Power Game

by Brad Magnarella

  The wyvern, which had risen up again, watched Brian with malevolent eyes.

  I trained the vial of ice crystals on the creature, but the idiot was right in my path.

  “Brian, get out of the way!”

  He flapped a hand behind his back for me to shut it. “Yes,” he said, directing his voice back to the wyvern. “You are here unbidden. But be not wrathful. Return to your realm, and do so in peace, or I will send you there myself!”

  He thinks this is a frigging D&D campaign.

  Brian aimed his wand at the wyvern. I was preparing to blast Brian aside with another force invocation when the wyvern’s eyes rolled back and its serpentine neck began to undulate—in time to Brian’s subtle wand movements.

  I hesitated. Huh?

  “So, begone!” Brian made a diagonal slashing gesture with the wand.

  Flames broke from under the wyvern’s scales and licked up around the creature. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “Begone!” Brian repeated, slashing the wand along the opposite diagonal now.

  I threw a forearm to my eyes as a ball of fire burst up from the wyvern. The creature released a fading scream. When I peeked, the once-solid creature was a silhouette of smoke, head reared skyward, massive wings stretched to the sides. Then the wind broke through it and scattered it down the canyon of Forty-sixth Street.

  Brian gave a nod and turned back toward the hotel.

  “Hold on a sec,” I said, running up to him. “Let me see that.”

  Before he could pull the wand back, I snatched it from his grip. It was the same sorry thing he’d tried to cast through during his session, electrical tape holding the two pieces together now. I scanned it anyway.

  “How did you do that?” I demanded. “There’s not an ounce of damned power in this thing or you.” I tossed the wand back to him. He bobbled it a few times, an indignant frown puckering his lips, before securing the wand against his chest.

  “What’s the matter, Croft? Feeling your celebrity threatened?”

  “I want to know how in the hell you dispersed a wyvern.”

  “It’s called magic.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Brian cocked his head toward the hotel. “Do you hear that?”

  It was only when he asked that I realized the cheers had risen in pitch. Now conference-goers began to break past the officers along the front of the hotel trying to hold them back. They came streaming into the street, running toward us.

  “Excuse me,” Brian said. “My fans await.”

  He strode over to meet them, looking over a shoulder as though to ensure I wasn’t trying to cut in front of him. The conference-goers surrounded him, talking all at once. Had that been a real dragon? they wanted to know. How had he defeated it? Brian started into his spiel from that morning’s session about becoming a wizard, blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t believe he was still trying to sell that garbage.

  But the crowd was hanging onto every flipping word.

  A few who had been approaching me stopped and returned to Brian. And then I caught the mass of dark electrical energy I’d seen that morning. Like in the conference room, it was hovering over the crowd, shifting toward Brian every time he paused to inhale. He was so caught up in his own story, though, I wasn’t sure he was even aware that the phenomenon was happening.

  Could it be that he was a natural charismatic? Someone with the power to influence people under the right circumstances? I remembered how I’d been drawn to him at the start of his presentation that morning. It could also explain why my wizard’s voice hadn’t fazed him. And like with Mae’s ability to control nether creatures, it wouldn’t have been an ability I could necessarily observe.

  It still didn’t explain him sending the wyvern up in smoke.

  Or maybe it wasn’t him, I thought. Maybe someone’s working from behind the scenes.

  I scanned the crowd for the other members of his entourage, then switched my gaze to the hotel, but his red-robed brigade was nowhere to be seen. I was thinking in particular of the man I’d seen wearing the metal gauntlet on his hand. It had had draconic features. I shoved my way toward Brian.

  “Where’s the rest of your Military Federation?” I called toward him.

  “Keep it down, man,” one of the crowd shouted back. “He’s talking.”

  Other voices chimed in basically telling me to shut the fuck up.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…” Brian looked pointedly at me before continuing. “I received an invitation to attend a secret wizard’s school…” I considered yanking him to me with a force invocation, but the throng of people around him was ten deep now and growing.

