Towns and Towers: A New Land

by Shawn Kass

  Glancing around, he found that off to the side of the bed there sat what looked like an old style pirate treasure chest. In games, these types of chests were pretty common and could be found anywhere from inside dungeons to lying on the ground next to a building in town. Typically, chests like this contained loot or gear, and in some special cases, rare magical items, but since this one was inside his rented room, he figured he knew what he would find when he opened it. Stepping over to face the chest, he used his foot to lift the lid and confirmed that the chest was like a hotel safe in the real world. Empty inside, it was there for him to store whatever items, weapons, and junk he didn’t want to carry while he was out.

  Dropping the lid back down, Sam gave one last look around the room and its sparse décor and then walked over and sat on the bed. As soon as his butt touched the mattress, the toll of the day’s activities overwhelmed him, and he immediately felt the irresistible feeling of sleep about to overcome him whether he wanted it or not. The only decision he felt like he was capable of was whether this would be a nap or if he would be out until tomorrow morning. Remembering that Anna said she would be over later and that they were supposed to go out to the pub, Sam told himself he would just take a nap as his head fell back against the pillow.

  To Sam it felt like only a few seconds had passed, but his nap was interrupted nonetheless by a loud banging on his room door. Rolling out of bed, he noticed that not only did his body no longer hurt and that his exhaustion was gone, but he also saw his reflection in the mirror and was surprised to find that not only were his face and hands no longer filthy, but the clothing he wore looked to be clean and whole once again, just as it had when he first arrived in Anozira.

  He had seen things like this in video games, too, but it never really made much of an impact when his character’s clothing only accounted for a handful of pixels. Seeing it first hand and in the flesh, so to speak, made him snort in derision at the absurdity of the game world and the short cuts

  programmers and developers took. It was obvious enough why they wouldn’t show a character changing clothes, but to just magically make them clean by sleeping in them seemed ridiculous.

  When the banging on his door came again, he crossed the floor and opened the door. To his surprise, Anna stood there looking down sheepishly while just beside her stood her mother, Mrs. Emirp, looking angry with her fist still raised. Unsure of why they would both have come to his room, Sam stuttered for a second as he tried to come up with a greeting, and Mrs. Emirp used the opportunity to rudely walk past him and enter the room.

  Looking back at Anna, Sam gave a ‘what’s going on’ look, and she whispered the words, “I’m sorry,” in reply before following her mother inside.

  Closing the door, Sam began to say, “Good to see you again, Mrs. Emirp,” but was cut short halfway through the sentence when she began questioning him angrily.

  “Who are you? Where did you come from? What have you been hiding? My daughter tells me you conjured up a fireball out there more than two feet across and flung it at a creature. There is no way a beginner such as yourself, who has never practiced magic, could have wielded such a spell without experience, never mind controlled it enough to send it at a moving target. You must be a trained mage! What happened? Did you get kicked out of your school and come to Anozira to read my Grimoire, thinking you could take a short cut to success? Tell me the truth or so help me I’ll rain down meteors upon you until there is nothing left.”

  Holding up his hands defensively, Sam said, “Look, everything I told you before is true. I’m not from here, and I’ve never practiced magic. I have no idea how that fireball could have happened, but for my sake as well as your daughter’s, I’m glad it did or else we would both be spider food by now.”

  Shaking her head, the mage said, “A fireball like that is at least a third level spell, and only someone who has put in the required years of study has the experience to turn a simple candle spark into something like that, never mind wield it the way you did.”

  Realizing what she had said, Sam held up a finger and politely corrected her. “It probably does take time for normal people to learn it and practice it, because as you say, it requires experience. The thing is, there is more than one way to get experience. Not everyone has to sit for hours reading over magic books.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Emirp.

  Still mentally putting all the pieces together from what he had done in past video games and comparing it all to what he had done earlier that day, Sam tried to explain it to the NPC mage in a way that would make enough sense that she would understand it enough not to destroy him on the spot and let him go on with his personal mission of getting back home. “For proper mages around here, there is probably a school to attend where you learn your spells and incantations from books and lectures, right?”

