by D. Levesque
“Oh, double fuck,” Tallen says, putting his head on the table as if already defeated.
“So, that’s bad?”
“Yeah, since we can’t go in with Magic. That doesn’t leave much.” Tallen says.
“Wait, you said we can’t use Magic against them. Does that mean that any spell that uses, say, an element to gather items is out as well?” I ask, looking around the table at everyone.
Tallen, Milta, and Carmen all look at me with wide eyes, and suddenly Tallen begins to laugh. “By the Darkness itself! I think he might have just figured a way. Most people go into a fight with a Troll trying to use their Magic straight on. I never even thought of using items. It’s the Magic itself that bounces off of them, but items? My Gods!”
“We might be able to do this!” Milta giggles.
“Leave it to a human to think outside the box,” Carmen says with a laugh. There is a smile on her face directed at me, which makes me smile back at her.
“All right,” Tallen says, slapping his hands together. “We need to come up with a plan.”
“Oh, I think I might have one,” Carmen says. An evil grin appears on her face. “Thanks to Kevin, I think I know a way to make it incredibly deadly for the Trolls.”
If the predatory grins on the faces of those three had been directed at me, I would have shit my pants. As it is, I feel shivers going down my back. Jesus, are Magic folk all this scary?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Who would have thought there were Trolls in Florida? When I asked if there were any elsewhere, Tallen said that they hate winters and would be found mostly near hot places. So mainly in the tropics. But some live in hot spots in the United States, such as Florida, Texas, and Arizona, to name a few.
Tallen was the one who used his Portal stone to get us close to them. They were near the swampy lands, and as soon as we came out of the portal my body exploded in sweat, and the bugs started attacking me. I noticed that Tallen, Milta, and Carmen were not being eaten alive. Then a spell came to mind, and I cast it. It was a body shield, very weak, but it worked to keep the bugs away. Too bad it didn’t work to keep the heat away. And no matter how I tried, I could not come up with a spell for an air conditioning shield.
I currently have my feet submerged in about a foot of water, almost up to my knees. At least I’m not the only one. Carmen and Tallen are right beside me. Carmen looks disgusted as she peers at the greenish water. Tallen somehow looks comfortable. It’s almost night, and I can see the sun going down through the trees.
“We are close,” Milta whispers. “We need to keep quiet. You know the plan?” she says, looking at the three of us.
“We do,” Carmen says, speaking for all of us. I know the plan, but talk about trusting people I barely know. I might like Carmen, but I just met her.
“Let’s go,” Milta says, leading the way.
Tallen falls in place behind Milta, and then it’s me, with Carmen bringing up the rear. We had agreed on the order because I am new to all of this, and I need to be as close to the middle as possible. I might be a powerful Magus, but I am also very inexperienced. Yes, I won a duel in under a minute against Tallen, but that might have been a fluke, so we don’t want to take any chances.
The heat is so bad that I am glad it’s almost nighttime. I can’t imagine how much hotter it would be with the sun overhead. I knew Florida was hot, but bloody hell! And folks want to come here on vacation? Then again, I remind myself that many of them come here to go to the ocean. Or sit in condos with air conditioning and outdoor pools. I would kill for a margarita right now, not just because it would be cold, but also for the liquid courage it would give me.
For the next hour, we slog through the swamp. At times I see Milta zip through the brush and hear her murmur to an animal. Once, it’s a crocodile that I am sure is longer than a pickup truck. It snorts and turns around, swimming away.
Tallen turns around and grins at me. “Glad she is with us. She has a way with animals. I would have had to kill them.”
“Same here,” Carmen says, and I can hear the revulsion in her voice. I am fairly sure it’s not about having to kill, but about having to deal with a crocodile.
“Shhh,” Milta says, turning around and glaring at us. “We are close. I can already smell them.”
That shuts us up fast. I mean, I wasn’t one of the ones talking, but that glare included me. So I remain quiet. If she can smell them, how close would that make them? How good is the smell of a Fairy? All that information in my head supplies me with nothing except that they have an exceptional sense of smell. Great.