  “Brian, we need to talk!” I shouted.

  This time, the crowd response was more vigorous. Everywhere I looked were shouting, angry faces. The Smurfs I’d spotted during the parade were especially PO’d. Hands began to grab my coat.

  I radioed Vega. “I need officers out front for crowd control.”

  “I’ll send them, but what’s going on?” she asked in concern.

  “A mob scene.”

  “Carry him from my sight,” Brian ordered his crowd.

  “Stay back,” I warned in my wizard’s voice, but the crowd was too much in his thrall.

  As a group descended on me, I summoned a form-fitting shield. I had to remember they weren’t themselves. They seized my shielded body and lifted me off the ground. Brian watched with arms crossed, a smug smile on his face. He was obviously relishing the payback from that morning’s duel.

  A good dozen of the con-goers had a hold of me now. To avoid hurting anyone, I decided to let them carry me off a short distance to drop me or toss me or do whatever they had in mind while the officers came out to disperse them. Then I’d get to Brian. But when someone dressed as an Elf on the Shelf ran up and tried to kick me between the legs, I’d had enough.

  “Respingere!” I shouted.

  My shield pulsed, scattering everyone who’d placed a hand on me. The elf went spinning off somewhere, the pointed hat flying from his head. I hit the street and quickly regained my feet, this time reaching for a sleeping potion.

  At Brian’s order, more of the crowd, which had to number in the hundreds now, rushed toward me. There were zombies, pirates, stormtroopers, vampires, characters I recognized from superhero comics, and a whole lot I didn’t. Basically, it was like everything in some teenager’s bedroom coming to life and deciding they didn’t like me. Several police officers were running toward me too. So much for crowd control.

  I activated the sleeping potion, uncapped it, and aimed it outward. As vapors began issuing from the vial, I invoked a force invocation to spew the potion into the onrushing crowd. People staggered and began thudding to the ground—individually at first, then in waves as the pink vapors enveloped them.

  I moved forward, stepping over their sleeping bodies while squinting through the mist for Brian. When the last of the potion left the vial, I moved it around the few still standing before blowing it away with another invocation.

  Through the clearing mist, the front of the hotel looked like the world’s largest outdoor slumber party.

  But Brian had skipped out.

  28

  I pushed my way back into the hotel. The crowd that greeted me didn’t appear to be under Brian’s charismatic control. They weren’t attacking me anyway. I jumped up to see past them into the lobby, but there was no sign of him.

  “Where is he?” I shouted. “Where did he go?”

  But no one seemed to understand who I was talking about.

  “Whoa, what happened out there?” someone asked.

  I looked over to find a guy in a muscle costume, wearing a leather war skirt and bearing a big-ass sword. In his wig and eye shadow, I almost didn’t recognize him, but the eruption of pimples on his cheeks gave him away. This was the young man who had summoned a demon the day before.

  “Nathan?” I asked.

  His eyes started. “Oh, hey, you�
�re that wizard! Was that you out there?”

  “Did you see the guy I was with? Big fellow in a red robe?”

  “Naw, the front of the lobby was packed. I couldn’t get close enough to see anything.”

  I looked around. That was probably true of everyone here.

  “But did a guy with a red robe come back inside?” I asked.

  “A big crowd came back in. Some police with them. They ran that way.”

  The ones my potion didn’t reach, I guessed. I imagined Brian ordering them to conceal him from me while he made his escape. And Nathan was pointing toward the back staircase. I took off in that direction.

  “Hey! You going to be doing any spells later?” he called after me.

  But I was already fumbling with the radio to contact Vega. “I need you to put an APB out on Brian Lutz. Last seen with a group fleeing toward the back of the first floor. Get officers on the security cameras. Cover the exits. Have them use caution, though. Sounds like he has armed NYPD with him.”

  “I’m on it,” she said and cut out.

  I ran until I reached the door to the stairwell Vega and I had checked out earlier, the one we suspected the conjurer had been using to move between floors.