  “Yes, I, for one, graduated from the Strawgoh School of Magic and Mages. Whereas you simply cheated and read a couple of spells from my Grimoire.”

  Ignoring the slight which she had implied against his character, Sam said, “Exactly, as you said, there is more than one way to learn a spell here, so don’t you think there’s also more than one way to gain the required experience to evolve that spell?”

  “No,” answered the mage with absolution in her voice. “One must study if they are to learn and grow.”

  Shaking his head, Sam responded, “I disagree. I think that a proper mage is supposed to do exactly as you say, but since I am not a mage, I have other options open to me.”

  Cutting off her mother, Anna asked, “What are you talking about, Sam?”

  “Look, I can’t really explain it all in detail right now, but I think when I used that spell to light the oil back at the cave and killed all of those spiders, I got the experience I needed to force that tiny little spell to grow and evolve into what it’s become.”

  “I don’t know how you’re killing a few spiders makes a difference,” said Anna.

  “No, you probably don’t, but trust me, where I come from, whenever a person in a place like this kills something, they gain experience. Over time they get stronger and more skilled in their arts.”

  Squinting at Sam, Mrs. Emirp said, “I have no idea where you come from, but even if that were true, your spark spell could not hurt more than one or two spiders at best.”

  Nodding, Sam agreed and said, “Under normal circumstances, you’re probably right, but I didn’t just attack them one at a time with the spell. I used the oil to spread that fire all throughout those caves, and by the time it got hot enough, it probably caught on to whatever residual laoc minerals were still present in the walls and spread even further. Ma’am, I didn’t just kill one or two spiders with that spell. I killed them all.”

  Shaking her head, the mage refused his explanation and said “I still don’t see how that would be enough to replace actual studying. It takes years for most wizards to evolve a zero level spell into a first level one, and you went all the way up to a third level in a matter of hours.”

  Trying a different approach, Sam suggested, “All right, well, what about practical experience? Surely you have to believe you get something out of that.”

  Lifting a single eyebrow at him, Mrs. Emirp reminded him, “But you said you only cast it once before it became a fireball. I don’t see how, even with the catalyst acting passively, your spark spell could have grown like that.”

  Pointing up, Sam exclaimed, “Yes, that’s right, I did read that second spell, and you said it would help me evolve my magical abilities. Well, think of its effectiveness. That’s where it counts. Lighting candles all day is nothing, there’s no real experience in it, but destroying an entire cave system and everything in it, that’s different.”

  Jumping in, Anna added, “Not to mention saving your own daughter and Peter.”

  “That’s right, and saving those two. That’s real experience.”

  Stepping away, the mage began to pace the small room as she considere
d his words, and then she stopped when her eyes landed on the bed. Glowering, she spun around to face Sam and asked, “And what about him? How do you explain the fact that you have a creature such as this with you?” pointing to the still sleeping lizard on the pillow.

  “Hey, that was his decision. His and the shop lady’s. You can ask Anna about that. She was there.”

  “It’s true, mother. Sekuri gave it to him.”

  Gesturing towards Tezukayoshi again, Mrs. Emirp exclaimed, “That is not just some animal which can be given away like a common dog! That is a magical creature.”

  Shrugging, Sam said, “I know. It’s a familiar. Madame Esmerelda told me.”

  Fuming with anger, the mage said, “So let me get this straight. You show up out of nowhere with no way of getting home, and you just so happen to get a familiar to pick you? Then, you ‘accidentally’ read one of my Grimoires and give yourself a couple of zero level magic abilities which in a matter of hours you turn into a third level attack spell.”

  Knowing full well that it didn’t make any sense outside of a game world, Sam was still surprised to hear someone else, someone who happened to be part of the game, say it out loud. In reply, he held up his hands and said, “Pretty much.”

