by Dante King
“Because, young master, I wished to show you a living relic of the Void Wars. This is the gryphon that the great Zenidor himself used to ride on into battle,” replied Manfred, his words colored with obvious pride.
“B-b-b-but why don’t w-w-we let him free?” Nigel asked.
Manfred gestured to the great creature’s broad back, and I saw that where one of the mighty wings should have been there was now only a stub.
“He cannot fly,” Manfred said. “And so, before they perished, your parents agreed to house him, in honor of the way that he fearlessly carried one of the Twin Spirits into every fray he was involved in.”
The young Nigel gazed steadily at the beast and the gryphon stared back at him, its large, fierce eyes locked on the face of the last remaining Windmaker.
The little boy shook his head confused and looked back up at the old servant. “Who did you say it belonged to again, Manfred?”
Manfred sighed and guided the young Nigel from the room. Once more the projected memory flickered and faded.
“So, I knew it too,” Nigel said. He took his glasses off and polished them industriously on with the hem of his shirt. “I must say, t-to knit m-m-magic into the very fabric of the world so that anyone who ever knew the names Zenidor and Istrea forgot th-them… That’s highly impressive,” he said.
“Pass me that there staff, friend,” rumbled Rick. Nigel passed the black crystal staff across.
The temporary locking of all muscles was not so obvious when it came to Rick, who you might be forgiven for thinking had been carved out of the bedrock in a dim light. The only outward sign that he had undergone the same momentary freezing though, was because his thick dreadlocks stopped in mid-swing.
This projection showed a younger, slightly smaller Rick—he was only about five and a half feet tall—standing in front of a great mountain of a man who could only have been his father. This giant man had the same dreadlocks as Rick did now, though they were wound up into a great beehive on the top of his head.
“That’d be a good look for you, big man,” I said, nodding at the green projection.
Rick shook his head. “My people only wear our hair up in that fashion when we are about to start, or are in the middle of, crafting in our forges,” he said.
I nodded at the sagacity of this. “I guess nothing puts you off your stroke more when you’re blacksmithing than having your head catch on fire, huh?”
Rick ignored me, his deep green eyes fixed on the unfolding scene.
“I remember this day,” he said. “Though it is not complete in my mind.”
“No surprise there,” I said.
“Son,” the giant figure of Rick’s father boomed in a voice that was so deep that it would have been advantageous to accompany this particular memory projection with subtitles, “it is my fervent hope that you will will remember how your father was the man chosen to maintain the weapons and armor of the Twin Spirits themselves, Istrea and Zenidor. That our people were entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the battle gear of our world’s greatest warriors who, in turn, watched over the Twin Spirits.”
The young Rick looked up reverently at his father. Then he said, in a way that was so much like the Rick that I knew that I had to stifle a laugh, “Father, I do not follow who you mean.”
The enormous man sighed deeply and grumbled something that I didn't catch, but which definitely included the words ‘Arcane Council’ and ‘traitorous’ and ‘vipers’.
Once again the projected memory faded away.
“Yes,” Rick said. “It is just as I recalled, though the names had slid from my mind like water from a duck. Now though, with this revelation, things are coming back to me that I had long since forgotten.” He turned those deep eyes of his on me. “Your parents were very great,” he said. “Strong. Tough as week-old dragon steak, as my people would say.”
“Gross,” I said. “But, a nice sentiment, Rick.”
Rick held the staff out to Bradley. Bradley seemed vaguely impatient at this, almost as if he wished he could just carry on cooking. However, he took the staff and froze just like the other three had done.
The projection came to life in the middle of the floor this time, and the figures were lifesize. Two pale green people popped into being in our kitchen. One was a tall and elegant woman who had the same cheekbones as our fraternity low-man. The other was an athletic man who I almost felt that I recognised, despite that fact being completely impossible.
“You know that I support Istrea and Zenidor, my love,” the woman said, “because I want to help create a safe world for Bradley, for our son.”
