SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Seventeen
It was all Nick could do not to jump up and down and do a few fist pumps into the air and basically act his age. Right there, on the other side of that glass, lay the future of wizardkind.
And they were letting him try it out!
Old Bailey withdrew a key he had secreted away beneath his white un-tucked button down shirt. It was a tiny key. Probably didn’t weigh an ounce. A few paltry grams were all that stood between Nick and the next great weapon in the warlock arsenal. With breath held, Nick watched Bailey insert the minute key into a brass lock at the bottom of the glass cage.
One swift turn and the sides fell open, swinging softly onto the cushioned top of the pillar. A clever lock, Nick thought. He couldn’t figure how it worked in such a manner.
Feet desperate to dance, hands anxious to grasp the weapon, Nick employed all his—admittedly limited—patience as he waited for Bailey to hand him the wand. The old man seemed to be moving in slow motion. What was his problem? Was he doing this on purpose?
Finally, it came to him. With ceremony Nick received the Wizarding Anti-Nemesis Device.
Disappointment.
He’d half expected—and entirely hoped—for some mystical light to wash over him, or perhaps for a gust of wind to ruffle his wet hair and soaked flannel shirt when he took hold of the wand. And yet grasping it, an item both brimming with potential and fraught with possible disaster, Nick found himself in possession of nothing more than a fancy twig engraved with sigils and tipped with a crystal. But for these mystical scribbles and the amethyst stone, it might’ve been any of a dozen small branches he’d stepped on in the forest during his trek here.
Bailey made a ‘go on’ gesture, shooing Nick over to a spot marked out on the floor in chalk. He shuffled over to the spot.
“Go ahead,” Bailey said.
Nick looked over at the opposite end of the room, thirty feet away. There was nothing to look at save for the pillars with their twining wooden vines and a window to the right, letting in a dusky sort of luminescence. “What do I do?”
“Use it,” was all that the master warlock would say.
A glance at Duchaine standing beside old man Bailey proved just as fruitless.
“No hints?” Nick asked, panic starting to creep in, replacing his former giddiness and glee. “No wise parental-figure guidance or sappy ‘believe in yourself’ platitudes?”
No response. What were they thinking, letting an underage journeyman wizard use this experimental weapon without any instructions? It all seemed much too un-warlock like for Nick’s taste. Was it a trap? Was it punishment for all the kerfuffle’s he’d been involved in since arriving at the Institute?
Aware that change was the purpose of both chemical reactions and magical workings, Nick decided to use the wand to make a change in the décor. He set his feet at right angles to each other. A good solid position. Dancers and bowmen alike used it, so why not wand users?
Visions of the altered décor began to fill his mind’s eye as he pointed the wand at one of the pillars across the room. Before settling into his rite, Nick looked over at the two older men.
Both backed up a few steps.
Eyes closed. Every novice knows that closing their eyes promotes focus. With precious little real world knowledge to draw on, Nick conjured up a memory of a dueling scene from The Sorcerer’s Stone. ‘Wand’s at the ready’. Yes, those were the words. With a firm grip, holding it level, Nick directed his will into the wand rather than towards the object of his focus.
It was the wand’s duty to do the focusing; channeling his will into a concentrated stream of effective reality-altering energy.
Heat like a fever coursed through Nick’s body, beginning in his coccygeal plexus, or Chakra One, and gathering potency as it traveled up through each of the successive chakras. By the time he directed the gathered energy from his cerebral cortex, or Crown Chakra, and funneled it into the wand, Nick sensed a change in his astral and physical forms. This was different from their usual workings and incantations, fiercer.
He could feel the energy moving, like a living force inside his body.
This manipulation of his inherent bioplasma took no longer than a moment, though for Nick time seemed to slow down as he worked. All the while he held tightly to his vision. The change he wanted to happen was now as real in his mind as anything in the physical world.
Energies swirled within. Chakra Four, the chakra associated with the air elemental, threatened to burst free all on its own. Designed to integrate the inner and outer worlds, reality with the wizard’s vision, this chakra would determine success or failure.
When he could no longer restrain the pent up force, Nick unleashed his inner energies into the wand, willing the bioplasma to bond with the physical nature of his world to effect a singular change.
Intense focus protected him for one brief moment.
And then reality bit him in the butt.
Carefully harnessed bioplasma and perfectly realized vision flooded into the wood and crystal elements of the wand, as they were meant to—only to backfire a nanosecond later.
Power tore through the wand and scythed through the air, jolting Nick’s hand with half a dozen lightning bolt fingers. He dropped the device. Quicker than thought he was cradling his burned appendage in a fetal position on the floor, his vision of altered décor mutilated into incredible agony and surprise. Fiery worms of pain slithered across his left hand.
Two shadows fell across his prostrate form.
Without releasing his aching hand, Nick glanced up and saw the two warlocks looming over him. They were grinning.
“Why are you smiling?” Nick sneered through the pain. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m okay?”