  With a tone of dissatisfied derision in her voice, the mage took Sam’s hand and said, “Well then, let’s see if anyone can corroborate this story of yours, shall we?”

  Seeing what was coming, Anna asked, “Mother, where are you taking him?”

  “To Madame Esmerelda’s,” replied Mrs. Emirp. “You both claim that she has the answers, so I wish to hear them from her.”

  Stepping forward to take Sam’s other hand, she asked, “Do you mind if I come along, too, then?”

  With an irritated sigh, her mother gestured for her to take his other hand and to hurry up about it, before she began to wave her free hand about in a complicated series of movements.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” cried Sam. “If we’re going to the psychic’s, I want to bring Tezukayoshi with me. Maybe she can tell me more about him as well.”

  Stopping her arm in mid-swing, the mage looked from Sam to the lizard who was still on the bed pillow, and back again. Her jaw line clenched twice as she decided, but finally she looked at the lizard and said, “You heard him. Come join your human.”

  Lifting one eyelid, Tezukayoshi considered the tall woman who was addressing him, and then after purposefully taking an extra moment just to show that he wasn’t about to follow her orders and that this was entirely his decision to make, he casually picked himself up and walked across the bed. When he reached the edge, he looked up to meet Sam’s eyes and flicked his tail a couple of times as if he was waiting for something.

  Standing there about three feet away, with a woman on each arm, Sam didn’t have a free hand to pick him up with so he simply shrugged and said, “Allons-y,” which was a popular line from a British sci-fi show he enjoyed, meaning ‘let’s go’.

  Apparently the language Sam spoke didn’t matter because Tezukayoshi understood his meaning and leapt from where he was to Sam’s chest. From there, he tilted his head to each side, considering each of the women for a second, and, upon seeing no threat present, turned around and crawled down into his favorite hiding spot, deep in Sam’s pants pocket.

  As the lizard burrowed its way in, Sam felt the need to adjust his stance and try to make some room for him, as if his pocket was somehow smaller than it was the last time the lizard had been in there. Bending a little to the side to try and provide his familiar with more slack in the fabric, Sam said, “I think you may have eaten a few too many of those spiders, pal. Pretty soon you’re not going to fit in there,” but the lizard paid him no attention and just wiggled and squirmed its way in more until only its long tail hung out.

  Glancing to his side, he noticed that the mage looked even more annoyed than she had before, but when he shrugged and said, “Okay, we can go now,” she simply finished the last of the hand gestures from where she paused it at, and the four of them disappeared.

  Chapter 8

  Teleporting in video games and movies always looks like a simple act, something characters do with a spell and a gesture, or in the case of science fiction, a twist of a dial and the flick of a switch. If anyone were able to see inside the two rooms where they had disappeared and reappeared, it probably would have looked just like that. In reality, or at least in this reality, teleporting wasn’t quite so simple. Instead of just selecting the place one wished to go and appearing there, a sort of multi-tubed transit system opened up before their eyes with what seemed like a thousand possible alternate wormhole paths for them to choose from. Beyond that, Sam had no idea where they all went, and it was entirely possible that each and every one of them could have led off and connected to a thousand more and so forth. At least that’s how Sam saw it when he briefly opened his eyes along the way, and by the time they arrived just outside Madame Esmerelda’s, the sight of it all had made him feel sick to his stomach.

  While Mrs. Emirp let go of him immediately upon arrival, Anna stood by his side and tried to hold him up as he began to double over and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Was that your first time teleporting? We should have warned you to keep your eyes closed. It can be quite a shock if you’ve never done it before.”

  Taking in a deep lung full of air, Sam made sure he wasn’t going to puke before he responded, “Yeah, that would have been a good idea.”

  “Are you okay?”

  Standing up slowly, Sam answered, “Just a little vertigo.” “You’ll be fine,” said Mrs. Emirp as she turned and

  briskly started walking away. “Now, let’s go inside.” Shaking his head, Sam whispered to Anna, “Your mother is a piece of work.”