  Would he have gone upstairs to his room or down to try to escape through the loading bay?

  But when I burst through the door and reached the landing, I had my answer. The casting circle on the wall was similar to the other two I’d encountered that day, but this one had sigils I recognized. The circle wasn’t for summoning; it was a portal. And the energies in the room suggested it had just been used.

  “Crap,” I spat. “Any sightings?” I radioed Vega hopelessly.

  “No, I just put the word out.”

  “Well, I think he and his newest fans just left here through an interplanar portal.”

  There was a slight lag on Vega’s end as she interpreted what I was saying. “Do you know where they went?”

  I eyed the circle. Like with the others, I had no doubt this one was warded in a language I didn’t understand. Attempting a reveal spell on it could shoot me to a plane with acid for an atmosphere and swamps full of tentacled creatures.

  “No idea,” I admitted.

  “Not to change the subject, but that spell book you wanted us to look into? The reverse P.O. box check came back for Brian Lutz.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Not only that, but someone got in touch with the magazine. Brian had been advertising that book for more than a year. He called a couple months back to increase the price, boasted that he’d added another section.” The section with the spells Nathan had cast from, I realized. “But then he pulled the ad abruptly. Said something about mortals not being able to handle it. The ad team had a good laugh over that.”

  “Yeah, well, unfortunately I don’t think he was joking.”

  “Background check just came back too. They’re sending it over.”

  “While that comes up, I’m going to see if I can find any clues in his room, something to cast from, maybe.”

  “I’d hold off,” Vega said.

  “Why?”

  “Stan’s already been in his room. It was cleaned out.”

  “Cleaned out?”

  “He has some information about Brian you should hear.”

  Vega and Bree-Yark had moved the show from the women’s bathroom to Stan’s office suite. I retrieved Tabitha en route—who was none too happy about having been left in the conference room and let me know it—and arrived to find two officers guarding the door. They recognized me and allowed me past.

  Inside, Stan was sitting at a table, Vega standing across from him with her arms folded. The fae had been seated on the couch. Bree-Yark was holding his weapon on them, even though the cold-iron cuffs were doing their job. The three were cast in sickly shades of blue, in no condition to do anything.

  Tabitha peered around the room. “I feel like I missed something.”

  As I walked up to the table, Stan looked over with a harrowed face. “Did you find him?”

  He’d obviously been listening while Vega put out the APB on Brian Lutz.

  “No,” I said. “When I left the bathroom earlier, you said Brian was behind the conjurings. What did you mean?”

  “Exactly that,” he said, his voice rising. “He’s behind them. We need to find him.”

  Was Stan the one who’d had me called that morning, insisting I come to the hotel?

  When he tried to stand, Vega pushed him back down. “Why don’t you tell Everson what you were doing in Brian’s room,” she said.

  “I was looking for a bone.”

  “A bone?” I repeated.

  “A dragon bone.” He sighed. “Brian is going to try to summon an ancient dragon called Drage the Wise.”

  “That name’s on their manifesto,” I said, pulling out the envelope the member of the Military Federation of the Dragon had given to me at the parade. I removed the sheet of paper and skimmed it. “‘Drage ruled with ultimate Wisdom, Power, and Justice. Indeed, He was the purest expression of Leadership this World has ever known. But rejoice. His Return has been foretold. He will rise to cleanse the Earth in Fire. He will commence the Red Era—a New Dawn. A Second Golden Age will follow.’”

  “That’s the one,” Stan said. “And Brian intends to do it.”

  I lowered the piece of paper. “Are you saying there’s something to this?”

  Stan took a deep breath and released it through his nose. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a dragon nut. Probably started the first time I heard the song Puff the Magic Dragon. The whole idea of being friends with a dragon just blew my mind. When Dungeons and Dragons first hit the shelves, I didn’t want to be a fighter or a magic-user—no offense. I wanted to be a dragon. You can imagine how stoked I was when they came out with the half-dragon player in the DMG three-point-five edition.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about but nodded to keep him going.

