The Conjuring of Zoth-Avarex: The Self-Proclaimed Greatest Dragon in the Multiverse

by K. R. R. Lockhaven

  Harris slapped the test down onto the table.

  “Okay, begin.”

  Question 1

  What will happen to an employee who lets slip the secrets of magic concealed at the Site?

  A) Verbal warning.

  B) Written warning.

  C) Employee will have his or her soul sucked out by a soul-sucking demon, memory wiped by an Altered Memory Technician, and be placed at a bus stop in New Jersey.

  D) Nothing.

  That one was easy. Harris hadn’t been able to sleep for days after voluntarily taking on that curse. He wouldn’t have done it, but the allure of working with actual magic was too much for him to let go.

  Question 2

  Jack is your coworker. Jack asks you to imbue his _______ with magic without a permit. “Just for a little fun.” He promises to bring it back on Monday to be un-imbued. No harm will likely come from its use.

  A) Ignore his question.

  B) Imbue his ________ without a permit.

  C) Report Jack to Magical Security and notify your manager.

  D) Tell Jack that imbuing can be dangerous without the proper work packages and permits. Leave him with a thorough lesson in safe practices.

  Question 3

  At your clearance level, you know the true name of the wind. A blizzard covers your driveway with snow and you need to clear it off. It is okay to call the wind’s name to accomplish your task.

  A) True

  B) False

  Question 4

  A foreign national approaches you during a pickleball game offsite. Conversationally, he asks about your job, pressing for any clues you can give him about security. Do you:

  A) Tell him what he wants to know. It’s harmless and he seems nice.

  B) Don’t tell him.

  C) Immediately send a raven to the Security Tower.

  D) Take matters into your own hands. Make it look as if he had a heart attack during the game.

  Harris, amused and excited at first, slowly began to feel as if the soul-sucking demon was presently doing its thing. The questions rolled by, varying little in what they were asking for. The go-to answer seemed to be to report any and everything to your manager.

  He hoped he was going to like his manager.

  Harris snuck a peek at Ana. Her dimple was on display as she smiled to herself and gently shook her head while plowing through the questions. Harris put his head back down and got back to work.

  Question 79

  You come across an ominous prophecy foretelling the doom of the Site management team. What should your next action be?

  A Nothing. Prophecies are vague and don’t always come true in the way you think they will.

  B) Nothing. You’re not in the Prophecy Department and you aren’t qualified to assess its validity.

  C) Immediately report the prophecy to your manager.

  D) Random incorrect answer here (Don’t forgot to fill this in later!)

  Prophecies? Harris realized there was so much he didn’t know about the different kinds of magic at the Site. He started to get excited again, deciding to ignore the mind-numbing, manager-centric answers, and focus on learning about real magic from the questions.

  He learned that there was a Realm Travel Department, where people could actually go to other magical realms. He learned that some people had the ability to read minds. He learned an unsettling amount about the Curse and secrecy.

  Question 207

  What is the correct way to deal with an accidentally summoned Kappa?

  A) Bow to it, tricking it into bowing back and spilling its head-bowl water.

  B) Set a trap. Bend over and show your bare ass to it. Then, when it comes to steal your soul through your anus, spring the trap on it.

  C) Release flatulence in the Kappa’s face. Then notify your manager.

  D) All of the above.

  Harris wondered how often that situation came up. He chuckled to himself and kept working.

  After an unknown interval of time, which felt like a full day, Harris finally turned to the last page of the test.

  Question 296

  You’ve discovered the Philosopher’s Stone in your experiments. You:

  A) Turn all the lead you can get your hands on into gold and hoard it like a dragon.

  B) Concoct the Elixir of Life and live an eternal, selfish life.

  C) Immediately report your discovery to your manager, and be rewarded for your honesty.

  D) Post your discovery of the Magnum Opus on Wikipedia.

  Question 297

  You see a will-o’-the-wisp off in the distance.

  A) Stare, transfixed, at the alluring blue flame. Is it. . . calling? Decide to get up and follow its. . .inherent. . .flickering. . .azure. . . goodness. . .

  B)

  C)

  D)

  Harris flipped his packet over, but that was the last question. Almost every answer was C, except for the occasional “all-of-the-above,” or “false,” so Harris marked C on the bizarre last question and turned in his test.

  Mr. Turner graded the test, holding a red pen, ready to mark wrong answers. But apparently there weren’t any.

  “Not bad,” he said in a low voice. “Most people at least get that last one wrong. We need to have it replaced, but the Orientation Test Question Committee hasn’t been able to agree on a replacement as of yet. And the original test maker hasn’t been heard from in decades.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “All right, just calm down.” Mr. Turner looked over his clipboard. “So you’re a Conjurer, then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Report to the Conjuring Building, Building 137.”

  “Okay,” Harris said. “Is it near the Conjuring Dome?”

  Mr. Turner seemed thoroughly amused by such a stupid question. “No. It’s clear across the Site from that.”

  “So, um, is it between Buildings 136 and 138?”

  Mr. Turner looked at Harris as though he were the dumbest person in the world. “The Conjuring Dome is Building 138, and Building 136 is over by 204-A.” He chuckled derisively while shaking his head.

