Maybe I should just start updating the story on Mondays? Honestly this totally slipped my mind yesterday even though it was ready to go. Hope everyone enjoys chapter 5 - First Quest. Chapter Six - Pederson coming up next week from Plotgap Publishing. - Josh Kemp
Christopher Chance: Sorcerer's Assistant - First Quest
The
next six months went by at a snail’s pace.
Days blurred into days, and little broke up the monotony. I had been thrust, kicking and screaming,
into a new world. For a good long while
I wasn’t sure if it had been the best thing for me or not. Martin was, in equal parts, a madman,
magician and philanthropist in my eyes at the time. I wasn’t sure if he was going to kill me or
enslave me with another spell or if he really was as good as his word and had
just been playing it safe with me. My
only real recourse in the situation was to learn EVERYTHING I could about the
supernatural world I was now a part of. When
he was around, Martin was only too happy to help.
We
relocated to his mansion. It took me
less than an hour to get the things that I actually cared about from my crap
apartment. I had a good bitter laugh
over that as we drove away. My new home
was an enormous, Victorian structure near Boston. It was all enormous elegant spaces and high
pointy windows. There was more than enough room for twenty Martins to live
comfortably together. With only two of
us the place felt like solitary confinement.
A
non-functional TV that looked to have been built sometime in the fifties and
scratchy radios scattered in odd rooms were about the only semblances of
“modern” living to be found throughout the masion. There was a garden with an extensive set of
neatly landscaped paths. There was,
however, no basketball court, tennis
court or anything else I might have entertained myself with. Martin himself was frequently absent,
jetsetting across the nation to one supernatural emergency or another. So basically what I am getting at is that I
got a lot of reading done.
I still
had what I consider a healthy level of paranoia about Darius, the demon I’d so recently
ticked off. Martin’s assurances aside I
wasn’t comfortable with the thought of something like that looking for me, even
casually. The reading I was doing on the
subject of demons was definitely not helping, and so I wasn’t all too excited
to be seen out and about in Boston. So I
read more.
Martin had libraries upon libraries
of books stored in the place, some of them original and unique. You could find the strangest books in there,
everything from treatises on Faeries and Egyptian Masonic rituals to modern
medical text with arcane annotations in the edges. There were even some scrolls of hide, wrapped around
golden rods that I was too terrified to handle.
All of this was located in his expansive collection. At first it was more than a little
overwhelming. Martin had never put any
sort of organizational system into place after he moved to America, since he’d
never had any intention of taking on another apprentice. I was not an apprentice, rather some sort of
strange middle ground.
Still,
I dove in as best I could, starting with a few slim books that Martin
recommended as helpful for beginners. From
there the whole collection just sort of fell into place bit by bit. There were several tomes and treatises
mentioned in the books I first read, and with a little leg work I managed to
pull most of them from Martin’s collection.
These gave me some new questions, so I went through the books until I
found a likely one and I read that too.
I read like a fiend. I think that
was the point of cooping me up alone in that mansion. Well I only half think so. I’m not sure even Martin plans that well
though.
Planned
or not, at the end of six months I had a rough working understanding of Magic,
some of the more common entities I might run across, and a crash course in
defending myself from them long enough to run away. I also had a newfound respect for exactly how
much I was going to have to learn.
It was
just about then that Martin came back, half the hair on his head, beard
included, singed off of his face. He did
not take my commentary with good humor, and soon shaved the remainder of his
patchwork face. While doing so Martin
grumpily commented “You have no idea boy, no idea at all, the difficulties one
must undergo to grow a beard. At least a
good beard, a wizardly beard.” I couldn’t help but laugh at the whole
process.
After that though, he was right into business. There were tests he wanted to run, blood
samples he needed, hair clippings, fingernail clippings, urine samples. It was sort of like going to the proctologist
in its uncomfortable intimacy. Luckily
that phase didn’t last too long.
Within
a week he made it official. I had no
wizardly talent, and no magical proclivities that he could see. On the plus side he did declare me fairly
strong and quick, of decent intelligence, and “the most stubborn jackass I’ve
ever been cursed with.” But he said it
in a sort of loving way.
Once
that was over, life was actually pretty amazing for all of a month. I ate better than I ever had in my life,
lived in a mansion and learned magical things that all seemed very grand and
adventurous in a vague kind of way. My
brush with Darius seemed far away, distant and a bit unreal, despite my current
employment in the service of a wizard.
That all lasted until March.
