by Rain Oxford
“Your parents sent assassins to get you. Not to kill you but to bring you back. They got me.”
“And thought you were me,” he said, nodding with understanding.
“It wasn’t the first time I was confused for you, either. An assassin, considerably less efficient than those your mother sent, ambushed me in a forest, thinking I was you. To be fair, his drawing was dreadful.”
“What happened?”
“Well, when I realized even your parents couldn’t tell us apart, I played along in order to figure out what happened to you.”
“You must have been traveling quickly to catch up to me.”
“What do you mean? You disappeared five months ago.”
“I only left the castle half a month ago!”
“When you pass through realms like that, time gets a bit distorted,” Merlin explained. “That might have been what Alice was referring to.”
“This is so confusing.”
“Yes, I’m starting to get used to it.”
“Why do you look like me?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just as surprised as you.”
A twig snapped.
“Oh, no, not this again!” both Yuri and I said simultaneously. Our wide eyes met.
“You, too?” I asked.
He nodded. “It chased me almost until I reached the mirror. I thought it came through, but that was you two that broke the mirror in the basement, right?”
“Yes, it was an accident.”
“It was probably a good thing.”
“We should hide,” I said.
He shook his head and drew his sword. “I ran last time. This time, I’ll fight.”
“Interesting,” Merlin said vaguely.
I wanted to ask him what was so interesting, but I was more worried about the monster that wanted to eat us. “I don’t know how to fight something we can’t see. Maybe we can make it visible.”
“How?” Yuri asked. “We don’t know what makes it invisible in the first place.”
“Well, we at least need to be making progress if we’re not going to hide. Keep moving. Maybe we’ll lose the creature.” The cold was trying to steal my determination. When we continued northbound, it was obvious we were being followed. Although I couldn’t hear it, I could sense something licking its sharp teeth.
Yuri’s steps started to falter. “Maybe we’re going the wrong way.”
“We’re not. You have to find the egg or we’re stuck here. We need you to do this.”
After a moment, he nodded and his resolve strengthened. “Okay. I’m right; it’s this way.”
On the way, Merlin would occasionally circle us or stop and growl into the dark. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was making sure the creature that stalked us knew we were aware of its presence and that we didn’t feel threatened.
I felt pretty threatened.
We passed many mirrors before Yuri finally stopped in front of one. “This is it.”
The mirror, floating in midair, was half as tall as me and wide. It showed us what I suspected was an otherworld tavern. There were people who all looked healthy and daylight streamed in. “That doesn’t look so bad,” Yuri said.
Merlin groaned.
Between an invisible monster in a snowy wasteland and a warm tavern with friendly-looking people, it wasn’t a difficult choice. We stepped through the mirror.
Chapter 5
Although it was my intention to enter the strange tavern gracefully, the mirror was actually behind the bar, and I had to climb down using several shelves as a ladder. What I hadn’t accounted for was how many bottles there were on those shelves. Needless to say, I caused a lot of damage, which drew the attention of everyone in the tavern. Merlin leapt through the mirror and landed gracefully. Yuri watched my struggles and learned, so when he followed me, he didn’t knock down a single bottle.
He really didn’t have to try that hard, though, as I had already destroyed most of them.
Everyone was staring at us, not with outright fear, but definitely nervousness. It seemed like they were waiting for something bad to happen. All of the six men in the room wore fitted trousers, hats with wide brims, and vests. There were only two women, both outfitted in frilly dresses that emphasized their gender. Everyone had dirt on their clothes.
That wasn’t the strange part, though.
The trio that had suddenly appeared in the saloon took in their surroundings cautiously, half expecting a devious sorcerer to jump out at them. The townspeople waited for an introduction, none willing to be the first to move unless it was to pull a gun on the newcomers.
I looked around to see where that voice had come from. It was deep, but not like a dragon’s. It seemed half bored, half amused.
Before the young wizard, Ayden, could voice his confusion, he noticed there was something peculiar happening to his skin.
I looked down and tried not to panic at the sight of myself. My clothes and skin were fading to gray. I searched the room for any color and found none. “Merlin, something is wrong with my eyes.”
Said the young wizard.
“It is not you, but the world that is wrong,” Merlin said.
The wolf responded in the young wizard’s head that the issue was widespread. Although the wolf had already figured out exactly what was happening, he did not think the young wizard would understand and didn’t want to explain.
“You can hear Merlin?”
Asked the young wizard to the air.
“I’m asking you, not the air.”
Insisted the young wizard.
“I’m not that young! You know my name, so use it.”
Implored the young wizard.
“Stop it!”
Demanded Ayden…
“Thank you.”
… the young wizard.
“What is going on?” Yuri asked.
The prince felt out of place in the saloon, but he was still more concerned with the fact that another person looked identical to him.
“He’s just showing off,” a man said. Although I understood his words, they didn’t match the movement of his mouth. His accent was also strange, not anything I could place, yet the words were clear. Alice’s potion was amazing.