Suddenly I hear a loud bellow of rage. I stop in place and look around in a panic. Carmen brings her sniper rifle out, and Tallen brandishes a sword of some sort. It looks like a rapier, something that the French would have used. So is that his Foci? I try to think of bringing mine out, and suddenly I am holding two slightly curved and very sharp-looking daggers.
I know how to use them. One thing that Mike had access to when we hung out was a weapons expert, and when he asked us what we wanted to be good at, I was the idiot who didn’t pick a modern weapon. I said daggers. It’s not that I hate guns. I just wanted to be different. So for an entire summer, a full three months, we were given lessons in the weapons of our choice. I was 16 at the time, but trust me, you don’t forget shit like that. I still find myself trying out the moves in my kitchen at times, with the knives I use for cutting veggies. These daggers feel right somehow. Almost like they’re an extension of me.
Suddenly, and without warning, a giant Troll, looking just like I had pictured them in my head, bursts through the woods. Upon seeing us, it stops dead in its tracks in surprise. It’s tall, at about 14 feet high, and its arms almost reach its knees. In its hand, it has a small tree, which I guess it was using as a club. One end is thinner than the other end. I’m guessing it uses it for bashing?
It opens its mouth to shout, but suddenly gunshots go off as Carmen fires her gun, and the shots hit it in the throat. The Troll jerks in surprise, but no damage is done to it. Which makes sense since it got hit with magical bullets. However, it did stop it from shouting.
“Now, test it on this one,” Milta cries.
Nodding, I look to put the daggers away somewhere, and suddenly, just like that, they are gone. Making a face of disgust, I put my hand down into the muck until I’m touching the bottom. Then I cast a spell to call up an Earth element, and I tell it to go under the Troll’s feet and turn the ground underneath it into quicksand.
Suddenly I hear a roar of surprise and when I look over I see that the Troll is now up to its armpits in the quicksand. Shit, its arms didn’t fit in with it. I close my eyes and tell the Earth element to make it larger, so that it’s a good ten feet around the Troll. The bellow comes again but then cuts out just as suddenly.
I open my eyes and the Troll is gone. But I can see something thrashing around in the quicksand, and a hand slowly starts to emerge. Shit. I close my eyes and tell the element to make it deeper, and then I tell it to harden it, making the quicksand as hard as stone. I open my eyes and listen for a good half-minute, but don’t hear anything. I’m breathing hard, probably from the fear.
“By the Gods,” Tallen says with awe in his voice. “I have never seen a Troll taken down so fast!”
Milta flies up to me until she is right in front of me. “Take heart, Kevin, that you stopped a beast that most likely was killing humans. That thing is nothing but a monster. It might speak, it might have some brains, but it is nothing but a monster. Is this your first time killing another being?”
“Yeah,” I tell her with a shaky breath. “But I doubt it will be my last, will it?”
“No, it will not. Not if you are now part of M.A.G.I. and intend to stay with them,” Milta says softly. “But know this. You do this for a reason. You are saving two people and may be taking one to justice.”
“I know. I guess I have to learn that this is the new me.”
“Kevin,” Carmen sa
ys, coming up to me and putting a hand on my arm. “Remember who you are. You are not a killer by choice. That is the difference. You do this to make a difference. It was the same for me the first time I took a life. I had to look past the killing itself and understand that there was a reason. Don’t think of it as your job. Your job is not to kill. Your job is to bring people to justice. You stand above killing. You can always choose, but there will be times where nothing else will be enough. You will need to kill again, maybe even today, but you will always be the one choosing. If it makes you sick to your stomach, it means your, well, I guess you would call it your humanity, is still intact. For us, we would say it was our Changeling, or Vampire, or Fairy in us that is standing out. Those who kill for fun or pleasure are nothing but monsters.”
