Greysons of Grimoire

by Tpaul Homdrom

  Fae had to admit, it looked pretty cool.

  Their bassist and keyboardist had taken the singer’s spot. With no instrument in hand, she stood with her hands on the microphone stand, eyes closed, waiting for the time to sing.

  Falling Stars was made up of triplets, but they weren’t identical. They each had very similar face shapes and eyes, but their hair came in three separate colors. The guitarist was blonde, while the girl now standing at the mic stand had hair that was, strangely enough, dark blue. She wore it deceptively short, swept to one side so that it looked longer and covered half of her face. The drummer, sitting back behind them and gulping from a water bottle, had red hair in a pixie cut spiked up. It suited her — she had a spunky attitude, was always grinning and in frantic motion as she wailed away on the drums. It was a wonder that she could also contribute to the harmonic vocals while drumming with such intensity.

  Fae wasn’t sure it was biologically possible for three children from the same parents to have such wildly different hair colors. Hadn’t she learned that genetic-hereditary stuff in high school biology? Maybe they dyed their hair, but it looked too natural for that, and their eyebrows matched their hair color.

  Nobody dyes their eyebrows, do they?

  With those odd thoughts crossing Fae’s mind, the blue-haired girl began to sing.

  Looking at her sister, Fae saw that Shana was completely enchanted. It wasn’t surprising. The current singer didn’t normally carry the melody, so her voice didn’t get the spotlight much. But when she did… wow.

  She didn’t have a voice suited much to the poppy, upbeat tunes, or at least not to the melody. But on a slow, emotional ballad like this one, her voice was the star of the show. Deeper than her sisters’, she sang with an openness and vulnerability that fit the lyrics she sang. There was a power to her voice, but it wasn’t one that jumped out to the forefront or overwhelmed other instruments. It ran as an undercurrent, like the bass that she usually played — a great supporting role that you’d never expect to be suited for the center of the stage.

  Yet out she sang. Eyes closed, her voice carried throughout Grim Night’s, and all conversation ceased. Her sister played the guitar sparingly, so that there really was very little save for her voice ringing out. It was a sound that came from deep within, washing over the audience, a melodic tide that pulled at all in its grasp, inviting them to come in closer, to fully engage in what they were hearing.

  And the lyrics… was this a new song? Shana had mentioned a new one. This must be it. Fae found herself enraptured along with the rest of the audience.

  “Standing at the balance / As leaves start to fall and the chill sinks in

  Holding out a candle / A distant light to guide your return

  Where have you gone now?

  When will you come home?

  Hanging on for you

  All night long”

  The singer stepped back, and the guitar grew louder to fill the space her voice had vacated. An interlude, letting the words hang in the air a moment longer, letting Fae and Shana and the rest of the audience grab hold of them and seek after their meaning. And then she stepped forward once more, raising her voice as the guitar faded to the background.

  “Shining in the moonlight / Seated below a sky of silk thread

  Consciousness comes undone / Your heart wavers in a nest full of dread

  Don’t let go just yet

  Hope rides on the dawn

  Light is coming soon

  To set you free”

  Fae couldn’t place it, but something about the words pulled her in. At first glance, it seemed simple, but… there was a mystery there. She could feel it. As the song came to a close, and the applause faded, the blonde guitarist stepped back up to the microphone.

  “Thanks for coming out to see us tonight!” she called out, smiling a smile that would dazzle and light up even the darkest of hearts. How were her teeth so white and straight? She looked like a movie star. “This is really our favorite place to play, and you’re always so welcoming. We’ll see you next time. Thanks again!”

  With that simple speech, the girls played an instrumental piece as a farewell, and then left the stage.

  “Man, they’re so cool,” Shana said wistfully, staring at the stage in awe.

  Fae smiled. “Yeah,” she said simply. She couldn’t deny that much. They had style in spades.

  “Wow, it’s already midnight,” Shana said, checking her phone. “Guess we should get going, huh?”

  Midnight already? Fae stared at her own phone, and sure enough, it was 12:01. But how? That hadn’t been an hour show… or at least it hadn’t felt like it. Shows by any band that played at Grim Night’s were always thirty minutes or less. Fae had thought it was some kind of rule, though she’d never asked or checked. But Falling Stars had only played six songs. How had that taken up an hour of time?

  “Yeah, I guess we should,” Fae said, standing with her sister. Grim Night’s was clearing out surprisingly quickly, too. Then again, mostly mages frequented the place, and they all knew what midnight meant: Hollow Hour. Fae cast a glance where Caleb and Chelsea had been sitting, but the pair was already in motion, rushing for the door.

  “How did it get so late?” Fae could hear Chelsea asked.

  “Heck if I know,” Caleb replied. “Aren’t these shows usually half an hour?”

  “And they only played, what, six songs?”

  “We are so dead for starting patrol late.”

  Fae felt a bit of relief at her suspicions being confirmed, but… that just made everything weirder.