Mr. Charcoal said calmly, hoping to stop the three newcomers from exacerbating the situation and instigating an amazing battle.
Mr. Charcoal looked at the ceiling. “Thank you, I can take it from here.” There was no answer. He made a motion with his hands to the other people and that seemed to calm them. “He likes to make a scene. As long as no one tries to lie or keep a secret, he doesn’t bother us much. He really likes to cause havoc.”
The man was thin and middle-aged with dark hair and light eyes. If we were on Caldaca, I would have taken him for a mage, except he wore a hat, like a magician did. Since he wasn’t a native of Caldaca, I couldn’t assume anything based on his appearance, which was discouraging.
He stepped behind the bar, grabbed a cloth from under the counter, and started cleaning a mug. Realizing that he was the tavern keeper, I wanted to apologize about the mess, but since he didn’t even look at it, doing so would have felt awkward.
“Who is he?” I asked instead.
“We don’t know. None of us do. He has been here for as long as people have. He can’t be seen or shot. He knows everything we do or think, even things we haven’t done or thought yet, and he’ll say whatever he wants to amuse himself.”
“Why do you stay?”
He shrugged. “We’re used to it. Let me get you something to eat.”
“Actually, we’re after a sorcerer.”
He shook his head. “You’re in the wrong place for something like that. We don’t approve of magic here.”
“Not even wizardry?” Yuri asked.
“Caldaca is the only world that differentiates wizards and sorcerers,” I told Yuri.
He paled slightly. At least, I thought he did. “This really is another world then…”
&nb
sp; “What do you do without magic? How do you keep the peace?”
“We respect everyone we don’t want to start a fight with and we shoot those we do.”
“With arrows?”
“With pistols.”
“What’s a pistol?”
“Never mind that,” Merlin said.
Mr. Charcoal didn’t hear him, though, and pulled a metal device out of a harness on his belt. It was silver with what appeared to be a wooden handle. It looked harmless enough.
“Well, if you can point us towards the sorcerer, we can defeat him and get out of your… tavern.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t seen any strangers until you two.”
I studied Mr. Charcoal as he spoke, trying to read his expression since I couldn’t judge his appearance.
The young wizard wondered if the bartender was lying.
“How did you know?” Yuri asked.
No, you’re the prince. Ayden is the… never mind.
“Yeah, we’ve learned not to bother hiding anything,” Mr. Charcoal said.
“Okay, let’s focus on catching the sorcerer. He could have gone anywhere in the universe. Why did he come here?”
“To get to the other side,” Merlin answered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What does this town have that he wants?”
“Typically, when a sorcerer goes to a realm that has less technology than him, it is to show off his skill.”
Merlin, who is normally extremely intelligent, offered Ayden an explanation that the young wizard would understand. Little did he know, he was completely wrong.
“You could just tell us,” I said.
The young wizard, who was not used to having to use his own brain, asked the air to solve all of his problems for him. Of course, that would be---
“Yes, yes, I know. You’re extremely annoying.”
It was funny he should mention that, because just the other day, he---
I held up my hand. “I know… what you’re about to say. Can I just retract my statement, please?”
… he thought how annoying Merlin was when the older wizard would not stop pestering him to meditate when all he wanted to do was use his friend’s magic mirror to spy on a girl he liked.
Everyone stared at me as if I was being creepy.
Which was so creepy that he would never have admitted it to his friends.
“It wasn’t that creepy.”
It was, the voice said with finality. He was obviously used to having the final word.
“It wasn’t!”
It was.
“Do you find me annoying often?” Merlin asked.
I turned to him, feeling as if the world was ganging up on me. “Not often, no. I’m sorry.”
But he wasn’t.
“I am!”
He wasn’t.
I groaned, but Merlin just laughed. “It is fine, young sorcerer. You are bound to not like some of my lessons. If I never pushed you, you would never grow. You stuck with it despite your perverted nature and that is what counts. On the other hand, if you have enough time to spy on Kalyn, I am not giving you enough work.”
I groaned louder and addressed Mr. Charcoal. “Has anyone strange come here?”
“Aside from you? No. You might check with Becky in the general store, though. She’s the town gossip.”
Mrs. White, sitting unnoticed in the corner, wondered how to get the attention of the identical newcomers, her mind playing out fantasies she never knew she had.
We all looked at one of the two women in the room. The man beside her jumped out of his seat in outrage and yelled, “How could you?!”
Mr. White was furious with his wife, despite having been thinking the exact same thing.
Eager to get away from the voice (and the strange couple) we went outside. It was hot, sunny, and dusty. Like the people inside, everyone outside was covered in dirt. I disliked this world immediately.
Most of the buildings were connected on each side of the road. I could tell they were separate businesses because they were each built with a different design. The one thing they all had was a covered porch, which basically lined the road.
Sensing an epic duel of the supernatural kind, everyone except for the sheriff rushed to get outside before they missed the action.
I ignored the voice, not looking forward to “the action” myself. A couple dozen people left their shops and piled under their porches with all the enthusiasm of a vampire in a vegetable garden.