I nod at that. I know she’s right. Even Vampires don’t kill for fun. They might subjugate humans, but the information in my head tells me it’s usually humans making that choice. Vampires can play with emotions, but they can also play with memory. So they can make humans forget. If a human denies the subjugation, they are not killed, but instead are made to forget and put back into the world of humans. Many humans benefit from it, just as Vampires do. Still curious about how Article 1 doesn’t come into account here.
Tallen admitted that over a thousand years ago it was not like that. He said his people on Earth changed. When I asked what the people on Vamir did, since they have no humans there, he said other races that took their place willingly. They were well paid. Being under the employ of a Vampire was a good way to get money quickly. And the Vampires get a source of food.
To them, blood is blood. Emotions are emotions. Tallen told me though, that there is something special about human blood and emotions that no other race can replicate. He shrugged and said he paid his staff handsomely, but there are times even he is denied. He said that’s part of the reason that Earth needs good M.A.G.I. hunters. To make sure that the Vampires don’t revert back to their roots. He told me that right now, he or men who are loyal to him take care of rogue Vampires. But it’s not, as he says, precisely legal.
“Well, that worked extremely well,” Milta says, turning to look at the area the Troll had been in. “Better than I expected actually. I wasn’t sure about this quicksand idea, but clearly I was wrong. Though the power used to do that must have been astronomical.”
“Why?” I ask her. “It’s not me doing it. I just called up the Earth element. I never touched the ground with my Magic.”
“What?” Milta says with a frown on her face. “You didn’t do anything to the ground yourself?”
“No,” I tell her, shaking my head. “All the commands were given to the Earth element. I just told it what to do, and it did it. I didn’t feel any power drain from it. Just from the initial casting.”
That’s another thing that will take some getting used to. I can feel the power inside me, and when I cast a spell, I can feel it drain out of me. Like when I called up the element. But after that, I felt no drain.
I hear a chuckle and turn to Tallen. “I’m glad you are on our side, and that there is only one of you. If all humans who get Magic are like you, we are in trouble.”
“I meant to ask. I have no information in my head about why humans can’t do Magic?”
“That is a story best told away from here,” Milta says sharply, looking at Carmen and Tallen.
Tallen nods. “I have to agree. I do not mind telling you, Kevin. But a swamp surrounded by Trolls might not be the best location for that. Now, if what you said about the lack of power drainage is true, I might have to attempt to take down the next one.”
“Not if I see it first,” Carmen says with a grin.
Milta laughs. “This might prove to be fun.”
What the hell is with these two? I have The Count of the Vampires and the Queen of the Fairies with me. Why? Why am I hunting with such influential people? Shouldn’t they have sent lackeys? And shouldn’t they have tons of guards around them? Yet here they are, with Carmen and me.
Shaking my head but smiling at the absurdity of it, I nod and say, “Shall we hunt?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It took another fifteen minutes to find the camp. And God, I wish we hadn’t. The smell is worse than the swamp. Poor Milta, whose sense of smell is better than ours, is making tiny gagging noises now and then. I can’t even begin to explain the smell since it’s so foreign to my brain. I have been in horse stalls. I have been in a slaughterhouse. Better not to ask about that one. And I have been in a well-used outhouse. But this, this is far worse.
We’re currently all crouching and looking at the scene in front of us. In front of us is a pit, a fairly large pit, and inside that pit there are Trolls everywhere. I count twelve of them. I guess that’s a lot because when Tallen saw them, he swore a streak under his breath. Even Milta shut her mouth in a hard line. Carmen, on the other hand, just shook her head. Great, those who are experienced are also worried. So I guess I should be shitting my pants?
In the middle of the pit, I can see another smaller hole. There are four Trolls sitting around facing the hole, with large clubs in their hands. The other Trolls are either sleeping or eating something I would rather not pay close attention to. I would surmise that prisoners are being held in the smaller hole.
Tallen waves us back, and we move back about a hundred feet and hunker down behind a large boulder.