The man, who seemed to be filled with a sort of bottled energy, paced around as the woman said these words. He nodded his head as if agreeing with her, but said nothing.
“Those are your parents then, Bradley?” I asked.
To my surprise, when I looked at our low-man, standing there with his aristocratic air and hair-do that you could set your watch to, I noticed that the blood had drained from his face.
“Uh, no, actually,” he said, in a strangely disjointed voice. “That’s my mother, but I, uh… That’s not my father.”
I swapped awkward glances with Rick, Nigel and Damien.
Damien looked back at the memory quickly and his face crinkled. “Does that dude look like Chaosbane to anyone else?”
I squinted at the flickering holographic-like scene playing out in front of us.
Now that Damien mentioned it…
“It does look a little like Chaosbane,” I admitted.
The image flickered and the scene changed slightly. The man who was looking more and more like a younger version of the Headmaster of the Academy and Bradley’s mother were joined by none other than—
“My parents,” I said.
It was a bizarre sensation, to see these two people that had raised me in this magical world up until their untimely demise, whom I should have known better than anyone else, standing there. I almost reached out to touch them.
I wasn’t sad, as some people might have been. In truth, I had no memories of my parents, having been very young when they had disappeared from my life, but I was interested to see the little things that made them human; the little quirks and mannerisms that distinguish one person from another.
“Can we expect the Flamewalkers to join our cause in this war?” my father asked Bradley’s mother. For a guy who was at once my dad and also—apparently—one of the most bad-ass mages ever, Zenidor’s voice was level and pleasant. It could have quite easily been the voice of the man who might have taken me to soccer practice, given me the talk about the birds and the bees or grounded me for smoking pot—in another life.
That other life wouldn’t have involved being able to summon a Lightning Skink or conjure an explosive Blazing Bolt to vaporize a troll that’s intent on turning you into a kebab, would it though?
The austere woman gave the Chaosbane look-a-like a steady look, then turned back to my father.
“Yes, we can count on them,” she said. “Only, it depends on me taking the life of...Tormun.”
“What the fucking fuck?” Bradley exploded, drowning out the next part of the conversation.
“What is it, friend?” Rick asked.
“What the flaming fucking shit!” was Bradley’s only response. Dressed in his apron, it struck me that he might be doing a Gordon Ramsey impersonation. It wasn’t bad.
I looked over at Nigel. Of the four of us that weren’t trying to communicate solely through expletives, he alone appeared shocked.
“What is it, Nigel?” I asked. “Who’s this Tormun guy?”
“That,” Nigel said in a low voice, “is Bradley’s father—at least, that’s the man that he thought was his father up until about thirty seconds ago.”
The projection faded and Bradley tossed my vector back to me. Then he ran his hands through his hair and ruffled it until it was sticking out all over the show. I thought for a second that he was going to t
ear it out, and that’s when I knew how shaken up he was. I’d never seen a hair on the man’s head look out of place before.
“That must have been the night that my mother died,” Bradley said, starting to stride backward and forward in his agitation. “She must have gone to take out my father, but he found out somehow and killed her before she could kill him! He must have learned that he had been unfaithful to her—both in and out of the bedchamber… Gods, he always told me that she died of a fever.”
I nodded. “Classic yarn that one,” I said, “the old ambiguous fever.”
Bradley shot a look at me.
“I’m just saying,” I said.
Like a man running on autopilot, Bradley started dishing up plates of steaming hot, bright yellow curry. While we waited for him to finish up, something brushed against my leg and I looked down. It was the saber-tooth cub that had taken to me after I’d slain its previous owner, the troll shaman, in the under-temple of the Gemstone Elementals.
“Hey, girl,” I said, kneeling down to rub around her neck with a finger. The little animal purred and closed her eyes as she rubbed against my hand.