  However, like every good mage who knew she might end up outside past midnight, Fae had all of her Talismans on hand. If they got in trouble, they’d be all right. With Hunters roaming the city, they probably needn’t worry, but there was always the chance that a Hollow would slip past their patrols.

  “Are you heading straight back to the dorm?” Shana asked as they left the bar.

  “Yeah,” Fae said with a nod. “I still have some homework for tomorrow. Do you want me to walk you back? I know you’re not… that great at magic.”

  Shana seemed shocked at Fae’s offer, and Fae didn’t blame her. She’d made a point of not getting within a five block radius of Greyson manor, and now she was offering to walk her sister the whole way there?

  “Would you really?” Shana asked, hope flooding her tone.

  Fae nodded. “Sure,” she said, looking away. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Thanks, Fae!” Shana grabbed Fae in a hug, startling her. She stood there for several seconds, wrapped up in her sister’s arms, staring wide-eyed at the night sky, struggling with the questions.

  Do I hug her back? How do I hug her back? Where do I put my arms? How hard should I hug her? How long do I hold it? Should I just stand here? Standing here’s really awkward, though. I should probably hug her back… why does that feel like such an awkward thought, too? What do I…

  Wait, what’s that?

  Fae’s eyes had been at work while her mind fretted about the simple act of a hug from her sister. They tracked several shadows moving along the roof of a nearby house. As the shadows began to take in the light, they dropped down from the house to the street, fixing their eyes on the Greyson sisters.

  Weavers!

  Fae pushed Shana away, digging into her pocket for the tablet stylus she used as her primary Talisman. “Stay back, Shana!” Fae called out, raising her stylus, prepared to fight back as the bulbous, menacing spiders began scuttling towards the pair.

  “S-s-spiders!” Shana screamed, trembling.

  “They’re Hollows,” Fae said.

  “Hollows? Where’s Caleb? What do we do?”

  “Just stay behind me,” Fae said, keeping her voice strong and steady.

  It wasn’t easy. She’d never fought Hollows before. She knew the theory, and she had practiced plenty of magic, but… seeing them in person set her heart racing, her blood pumping. She thought she could feel her own hear
tbeat in her brain, pulsing at the inside of her skull. She was sweating, and she worried she might drop her pen as soon as she moved. Meanwhile, the monstrous arachnids were coming closer, and there was no one else around. The streets had cleared alarmingly fast. Fae was the only one standing between these monsters of nightmare and her little sister.

  But…

  “Felix!” shouted out a girl’s voice. Fae looked around, but she didn’t see the speaker anywhere.

  What she did see was more startling than five Weavers coming straight towards her. Not frightening, just… really weird.

  It was a cat. Well, a person with a cat face. But his hands were kind of like cat’s paws, and furry, and his feet had the strange anatomy of a cat’s rear legs, looking like they were standing on tiptoe. But the cat-man was running on two legs, and had proportions more like a human than a cat. He wore a frock coat with flared cuffs, tights, and a scarf around his neck. And he held slim, deadly-sharp rapiers in either of his cat-paw-hands.

  Great Feline Adventures.

  Fae knew about the show, even if she’d only watched it once or twice. The swordsman — swordcat? — charging the Weavers was straight out of that show.

  Except his entire body, and his clothes, were a solid color. A milky orange, he radiated his own light in the midst of the shadows he ran through.

  He’s a Summon.

  All Summons brought into being through Summoning Magic had that same one-tone glow to them. Altair, Shana’s Summon dog, was completely blue, the same shade of blue, all over. His eyes were a solid black, but it was normal for the eyes to be different. Fae had seen a lot of different Summons in her time, and they all had that same glow and coloration to them…

  But she’d never seen a Summon that was a cat-person. Or one that carried swords.

  In a blur, the swordcat was on the Weavers, and he made shockingly short work of them. His swords flashed as he danced through the quintet of arachnids, slicing and thrusting, and within a space of four seconds, the five Weavers were crumbling into dust. Surprisingly, the swordcat didn’t pick up the Drops left behind. Instead, he scanned the area, as if looking for more threats, and then, seemingly satisfied, gave the sisters a nod, then leapt up onto the rooftops and beyond, disappearing from view.

  “What…” Fae said softly, not having any words for what she’d seen.

  “That was Felix!” Shana said in shock and excitement.

  “Who?” Fae asked.

  “Felix Feline Felinosis, First Swordmeowster of the Twelfth Circle!” Shana said all of that gibberish with a look and tone that suggested Fae should know exactly what she was talking about. “You know — from Great Feline Adventures! He’s the greatest swordmeowster in all the realm!”

  “S-swordmeowster?” Fae asked, embarrassed at saying such a ridiculous word.

  “It’s how the Felines say swordmaster,” Shana said simply.

  “Why is his middle name ‘Feline’?”

