SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Forty-Three
“Have we met, then?”
“Yes, long ago.” A tall, wrinkled man emerged from the shadow of the stairway. Half-moon spectacles hung precariously off the end of his nose. Loose black suit swished as he walked; it looked worn and two sizes too large, as if the man had suffered on a cancer diet and had since neglected to update his wardrobe.
Nick whipped out his wand, aimed it at the old man. “Are you the Mythmage?”
Slowly, the old man nodded. “I am.”
Breaths came in slow ragged gasps. The moment had arrived. He finally had the Mythmage at his mercy.
“Did you make me the way I am?” It came out sounding like an accusation.
Long, gnarled fingers entwined as the old wizard clasped his hands in front. “No.” He spoke tediously, carefully enunciating each word as if fearful of making a grammatical mistake.
“You made me a sorcerer!” Nick brandished the wand. The tip began to glow.
“I imbued you with magic. The fact that you have twisted and defiled my gift is hardly my fault.”
As if acting of own accord the wand belched a stream of particle energy. The cerulean fire lanced across the room, taking the old man completely by surprise. Shaken by his actions, Nick hesitated. This was a mistake.
Belying his advanced years, the old man recovered and rolled across the hardwood floor over to a hall stand, out of which he recovered a small round device that reminded Nick of a light saber handle. While Nick conjured the will and the bioplasma necessary to finish off the old man—and strove to avoid using sorcery—the old man unleashed a scything arc of electricity from his own device. Wicked tendrils of light arced off the main stream. Nick received the brunt of the charge directly to his chest despite managing to deflect some of its power with a swish of his wand.
He stumbled backwards. A coat rack caught him in a trust fall embrace, but its stout brass hooks then tried to mangle him. As Nick struggled to get clear of the homicidal coat rack, the old man climbed to his feet and took aim again. This time a more focused beam of light charged out of the device, nearly one-inch in diameter and gunning straight for Nick’s heart.
Nick threw the coat rack aside, raised his wand hand and visualized a force field, not unlike the magnetosphere Mrs. Willowroot had been teaching them about. Earth’s magnetic field, the science on which the wand was based, was invisible until about 1,975 miles up, where it hardened into a compact layer of nearly impenetrable energy.
A faint amethyst light spread out about a foot from the tip of the wand, expanding instantly from wall to wall and from ceiling to ceiling, lighter at the edges where Nick imagined it was weakest.
The old man’s stream struck the shield, where it was filtered into thinner strands of lightning, which promptly tore through the room, scorching the walls and ceiling and melting appliances and furniture wherever they struck, making strident popping sounds with every impact. Half the room was smoking; Nick had bought himself a reprieve. A good thing too, as he was just about drained of chi. He dropped the shield, experiencing instant relief, as if the will and effort to formulate the shield had put a strain on his very soul.
Movement in the smoke.
“Just tell me what you did to me,” Nick said, almost pleading. “Tell me that, and what you got out of the deal with my parents, and I’ll—” he spotted the swirling vision sneaking up out the corner of his left eye, and hoisted the wand without thinking. This time though he summoned an elemental with it, opting for sorcery as if by instinct.
He’d hate himself later.
A sylph directed the air—thick with acrid smoke—towards the old man, pummeling him with the force of a gale wind. While the old man staggered, Nick conjured an image of himself out of the smoke, shaped it, and sent it rushing after the old fart with a flourish of his wand.
The moment was upon him.
Nick stole a few seconds to calm his racing heart and to balance his chakras, thrown out of whack from the nights’ misadventures. The walls, so colorful in rich hues of yellow and tan on his entrance, had lost some of their vibrancy; at the footboards lay a pile of fine gray ash, as if the paint had bled from the walls, been darkened by fierce heat, and finally plummeted in fine particulate matter.
Nick’s wand hand was completely numb, all the way up to his elbow now.