  Harris wanted to ask how he was supposed to know that already, but he nodded and walked away instead. As he left, he saw Ana bringing her test up to be graded. He hoped he’d run into her again some time.

  The Conjuring Department

  After finally tracking down Building 137 with Xop’s help, Harris gulped and headed for the front door. Xop flew just behind him.

  “You can’t come in with me,” Harris told the imp.

  “I’ll stay with you until you welease me. I don’t want to wait in the car again.”

  “Well, I don’t have time to figure that out right now. Could you go perch in that tree over there until after work?”

  “I could do that,” Xop said, looking adorably saddened by the idea.

  As Harris turned he noticed a sign on the door. It read:

  As an employee of the Site, you have a responsibility to cooperate with all Magical Security investigations and must report any knowledge of fraud, abuse, or mismanagement of Site funds or resources. Per Site Order 187.7 the administration of truth serum is allowed on all suspected instances of wrongdoing. Anonymous reporting is available by contacting Magical Security at 555-0000 or by sending an anonymous raven to the Security Tower.

  He entered the building, his thoughts a jumbled mess. He wanted to make a good first impression, but felt that he was already well on his way to messing that up. He would have to push Xop out of his mind until later that evening.

  “Hello,” a woman said when he came in, startling him. “You must be Harris.” The woman was an inch or two taller than Harris. She had dark black skin and dark brown eyes that exuded both confidence and strength. She wore a light gr
ay pant suit and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Please, call me Marian. I’m Marian Campbell, your manager.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Harris extended a hand. “I’m Harris. Er, you already know that.”

  “You can relax around here, Harris. You’ll find I’m pretty laid back. I value each of my employees and treat you all with the respect you deserve, although it might be a bit difficult to take you seriously with a Pokémon on your shoulder.”

  Harris’s head shot left to find Xop floating cross-legged with a smile just over his shoulder.

  “I—”

  “Don’t worry. We’ve all had an unauthorized conjuration at some point. But as your manager, I do have to say that there will be no more of those, okay?”

  “Of course. Sorry.”

  “Good.” Marian’s smile was genuine. “How did your orientation go?”

  “Good.” The word came out like more of a question than an answer.

  “Oh, I know, it’s pretty brutal. A lot of das Site über alles stuff. I’m glad you made it through.”

  Harris had no idea what she had just said. In an attempt to change the subject and not look stupid, he held up his wand.

  “I wanted to say, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” she said. “Now if you’ll just wait here a minute, I see the other two new hires coming. Let me greet them and then I’ll give you guys the tour.”

  “Okay.”

  Silvia Flores and Patrick Nash walked in together, both looking damn-near carefree. They both were laughing, probably at something one of them had said before the door opened.

  After introductions were made, Marian led the three new employees from the small foyer into a typical office area with fluorescent lighting and lined with cubicles.

  Posters with various sayings plastered the walls. One said, “Get Your TPS Reports Done as Soon as Possible!” Another said, “SAFETY FIRST! Unless It Costs Too Much.” But the one that made Harris’s eyebrow rise said, “Absolutely No Conjuring of Sparkly Vampires.”

  “You might want to have your little buddy stay here for a minute,” Marian told Harris. “My manager is much more of a stickler for the rules than I am.”

  After some convincing, Xop agreed to hover near the bathroom until Harris returned. Marian then took them to a corner office where she rapped on the frame of an open door.

  “Hey, Bill,” she said. “I’ve got our new Conjurers here.”

  “Oh. . . okay. . . come in, I guess.”

  “This is the Project Manager for our department, Bill Gulley. Bill, this is Silvia, Patrick, and Harris.”

  The Project Manager was a chubby-cheeked man who couldn’t have been much more than forty years old. His brown hair, in a bowl cut, had just a touch of gray. He wore a white button-up shirt buttoned to the top with a fancy-looking pin that read Conjuring Project Manager. His office was a disaster. Piles of papers and files covered every square inch of his desk and shelves. An inflatable purple crocodile was stashed in the corner and acted as a makeshift coat rack.

  Mr. Gulley was nice enough, but obviously preoccupied with his work and wanted everyone gone from his office as soon as he could make one point.

  “As you may or may not know, we have a big project happening tomorrow,” he said. “This project is thirty-seven years in the making and is the culmination of my life’s work. You were all brought on as last-minute additions to help fortify our binding power. The one thing I want you to know is that everything will go according to plan. You have nothing to worry about, rest assured. Tomorrow. . . we will make history.” Then he bent over a stack of papers, effectively dismissing them by acting as though they’d already left.

  Marian shuffled them out of the office and they made their way back through a labyrinth of cubicles to the back of the building. In the back corner, one of the cubicles, much bigger than the others, was completely dark inside. Harris squinted and studied the top of the strange cubicle. It seemed as if it had been filled up with palpable darkness. Adding to the veracity of this idea was that the dark spilled over the cubicle walls at times, like it was water in an overflowing tub. The spilled darkness acted like water at first, but soon dissipated like steam.