  “Every single one of the noble cats of GFA has ‘Feline’ in their name. But only the royal family has ‘Feline’ as their last name, since it’s their family name. Most of them have ‘Feline’ as their middle name.”

  Fae groaned internally. The lore was just as cheesy as she’d thought it was. “Okay…” she said slowly. “But… who Summoned it?”

  “Huh?” Shana looked perplexed at the question.

  “You saw how he was colored, right? That’s how all Summons look. Just like Altair. So he wasn’t the character from the show — he was a mage’s Summon.”

  “So there’s a mage that likes GFA enough to make Summons of the characters…” Shana’s eyes lit up. “So cool!”

  Fae turned back to the sight of the Weaver’s Drops. The street was still empty. She didn’t see anyone. But someone had Summoned that “swordmeowster.” And Summons couldn’t function very far from their mage.

  Who was it that had saved their lives?

  And why did they feel the need to pick such an obnoxiously cheesy character to do it with?

  Chapter 10: Questions

  — G —

  “It isn’t just me, right?” Caleb asked. “Howlers aren’t normally this aggressive.”

  “It isn’t just you,” Chelsea replied, blasting flames into the face of a lunging Howler. The hairless, tattooed wolf yelped in pain, but it was committed to its forward momentum, and couldn’t escape before it was burned to ash.

  Caleb sidestepped a Howler that leapt at him from the roof above. He reached out with white, magical chains, wrapping them around the torso of the beast and, with a wave of the arm holding his open pocket watch, slammed the Howler into the wall of the building it had leapt from. Two more Howlers charged from further down the street, and Caleb flung his captive at them, using it like a wrecking ball to smash the two oncoming wolves aside, the Howlers crumpling as they hit the wall of the building opposite the street.

  Bricks came loose from that building, and Caleb winced. He knew the owner of the odds-and-ends store Taro Beyond. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too upset at the property damage Caleb had just inflicted.

  “Maybe don’t turn Howlers into wrecking balls,” Chelsea suggested, surrounding the last Howler still standing with a vortex of flame. With a howl of pain, the monster was destroyed.

  “I thought it would look cool,” Caleb said, as he and Chelsea collected the Drops.

  “It did,” Chelsea said, smirking, “until, you know, you broke Mister Franklin’s wall. But hey, at least you didn’t cave the wall in. Just some surface damage. No big deal.”

  “You’re tremendously comforting.”

  “Instead of chatting, you two could pay more attention,” said a female voice behind Caleb and Chelsea. “You missed three.”

  The speaker was the same age as Chelsea, with red hair tied in a single braid while her bangs were left to hang loose. She wore a long blue pea coat, grey scarf, jeans, and black boots. Her bright blue eyes were her standout feature, seeming to shine from a gaze that rarely betrayed much emotion.

  She pointed behind her, at three Howlers. The beasts were encased entirely in gleaming cerulean ice save for their heads, and they were snapping their jaws, desperate to break free.

  That wouldn’t be easy. The ice was magical, after all.

  “Should I finish them off?” the girl asked.

  “Go for it,” Chelsea said. The girl nodded, and swung her left hand in an arc. The glove on that hand gleamed with white light, and water droplets appeared in the air, floating at different spots above the Howler’s heads. There was a crackling sound, and then the droplets expanded and froze, turning into three foot long icicle spears that ran themselves through the heads of each of the three Howlers with vicious speed.

  Caleb, wincing at the brutal takedown, let out a low whistle. “You are cold, Lorelei,” he said.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “And you’re only about one percent as funny as you think you are,” she shot back.

  Lorelei Frost had been friends with Caleb since high school, and with Chelsea since the girls were still in diapers. When Caleb had found out Lorelei used Ice Magic, he’d tried to tease her, saying, “What, did you choose Ice Magic because your last name is Frost?”

  Her response had been simple: “Yes.”

  That had stopped teenage Caleb in his tracks. What do you do when you’re trying to tease someone in high school and they take it with such poise?

  You become friends with them, of course.

  “We’re not making great time,” Lorelei said. “It’s still ten blocks to the library, correct?”

  “And the streets are just as thick as last night,” Caleb said. The trio started running, sticking to the narrow streets for a few moments before taking a staircase up to a rooftop walkway.

  All around them, the city was flashing with the light of magic at work. It was a beautiful sight. A massive golden falcon flew over Grimoire Academy in the distance. Other smaller, landlocked Summons could be seen leaping around on the rooftops. Water spouted in a
pillar here, magical lightning flashed there, and lights burst into being and then faded away, all illuminating the forms of Hunters in the midst of battle.

  “Caleb,” Chelsea said in a hushed voice, bringing Caleb’s survey of his fellow Hunters to a halt. She and Lorelei were walking while staying low to the rooftops, heading to a wide chimney they could crouch behind. Caleb followed suit.

  “What’s going on?” he asked. Chelsea held a finger to her lips, then pointed down at the courtyard below.

  Caleb’s eyes grew wider and wider the longer he looked where she was pointing.