Dinner, unsurprisingly, was a rather subdued affair. That’s par for the course, I suppose, when one of your fraternity brothers finds out that the man he thought was his father for his entire life turns out not to be. You can make that a double shot of awkwardness, when you factor in the information that this man—the one that your friend thought was his dad for years and years—turns out to be the most likely candidate for offing your mum.
I leaned over toward Bradley, whom I happened to be sitting next to and, under the pretense of grabbing a naan from a plate that was circulating, spoke into his ear.
“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about...this,” I said in a low voice. “I’m not going to pretend I know what’s going on in your head, because that would be ridiculous. But you’re my fraternity brother, and that counts for something.”
Bradley caught my eye and gave me a brief, but grateful, nod.
I leaned back in my chair and tore my naan bread in half.
“Guys,” Nigel said, breaking the silence after a good ten minutes of slurping and mastication.
“Nigel,” I said, “are you about to break the tension with a joke?”
“Uh, no,” Nigel said, missing the sarcasm completely. “But I have been thinking. All of our parents were involved in the Void Wars seventeen years ago. All of them, from what we have just seen, must have been involved fairly deeply with Zenidor’s and Istrea’s cause.”
Rick grunted his ascent.
“What puzzles me,” Nigel continued, “is that those who were connected with the Twin Spirits were mostly tried and executed, yet our parents—those that survived the war itself, obviously—were not.”
“Lucky for us, eh?” Bradley said darkly.
“What’s strange about that,” Nigel pressed on, “is that they must have been spared for some reason by the Arcane Council. It’s the only reason that I can think of that the blanket enchantment that affected almost everyone else’s minds in our world, did not wipe theirs.”
We all digested this for a moment. I took another bite of Bradley’s fish curry. It was freakin’ great stuff. For a man who was used to being waited on hand and foot by servants and lackeys, he sure knew his way around a kitchen. I had a feeling that there was a story in there somewhere, but decided that this wasn’t really the time to ask him.
I swallowed my mouthful, dropped a piece of fish down into the waiting mouth of the saber-tooth cub and cleared my throat.
“I guess we know why Chaosbane threw us all together then, huh?” I said. “In this ‘frat house’ which turns out to be my parent’s old house.”
“Because we’re a big old bunch of nerds?” Damien asked.
“You say that like that’s a bad thing, Damien,” I said. “Don’t you know that nerds run the world?”
“Go on then, friend,” Rick said, as he licked his plate.
“I think he put us in this frat house because we come from families who weren’t fighting against Zenidor and Istrea during the Void Wars, but were allied with them,” I said.
“Why would he do that?” Damien asked.
“He is a Chaos Mage,” Nigel chipped in, perking up at a potential motive to unravel. “He’s probably just trying to see what happens if he puts a bunch of the children of rebels in one place.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said.
Although I had come to the conclusion that Reginald Chaosbane was a mad motherfucker, he also seemed highly intelligent—in that special way that some people, who tightrope along the line that divides geniuses and nuts, sometimes do. It was this acknowledgement of his potentially dangerously clever mind that made me think his intentions for gathering us all together under the one roof were more than just the curious experimentation of a Chaos Mage.
“It makes a lot of sense,” Rick added, his eyes travelling slowly from each one of our unfinished plates to the next.
“Hey, Rick,” I said, dismissing for the time being my speculation as to what Chaosbane might be cooking up, “is there anything you won’t eat?”
Rick gave me one of his big, wide smiles. “My people appreciate food. Our rule, on our island, is that you eat anything that doesn’t eat you first.”
We all laughed at this. It even elicited a smile from Bradley.
Nigel slid his plate across the table to the ever-hungry Earth Elemental and leaned contentedly back in his chair. Then he leaned forward again and said, “Justin, this is your parents’ place, right?”
“You are correct, Nigel,” I said, sliding my own plate over to Rick. “What’s on that perfectly balanced and disgustingly accurate instrument that you call a mind?”