It had been raining consistently
for some time. Weeks of unrelenting
drizzle and gray skies were not uncommon for the season, and I was more
thankful for the patches of sun we had been getting than I was upset at the
moist atmosphere. The particular day
Martin called me into his study, one of the few rooms of his mansion that I was
not allowed complete access to. It was
situated on the third floor in a corner of the sprawling manor and overlooked
gardens below.
I knocked on the door, just a quick
rap before twisting the knob myself and entering. Martin stood at the window, distracted by
some unknown sight in the Garden below. “Damnit
Desmond,” He muttered softly enough I don’t think I was supposed to hear
him. “Who said you could come in?” he
barked at me.
“Oh, sorry Martin. Let me just go back to my rooms and await the
almighty wizard’s summons once more.” So
I’m a bit disrespectful of authority, sue me.
“Oh… It’s nothing terribly
important, simply your first quest.” He
grinned when he said that, something childlike and impishness breaking free
from his wrinkled face.
“Quest? What’s this about quests? I’ve been doing well on the books and stuff,
haven’t I?”
“Yes, Christopher, on the books you
have been doing fine. However life is
not lived in books, as you well know. Currently,
I have business in South America, business that can only wait a short period of
time. Nearby I have detected the
presence of a rogue earth elemental that is playing hell with the town of
Pederson in Missouri. I will need you to
deal with the elemental before it causes any more difficulties or disrupts one
of my wards.” When he finished speaking,
Martin strode to the end table that rested by a heavily cushioned Lazy Boy and
began gathering a few papers from it.
His manner suggested he believed our conversation was finished.
“Uh Martin… what are you talking
about? You said it yourself, I don’t
have any kind of magic. What the hell do
you expect me to do against an earth elemental all by myself? Do you know what those things can do?”
“Yes, Christopher, I know precisely
what they can do. You are supposed to
know that as well. Or have you been very
cleverly faking your studiousness of the past several months?” Martin straightened from gathering the papers
and eyed me from beneath a steeply arched eyebrow.
Damn old man had me there. “Well it can cause tremors, whole quakes if
it is powerful enough, shift rocks or piles of rocks, move and manipulate
basically anything made of rock or dirt.
Oh, and in their physical form they are ungodly strong.”
“Accurate enough, if slightly less
than eloquently stated. So, how would
you go about handling such a creature?”
Somehow I sensed a trap, and I definitely didn’t like it.
“Well… I, unlike you, would
probably have to lay out a big summoning circle, get some mystical mumbo jumbo
set up from someone who did have a spark of magic in them and lure the beast into
the trap. Once it was in a circle I’d
probably have to figure out some more mumbo jumbo to get it into an amulet or
ring. Either that or appease it. Or find whoever summoned it and make them
send it back. Or I could kill them, I
guess, but you know me. I’m not so much
the cold blooded type. Hey Martin, why
do you think people always store spirits in jewelry?” I realized I was babbling and my mouth shut
with a click of tooth on tooth. Martin
was either happy with my answer or entertained by it. Either way he was smiling ear to ear.
“I feel, my good Christopher, that
you have proposed a number of excellent options. Do be sure to inform me how they work out in
Pederson upon my return. You have your
keys for the home and access to your discretionary fund. This should be more than ample to see you on
your way to Pederson. As I stated
earlier, time is of the essence on my own venture. Until we meet again.”
With
that Martin literally vanished. I didn’t
know at the time that teleporting around expends a vast amount of energy. He probably just turned himself invisible and
walked out of the room. Wizards, I tell
you.
That
night was the first and only night I ever tried to resist an order Martin gave
me. Still frightened about the idea of
confronting a spirit on my own I determined that I would stay at the mansion
and wait until Martin returned in a more reasonable mood. Turns out that was a big mistake.
It
started out as just a little bit of a headache.
I didn’t think much of it. Before
the sun had set that night I was feeling my bones grind every time I shifted
and my head felt like it was weighted with a million tons of constantly
crashing gravel. As each hour passed the
feelings got worse. Soon all I could do
was lay in bed moaning piteously as every inch of my body quivered from
throbbing pains. At one point my addled
mind pondered if this was from the geas laid upon me by Martin. No sooner had I thought of going on the mission than all of my symptoms faded. It was so dramatic and sudden that I couldn’t
help but take notice.
I
experimented with it for the rest of the night.
What a hellaciously miserable time that was. Actively resisting the compulsion proved to
bring on effects much more suddenly and sharply. Thanks to my bull headed refusal to accept
defeat I finally collapsed into sleep a
miserable, shuddering and sweat sogged mass, determined to get on a plane to
Pederson as soon as humanly possible when I woke.
