they didn’t know anything about why I had been given up for adoption, so I had never heard anything about it.

  “I didn’t know your mother particularly well, at least not as well as my father did. He died trying to protect her. She put you up for adoption to protect you from the same people who ended up killing her. Or at least that’s my understanding.”

  “So she was murdered?”

  “Yes, a few weeks ago.”

  “Why? And why tell me now? I never knew this woman.” Despite her status as a stranger in my life, an odd sense of finality accompanied the declaration of her death, a sadness at knowing she would forever remain a stranger.

  “Right before he died, my father made me swear to deliver the necklace Meglana left to you. When I said he died protecting her, that wasn’t strictly accurate. He did try to save her, but it was the wounds he sustained making sure I got the necklace that ultimately killed him.”

  “Jewelry? Your father died over a piece of jewelry? My mother thought a necklace was important? We clearly had nothing in common.” What kind of person cared that much about jewelry?

  “It’s not the necklace that’s important, it’s the stone. It was your mother’s, and she left it to you.”

  “So it’s what, a family heirloom? One that causes ice to form?” For someone who was supposed to have all the answers, he sure wasn’t giving me the information I needed. I’d already mourned one mother; I wasn’t doing that again for someone I’d never even known.

  “This is the part where I tell you that what you really need to know about your mother is that she was a mage.”

  My mother had been a gamer? Maybe we did have something in common after all. But that didn’t seem relevant in the moment. Maybe the necklace was some super-advanced prototype, some cool, new tech for a game. I wish I could take it off and look at it. “I don’t understand. Why would someone kill her? She put me up for adoption when I was two years old. If she did protect me, it means she spent the last nineteen years fearing for her life?”

  “Your mother was an extraordinarily powerful mage. I do know she had a lot of enemies and was paranoid someone from Elustria would kill her.”

  Elustria? Must be a foreign game. I couldn’t recall Elustria ever crossing my radar before.

  “I have to say, you are taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”

  I apparently put on a much more confident air than I felt. “None of this makes any sense. So you’re telling me my mom was killed because she’s a powerful mage and someone from the game she was playing killed her?”

  Alex’s forehead crinkled in a confused look, completely changing his appearance. “Game?”

  “Yeah, you said she was a mage.”

  Understanding dawned on his face. “You think that I meant a mage in some sort of game? No, let me try this again. Your mother was from Elustria. It’s a parallel world, a different dimension or realm if you will. She was a mage, which means you are too. She came to Earth to work on something, some studies for her magic, I’m not sure, but someone murdered her.”

  My mind whirled. An actual magical realm? That wa
s insane. What kind of sick joke was this? Yeah, physically assaulting women wasn’t his idea of fun, just coming into their homes and mindfucking them. What a jackass. Here I thought he had some actual information about my birth mother, and all he wanted was to fuck around with my emotions. I rose to my feet, ready to tell him to leave.

  “My father protected her, or at least tried to. We’re from Elustria too, except we’re panther shifters, not mages. Our magic isn’t nearly as strong. We pretty much shift between panther and human form, and that’s the extent of our abilities.”

  Great. A furry. “You’re a panther shifter?”

  “Yes. I spend most of my time in panther form. I’m only in my human form now so I can speak with you.”

  The orange flier from earlier came screaming to the forefront of my mind. He had to have known about the panther sightings, trying to make a plausible story, as if that little tidbit would make me believe him. “You’re expecting me to buy that you can shift into the form of a panther, my mother was a magical mage-person from a fantasy realm who was murdered for her magic, and you magically found me to deliver a necklace?” The incredulity in my voice should have been enough to send him packing.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  “You expect me to believe this because a necklace made me a little cold?”

  “A little cold? You said ice formed.”

  Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. It could all have been my imagination. I got like that sometimes in-game, my imagination running wild with me; it was part of the fun. “This is ridiculous. I don’t know what kind of kicks you get out of lying to a girl about her birth mom, but I really think you should leave now.” I pointed to the door, giving him space to squeeze between me and the coffee table.

  “You think I’m lying to you?”