“Well, this being a known habitation of two extremely powerful mages, we should check out the dungeon right away.”
“Nigel, if you’re leading up to some wise-crack about the sort of kinky shit that my parents might have got up to during my conception in the bowels of this place, I’d like to remind you that, although I’m getting better at controlling my magic, chances are that if I hit you with a Storm Bolt there’s at least a ninety-three percent chance that we’d be able to clean you up with bucket and a spoon.”
Bradley finished clearing his own plate of fish curry and pushed it aside. I saw Rick give the Fire Mage a reproachful look.
“I think I know what Nigel is getting at,” Bradley said.
I held up my hand like a kid in a classroom. “Please, sirs, what the fuck are you on about? I’m on tenterhooks.”
“I’ve always wondered what a tenterhook actually is,” Damien said.
“Well,” Nigel said, with the ominous eagerness of a really smart person about to embark on a very detailed and extremely boring explanation, “a tenter was actually an old earth instrument that was used in the process of making woolen cloth. A tenterhook was—”
“Oh God, please stop, Nigel,” I said, “before I ask Rick to beat me to death.”
Rick guffawed.
Nigel’s mouth snapped closed.
“Now, why do we want to go rooting about in my parents’ basement?” I asked.
“Because the dungeons in the fraternity houses are special training rooms,” Nigel explains. “When a frat house gets a poltergeist, they’re normally stationed in the dungeon. If your parents were these insanely powerful mages, then they probably had an insanely powerful dungeon.”
“How can a room be powerful though?” I asked.
“Have you not walked into a toilet after Rick has laid his morning cable?” Damien said. “That’s power.”
I wrinkled my nose at this.
“Dungeons have their own intrinsic magic,” Nigel explained patiently. “It’s deep-seated, part of the bones of an old magical property.”
“And the poltergeist? What does it do?”
“It basically acts as a warden of sorts,” Nigel said. “It keeps an eye on just what is lurking throu
gh the veil that divides all worlds and the realm of pure magic.”
I nodded, pretending that this explanation made some sort of sense to me. I knew that if I betrayed the fact that Nigel may as well have been speaking Albanian to me, the halfling would launch into an even more in-depth elucidation from which I might not be able to free myself without strong violence.
“Has anyone here actually been in one of these magical dungeon training rooms?” I asked the four others.
There was a chorus of negative responses.
“Well, let’s go and take a look then,” I said.
Chapter Two
“Professor Charles Francis Xavier eat your motherfucking heart out,” I said, when the door at the bottom of the lowest staircase in the frat house creaked open.
“Who’s Professor Ch—” Nigel began.
“Never you mind, Nigel,” Damien said, patting the halfling on the shoulder and staring over the top of his head at the room that lay beyond the heavy, iron-riveted door.
It was a sort of medieval equivalent of the Danger Room in the X-Men Academy; a huge room—a vast space-filled with wooden targets of various designs, weapons lining one of the walls, and a workstation that looked to be filled with various vials, containers of ingredients, and an extensive array of glassware that would have given even the most experienced potioneer a stiffy.
“That’s weird,” Nigel said.
“What’s weird?” I asked. “That where most people would expect to find a wine cellar we have a veritable treasure trove of ways in which to become more dangerous magical practitioners?”
“Well, there’s that,” Nigel said, “but from everything I’ve read about dungeons, the poltergeist should show itself instantly, as soon as we step foot inside the room.”
I looked down. I was at the front of the group and my toe was on the threshold of the doorway.
“Technically, we haven’t entered yet,” I said.
I stepped across the threshold and walked a little way into the massive room. The ceilings were at least three stories high, which tallied with the amount of steps we had descended to get here. The others followed behind me. I felt a familiar brush against my legs and looked down to see the saber-tooth cub winding around the back of one leg. It mewled at me. It might have been my imagination, but it almost sounded like the little creature’s growl held a note of warning.