As his illusory smoke-self was being banished by the old man with a wave of a wrinkled-up hand, Nick crossed the foyer. Vaporous limbs vanished in a puff. Smoking torso disappeared without a sound. Nick appeared from behind the conjuration, wand at the ready.
“Tell me why you made me this way!” There was an edge to Nick’s voice that he did not recognize.
Half lying, half leaning against the sideboard, the old man began to laugh. It was dry, hacking laughter and it summoned a rage in Nick that no lie could ever have called forth. “Stop it,” Nick hissed. “Stop laughing at me!” But the old kook just kept on cackling like a hyena hunting its poor deluded antelope prey.
“Tell me why or I kill you now,” Nick shoved the wand forward, and kept going until the tip was digging into an old turkey-wrinkled neck.
Finally the laughter stopped.
Beneath the half-moon spectacles, hanging precariously off the end of the old man’s long nose, lips opened and the truth came out: “I made you this was because I could, because I felt like it, because it’s fun screwing with worlds.” Like a demonic recording the cackling resumed.
Caught off guard by his words, Nick wasn’t ready for the counterattack.
A concentrated dose of living light burst from the old man’s device, striking Nick in his already wounded shoulder and sending him spinning. Struggling to recover his feet, Nick whipped round just in time to lift his wand and deflect a second assault. Particle stream met laser beam, and the two energies burst in a pyrotechnic display that would’ve made Tesla envious.
Amplified light diverged into dozens of lethal bolts, piercing gaping holes in the walls and setting the tapestries aflame. Shocking pops of energy sounded like gunfire in Nick’s ears.
Relentless, the old man stood and unleashed a fresh barrage of staccato bursts. A lightning bolt conjured through some unknown means sizzled by Nick’s face, scorching his cheek. Another jolted right through his leg. Nick fought back, conjuring his own magical fusillade; deadly gouts of bioplasma began to explode from his wand. Though uncertain how he was maintaining this level of return fire—or even remaining standing—Nick continued to fight back.
Each jolt from the old man’s device was met by an equally vicious bout of light. Mini explosions rent the air, fizzling into smoke-signals and further mucking up the already murky foyer. Their reports resounded through the space.
Nick closed his burning eyes and reacted on pure instinct, relying fully now on his Third Eye. Like an automaton his wand hand flicked and swished and slashed at the space before him, deflecting deadly bolts of electricity by releasing his own conjured fire and occasionally crafting electromagnetic shields.
The numbness extended, crawling up into his bicep.
And then the old man screamed and the enemy fire came to a sudden and violent end.
Nick marched across the room, squinting against the acrid smoke. Ah, there he was, the old man who had provided the worst possible response to his queries.
He wasn’t laughing any more. He was bleeding from a dozen spots on his body, smoke gushing where blood leaked. At the threshold of physical, mental, and psychic exhaustion himself, Nick staggered forward and practically cried out the words: “One last chance, old man. Why did you make me this way?”
The prune-wrinkled lips curled upwards as blood seeped out of them. In a hacking gasp the man said, “I didn’t make you this way. You chose this path all on your own . . . sorcerer.”
Nick roughly wiped aside tears mingled with blood and ash. He brought the wand up and poured every last ounce of his will into it. A stream of unbridled power erupted from the tip, shattering its magnetic core and rupturing the very essence of the device’s magical configurations. Lost in the brilliance of the explosion, the old man disintegrated, and Nick dropped to the hardwood floor, utterly spent.
Darkness crept around the edges of his vision. Soon the world was black and there was no more sensation; neither pain nor pleasure nor consciousness of any form.
Precious moments ticked by. A sudden jolt to his system forced his eyelids to rise.
Nick realized he was sitting at a divination table, the oak top emblazoned with a Magic Circle and adorned with unrecognizable runes and sigils. He also discovered that the numbness that had crept up to his elbow was back where it had been on his arrival in the foyer: in his hand, no further.
Before him stood the tall old man, not a scratch on his person, holding the wand limply in his gnarled fingers.