  “When I helped organize the first Epic Con back in 2000, I met a number of others who shared my passion. Together, we started an online forum: Dragon Com. Get it? The forum was a place to pool our knowledge and resources. Through hired sages, we built a comprehensive history of dragonkind across the ages. It was the most awesome thing I’ve ever been a part of.” The joy left his face. “Then Brian Lutz joined the forum.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “About a year ago. Man, he was the kind of member you hope doesn’t end up on your forum. Rude, delusional, arrogant—just an all-around jerk. He claimed to be a high-level magic-user and dragon master. He’d pick fights over this or that in the history, saying he had forgotten more about dragons than the rest of us would ever know. Guy wasn’t quite put together. But he never crossed the line into ban-able territory, and all the high-and-mighty aside, he was basically harmless. Or so we thought.”

  “What changed?” I asked.

  “Well, it seemed the guy had money, because he was buying artifacts with supposedly magical properties, posting images of them on the forum. It was obvious the stuff was crap. He took a lot of ridicule for it too. When he went silent for a month, we thought we were finally rid of the guy. But then he comes back with a photo of a new artifact—a ‘game-changer’ he calls it. We wrote him off, but then he starts posting videos of himself manipulating fire. The tricks were small at first, dancing flames between his fingers, that sort of thing, but they started getting bigger, more complex. One of our forum administrators is a video editor. She said Brian wasn’t doctoring the footage. The demonstrations finally reached a point where he’d either hired a special-effects expert, or he was actually manipulating fire.”

  I thought about the kinds of items that would be able to instill a non-magic-user with flame-controlling abilities but couldn’t come up with any off the top of my head.

  “He said he was working up to conjuring a dragon,” Stan continued. “About that time, his videos caught the interest of another user, someone wh
o posted as ‘Cameo.’ He argued that Brian lacked the power to control a dragon.”

  “That’s true enough,” I remarked.

  “They went back and forth. Finally, Cameo said if Brian was serious about conjuring a dragon, he had something Brian could use. Then both of them went silent. After a while, curiosity and this sick feeling in the pit of my gut got the better of me. I used my administrator access to check out their private inboxes. Sure enough, they’d had a lengthy exchange that they later deleted, but it remained in the administrative archives. Cameo started out claiming he had a magic gauntlet that could control dragons.”

  I thought about the guy in the parade flanking Brian, wearing the ornate gauntlet.

  “Brian was doubtful,” Stan went on, “but it looked like they got together, ran some tests, summoned some lesser draconic creatures. Over the course of their exchanges, they started opening up about their personal lives. Brian was a software developer who had been forced to sell his share of his company over ‘creative differences,’ he called them. His wife left him around the same time. ”

  “That’s on his background check,” Vega said, consulting her phone. “He was arrested for harassing his ex-wife and threatening to blow up his former company. Judge ordered a psych eval. He did six months at a mental hospital in lieu of jail time.”

  “Sounds about right,” Stan said. “Cameo was in pretty bad shape himself. He graduated college right before the Crash and never found work. Been drowning in debt ever since. They both sounded isolated, angry. They talked more and more about the Lucero Millennium, the Golden Age of Dragons, and in particular about Drage the Wise. They were convinced that the kind of injustices they’d suffered would never have happened under Drage’s rule.”

  “And thus was born the Military Federation of the Dragon,” I said.

  “Yeah, they wrote their manifesto, put up a website, and started recruiting. Harmless stuff until the discussion turned to trying to summon Drage. Thanks to our work at Dragon Com, they knew Drage the Wise had been murdered by a cabal of dragons in what’s now Glogow, Poland. They planned an excavation to recover a bone to conjure from. That’s when they deleted their exchange on the forum. Not long after, they claimed on their website that the excavation had been a success. They then began organizing a meetup here at Epic Con, where they would summon Drage, ushering in the Red Era and the second Golden Age.”