  “Eddie has been here longer than all of us,” Marian said to them in a low voice. “I’m his boss, but I can admit that he has forgotten more about this Site than I’ll ever know. I let him get away with his minor rule-breaking because he’s earned it. But I don’t want any of you to get the idea that I’m soft, because I’m not. I expect you to do your job and follow the rules.”

  When the three of them nodded assent, Marian called, “Eddie!”

  A snap from inside the darkness.

  Light began to fill the cubicle from the bottom up. It revealed a man in his sixties, rubbing his eyes and leaning back in his office chair. “Bowie’s bulging package!” he said to Marian. “You startled me.” He shook his head. “What’s up?”

  His voice was both gravelly and high-pitched. His blotchy white face shone with pure mischievousness under a white mop of mad-scientist’s hair. An overgrown mustache grew unkempt over a smirk. He wore a well-worn t-shirt that read Pinball Wizard and had a screen-printed wizard standing menacingly over a pinball machine, basketball shorts, and mismatched socks pulled up to his mid-ankles. His right arm was almost completely covered in a burn scar.

  “I wanted to introduce you to our new Conjurers.”

  “Fresh meat for the grinder, eh? What’s up, guys?”

  Before any of them had a chance to respond he continued talking again. He spoke fast, making it hard to understand him.

  “Whatcha got there?” he said to Harris. “Is that. . . Xop? Hey! Come here, little buddy.”

  Xop dove down and landed on Eddie’s lap with his belly in the air. Eddie began to rub it, eliciting a loud purring noise from the imp.

  “What’d ya do, conjure him without authorization?”

  Harris paused for a moment, hoping the truth was the right path here. “Yeah. I helped a firefighter pull a prank on someone down at the fire station, but now I—”

  “Jake, huh?”

  “How did you know?”

  “That little shit—well big shit—is always pulling something.”

  Eddie rubbed Xop’s head before tossing him back up to his hovering position. “An unauthorized conjuring to help Jake with a prank on your first day.” He shook his head.

  “I wish I could have been there to tell him not to do it,” Patrick said, in what Harris took as a nice gesture.

  Eddie did not take it this way.

  “What are you, some kinda ass-kisser?”

  “No, I was—”

  “You’re a real killjoy aren’t you? I’m gonna call you Killjoy now. Killjoy. . . . Anyway I was gonna tell Harris here that I may have just found at this late hour someone worthy of my locker.” He studied Harris’s face. “I’m out of here any day now. I’m only waiting on my retirement papers to go through and I will vanish like someone conjured me from the beach. I’ve been waiting to find someone to pass the contents of my locker to. Maybe you could be the one. . .”

  “Just don’t teach him to cross-craft. Please.” Marian looked as serious as Harris had yet seen her. “And take it easy on Pat—”

  “On Killjoy? Okay, I’ll take it easy on Killjoy.” He shot her a grin rich with mutual respect but tinged with chaos.

  “I’m sorry,” Eddie said to Silvia. “I’ve been a typical male asshole. What’s your name?”

  “Silvia.”

  “What a great name. Nice to meet you.” He switched between spite and charm with ease. “You know, I’ve seen hundreds of bright-eyed bushy-tailed new employees come in here and be ground down by the gears of bureaucracy. I’ve become very apathetic to it al
l. But I like you two. Killjoy, not so much. But there’s something about you two. You have potential.”

  Two men in blue coveralls approached Marian, one of them holding a clipboard. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “We’re here to switch you over from heat to air conditioning.”

  “It’s about time,” Eddie said. “I was about to switch—”

  “Eddie.” Marian gave him a stern look before turning to the maintenance man. “Okay, good timing. It’s starting to get a little warm in here.”

  “I just need you to sign here. Then we’ll go back, have lunch, get our tools, and come back here to take a look at it.”

  “Or you could take a look at it now, since you’re here.” Eddie’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You could have brought your tools—”

  “Eddie.” Marian raised her eyebrows at him.

  “Okay.” He resembled a dog that had been caught chewing a slipper.

  “Just doing our job. You know what it’s like around here.”

  Eddie nodded, resignedly.

  “Wait,” the other, younger, maintenance guy said, looking amazed. “You’re Eddie Wilson, right? I didn’t know you still worked here.”

  “I wouldn’t say I worked here.”

  “I wouldn’t either,” Marian chimed in.

  “But I am still out here. Just waiting for my retirement papers to come through.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Cut the sir shit, but thanks.” He turned to Marian and the three newbies. “See. This is the kind of treatment I deserve. This kid really has his shit together.”

  Without warning, Eddie’s head slumped forward and he began to snore.

  Marian took the work package and signed it. “That happens sometimes,” she said with shrug.

  The men reluctantly left, the younger one keeping an eye on Eddie until they were out the door.

  Harris stood dumbfounded.

  Xop flew in front of Eddie’s slumped-over form, reared back a tiny cute paw, and slapped him across the face, making a much bigger noise than Harris expected.

  “You all could learn a lot from him—.” Eddie continued speaking as if he hadn’t just passed out. “Oh, they left. Thanks Xoppy. Just like old times, huh?” Eddie’s pace was manic.