  But before she could respond, Mrs. Emirp called back over her shoulder without looking, “I heard that,” and then pulled aside the curtain door and walked inside.

  Looking at Anna, Sam waited to see if she had anything to say, but she simply gestured for him to take the lead and then followed him into the psychic’s place.

  The lobby looked much like it had the last time Sam had been here, but this time there was one addition. Sitting on a chair along the side of the room was a man with a sword and shield strapped to his back and more than a few days’ worth of beard growth on his face. Looking up from where he was, his eyes looked haunted and sad, which did not at all match his words as he said, “Good day to you all.”

  Not knowing what else to do, Sam responded in kind, “Good day.”

  “Are you, too, here seeking the wisdom from beyond?”

  Matching his cadence and language, Anna said, “Aye, we are.”

  Looking them over critically, he asked with a touch of concern in his voice, “You three are not seeking the glory of conquering the Tower as well, are you?”

  “No, sir,” replied Anna. “Our visit is more of a personal inquiry than a prediction.”

  Nodding as if this satisfied his worries, he said, “Ah, I see. Then I hope the words you hear are satisfying.”

  While Sam was impressed with how Anna had so easily communicated with the man, Mrs. Emirp maintained her distant cold attitude of impatience and paced along the opposite wall until a hand poked its way out from between the curtains followed leisurely by Madame Esmerelda herself.

  Looking first at the man in the chair, Madame Esmerelda asked, “Mr. Parisol, would you mind if I handled a brief bit of business with these folks before I attend to you? I assure you that your concerns are well founded, but nothing will change in this moment.”

  Standing quickly upon being addressed, the man bowed and said, “If that is the wish of your counsel, then I shall wait, Madame.”

  “Thank you,” replied Madame Esmerelda to the man, and then with a wave she said, “Come on, Jacqueline, I’ve been expecting you.”

  With a huff, Mrs. Emirp glared at the other woman and said, “I have asked you repeatedly to address me by my professional title as I do you.”

  In retor
t, Madame Esmerelda said, “Yes, well, we can’t always get what we want now, can we, Jacqueline?”

  Watching this interaction, Sam was forced to conceal his smirk when he saw the remaining curtains being cast aside angrily by an invisible force, and Mrs. Emirp strode through them into the back room. Not wanting to follow, but figuring he had no choice, he began to walk in as well, but Madame Esmerelda simply shooed him away and said, “You should wait here a moment as well.”

  Seeing Mrs. Emirp in the back cross her arms over her chest and glower at the other woman, Sam was thankful the mage now had someone else to take her wrath out on other than himself. Taking the first seat by the curtain, he made sure that he wasn’t in direct sight of Mrs. Emirp before he smiled up at Madame Esmerelda and said, “Thank you.”

  Reaching up to take hold of the curtain, Madame Esmerelda said, “It’s no problem. I’ll be right back,” and then stepped back and pulled the fabric across the frame.

  Taking the seat next to Sam, Anna sulked and said, “I knew this was going to happen.”

  Confused, Sam asked, “What?”

  Pointing to the drawn curtain, Anna said, “Those two, having their conversation without us. It’s not fair.”

  “Why are you upset about it?” asked Sam. “Frankly, I’m relieved. I was getting a little tired of waiting for your mother to incinerate me with a blast of magic.”

  Shaking her head, Anna said, “She wouldn’t have incinerated you, Sam. She just wants answers, and she thinks you’re hiding something.”

  Not knowing what to say, Sam remained quiet and waited for Anna to continue.

  “The thing is, she’s not going to get any answers in there either, at least not the ones she’ll be satisfied with.”

  “Why not?”

  “Madame Esmerelda and my mother both went to the same school together when they were younger. They hated each other then, and they hate each other now. Mother says magic and psychics shouldn’t mix, that they are two different arts, and that the latter barely even qualifies as that.”