At the end of the road was a mine with cobwebs and broken boards. A dusty sign above the partially-boarded up mouth of the mine read Get Rich Gold Mine.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked Merlin.
“I really hope not.”
Merlin, being the most intelligent member of the group, wondered why a town with no color had a gold mine.
“It looks abandoned from here,” I said.
“Right, which means that they used to mine gold and now they do not.”
“Because who cares about gold without color.”
At this point, even Yuri thought Ayden was a bit slow.
I glared at Yuri, since I couldn’t glare at the voice. He put his hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry, but you should have realized it the moment the voice mentioned it. It means the town once had color, so gold was valuable. Something made the town lose its color.”
“Oh.”
“Your auditory processing skills are slower than your visual processing skills,” Merlin said.
Merlin said the first thing that came to mind to comfort the wounded wizard, knowing Little Ayden wouldn’t understand it.
“I understood that just fine!”
He didn’t.
“I’m not an idiot!”
What Ayden didn’t realize was that his outburst of emotion was overheard by the very sorcerer they were after.
We turned and saw a sorcerer standing in the entrance of the mine. I assumed his hair was black and his eyes were red, which was normal for sorcerers, but I couldn’t be sure since there was no color. What was odd was that he wore a mask made of some type of shiny black material. It stretched from his eyebrows to the bottom of his nose and ear to ear.
His robe was dark velvet with lighter accents and no family emblem. He was hooking a small, white cloth bag to his belt, which enabled me to see a much larger sack next to it. I was a little surprised that his pants didn’t fall down.
He saw us watching him and smirked. “Two wizards and a wolf?” the sorcerer asked snidely. “I broke into the most protected castle in all of Caldaca, and they send two wizards and a wolf? I think I’ve been insulted.”
I waited for the voice to correct him, but he didn’t.
“The voice wants us to fight,” Merlin explained.
The wolf was happy to clarify the matter to Ayden. What he neglected to tell his apprentice…
Merlin groaned.
… was that the sorcerer looked strangely familiar.
Merlin often had dreams of the future and it was perfectly logical that he would have foreseen this opponent. What was odd was that Merlin didn’t tell me.
Suspicion blossomed in Ayden’s mind.
“Can we stay focused, please,” Yuri asked.
Despite his attempts to distract his new friends, he was wondering if the mysterious voice knew his dark secret as well. Yes, but we’ll get to that later.
“Oh, no.” He blushed, although it was hard to tell when there was no color.
“Maybe you should just tell us,” I suggested.
“Later, maybe.”
“Twin wizards?” the sorcerer questioned. I realized at that point that he had been talking and we had accidentally ignored him. “It’s been a while since I battled an identical duo.”
The sorcerer’s bravado reminded the wolf of someone, and that made him try even harder to remember where he had seen the sorcerer.
“What are you going on about?” the sorcerer asked the voi
ce.
The voice didn’t answer.
“You stole the precious treasure from my castle,” Yuri said. “I’m here to take it back.”
His voice was off, almost shaky. It wasn’t too obvious, though, so I ignored it.
The sorcerer laughed. “You? You are in way over your head. Prepare to meet your death from Captain Chaos, the most powerful---”
“Nobody cares.” Yuri drew his sword. “Give me the egg and you can leave here alive, with your dignity intact.”
“Or, at least you can leave here intact,” Merlin amended.
“I thought your name was Zuras,” I said, worried we were facing the wrong sorcerer.
The sorcerer hesitated. “I changed it to Captain Chaos,” he explained, somewhat deflated.
“Oh. You don’t really look like a captain to me.”
Zuras glared at me. “What do you know? You won’t be alive long enough to see my evil plans unfold!” He cackled dramatically. “Now, prepare to meet---”
“You said that already,” Yuri interrupted.
Zuras’s chest deflated and his eyes bugged slightly, which was amusing with his mask on. “Would you just be quiet and let me say what I have to say?”
Zuras hadn’t yet realized that the young prince could barely stand through the pain in his head.
Although Yuri was facing away from me, he did seem stiff. “Yuri, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He lied.
“Getting the egg back is our top priority.”
Zuras took advantage of the distraction. He reached into his robe pocket and pulled out what looked like a metal book. I took a moment to admire the size of his robe’s pockets.
It wasn’t a book that he held, though, and he didn’t open it. One side of it was covered in short, blunt metal teeth. “What is that?” I asked Merlin.
“A control board of some kind, judging by the knobs all over it.”
“What is that?” I asked Zuras.
He laughed malevolently. “This is my greatest invention— a weather machine!”
Black lightning shot from the control board into the sky. The sky darkened and angry clouds formed. It was especially ominous without color. Merlin bit my robe and jerked me back so that I was on the covered porch. Merlin dashed out and grabbed Yuri by his fancy tunic and tried to pull him back, but the prince had already started advancing on Zuras and was more determined than I was not to be moved. It started raining. This wouldn’t have been a problem if it was water that fell from the sky, but instead, it was black goo.