“How the hell are there twelve Trolls here? They are not social beings. They are loners. Sometimes you’ll see a Troll with one or two followers. But twelve?” Tallen says, sounding irritated.
“This changes things,” Milta says, clearly annoyed. “We figured Gordo was with maybe five or six Trolls, not twelve. How the Holy Tree are there that many here! Most states only have maybe four or five. They are very territorial, and their territory is fairly large.”
Looking at the tiny Fairy Queen, I can she is pissed, but I also see some worry in her face.
“Could Gordo have gotten them together?” Carmen asks.
“He must have. But how?” Tallen says. “Trolls are not that smart, and they trust no one, not even themselves. To them, it’s all about who’s the strongest, so they should have killed each other off. There is no way that twelve Trolls working together would ever or should even work.”
“I would say then that it has to be Gordo, but how is he doing it?” Milta says. “He is strong for a Beast, but there is no way he is on par with a Troll.”
“Magic?” I chime in, shrugging my shoulders.
“Magic? How?” Milta asks curiously.
“Well, there is a spell that comes to mind. It’s short term. It’s called Battle Worthy.”
“Battle Worthy? I have not heard of this spell. How did you learn of it?” Tallen asks me. There is skepticism on his face.
I blush and say, “Let’s just say that during my training for M.A.G.I. when they were pushing information into me, they tried to break me and kept throwing more and more at me. The person who was doing it said I was taking stuff in like a sponge and that I was only meant to do four hours a day, but I was doing over twelve hours a day instead.”
“Fucking hell,” Tallen says, looking at me in awe.
“Twelve hours,” he says numbly. “Kevin,” he starts but then stops and rubs his eyes with one hand. “Kevin, I am aware that the training for M.A.G.I. is intense, so even four hours is hard on new recruits. Isn’t that correct, Carmen?”
“Yes,” she says, a shiver running down her body. “Even the four hours a day that I had to do for a week was intense. I almost wanted to back out. It was so damn painful, I almost quit after the third day. Some recruits can’t even make it past that.”
“Wait. You did it for a week?” I ask her in consternation.
“Yes. Why, how long was yours?” she asks me slowly.
“Two weeks,” I tell her.
I hear a choking sound, and I look over at Milta. She is staring at me with wide eyes, and her mouth is agape.
�
�Did you say two weeks of twelve hours a day or more of memory training?” Milta says, finally able to articulate words.
“Yeah. Like I said, they wanted to break me,” I tell her with a shrug.
“What,” Tallen asks me slowly, “did they teach you exactly?”
“Well, I was taught what all M.A.G.I. recruits learn. What someone doing a full magical course for four years would learn, and some extra stuff, which she wasn’t specific about,” I tell him, trying to remember what Luitta said.
He stares at me for a minute and then finally shakes his head. “No wonder you beat me. It’s not just the power you have. It’s the knowledge. I shall need to ask about this some more later, but for now, tell me what this spell Battle Worthy is.”
I nod at him, realizing that I might need to talk to Luitta or even Magus Targun later to find out just what the hell I learned.
“From the information I have, Battle Worthy is a short-term spell. It lasts a couple of hours. It’s a spell that gives someone a very powerful boost in their strength—about sixty percent. The components for it, though, are hard to find. You need items I have never heard of, mostly.”
“Name them,” Milta says quickly.
“Hmm,” I say, bringing it up from the information in my memory. “You would need a crow’s foot and a Malgum flower crushed into a paste with dew water you obtain from near a lake or river the night after a full moon. A powder called millipede legs. Gross, is that a thing?” I ask, and Milta nods.
“You would also need the blood of an ox during mating season. Then you would need a hair from a Centaur. Wait, they are real? Never mind,” I say, since as soon as I said it the information popped into my head. Centaurs are real, but they are tagged as monsters rather than a race since they are wild and always fighting. They are at war with everyone. They are like the Trolls, short term thinkers and dumb, though the Centaurs are slightly more intelligent than Trolls.