“You’re talking,” Duchaine said. “That’s a good sign. And you’re clearly not on fire or possessed by a demon—also really good signs. But so you don’t think us completely heartless, how’s your hand?”
“Like you care,” Nick eased up to a seated position and then slowly stood, still clutching his injured appendage.
Of all the indignities he’d suffered, from the Department’s ignorance of him, to its refusal to offer dry clothes, to the warlock’s mysterious refusal to give him hints on how to use the device, the worst was no doubt their joviality at his unfortunate state. They’d clearly expected something like this to happen, but as if this were all some sick prank, they’d failed to warn him.
“You knew this would happen,” he accused.
Bailey nodded. “It happens to anyone who tries that device. In my defense, I did hold out a smidgen of hope that your unique magical signature might prove the exception to the rule.”
“And you?” Nick said, gesturing to Duchaine. “Did you hope I’d be like some chosen one too, or were you just looking for a laugh?”
Duchaine quelled the last of his guffaws. “Look at it like a hazing ritual.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You guys are acting like college dorm dudes. You let me get hurt. What kind of wizards are you, standing by while a kid gets injured? Look at my hand!” For the first time since the incident, Nick glanced down at the hand. It had not, in fact, been burnt. Far more peculiar: it had sprouted a vine tattoo, not unlike the carved woodwork embellishing the room. Unlike a regular tattoo, however, this one was slightly raised.
The warlocks approached. Bailey produced a pince nez, wiped the glass dry on Duchaine’s fresh shirt, nestled them snugly on his nose and proceeded to inspect Nick’s tattoo. Through lenses mimicking the height of fashion circa 1790, he asked Nick: “What spell or enchantment did you attempt to work through the device?”
“I tried to transform the wood vines on that pole into real vines.”
Of the catalogue of responses Bailey could have chosen, the last one Nick expected proved the winner. The master warlock released the tattooed hand and patted Nick on his back.
“Well, perhaps my optimism in your brand of magic was not misplaced after all.”
Duchaine, who had just deposited a stick of gum in his mouth, took in the expression on his superior’s face. “What are you grinning like a loon for?”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “What do you mean by that?”
Still beaming, Bailey said, “Every one of us who have attempted to use this device” here he gestured at the wand, lying burnt, smoking, and abandoned on the floor “received a shock of concentrated bioplasma, just as you did. Some were burned, others actually caught fire, and a few even experienced mystical melees, like their teeth growing, or losing all their hair. But none of their attempted spells worked.”
“Yeah,” Nick grumbled, “and neither did mine.”
“Ah!” Bailey poked a finger at the air. “But there’s the rub. I think it did. Not exactly as you cast it, of course, but what happened to your hand is at least reminiscent of the spell you wove. You see, the device responded to you.” The old man shuffled away from them, muttering to himself. When he returned, he spoke in a low, almost reverent voice. “I believe we were right in bringing you on board, Mr. Hammond. Tell me, what do you think we could do to make the device function properly?”
“Um, well, since it seems to backfire on us,” Nick hazarded a guess, “has anyone considered turning it around and trying to use it that way?” It sounded even dumber out loud than it had as a mere throwaway thought inside his head.
Bailey winked at Duchaine, and then looked at Nick. “A quick study, this one. It took us as a group three days of shocking failures before one of us made that suggestion.”
Beside him, Duchaine puffed out his already impressive chest. “And I paid for that contribution, believe you me.”
“Well,” Nick continued, getting a feel for how they worked things out here. “What if the crystal diode was inserted incorrectly? Would that not make the spells backfire on the user? Or maybe its facets were cut wrong.” As he considered all the possible faults in the device, Nick began to understand just how overwhelming this project really was and just how badly the odds were stacked against the warlocks.
But if they failed to produce a viable wand, and soon, the mythics would overtake them.
“Maybe we should scrap this one altogether and start fresh,” Nick suggested. After a moment of consideration, he added, “Have you guys tried using metal for the shaft, like iron or silver? I know it’s expensive, but in all the lore silver is deadly to fantastic beasts. So if nothing else, you could at least poke them in the eye with the wand. Or have you considered using magnets in place of crystals?” He paused before adding, “Or is that stupid?”
With an uncomfortably intense focus, the two warlocks stood scrutinizing Nick. Bailey ran a ringed hand over his stubble. “He’s getting the hang of it already.”
“I told you he was sharp,” Duchaine said around his gum.
A few more seconds of squirm-inducing scrutiny passed. Finally Bailey elbowed Duchaine. “I think it’s time we brought the boy to meet the Grand Vizier.” He turned and walked out.
Duchaine gestured for Nick to follow him as he shadowed the old man.
As he followed Duchaine, Nick’s stomach growled. He’d skipped breakfast and it had been a long morning. “Can we get some grub on the way? I saw a Pizza Shack downstairs.”
At last, things were looking up.
In hindsight, he should have expected Murphy’s Law to assert itself. As he was slopping along in his soaking shoes behind Duchaine, Nick heard the all-too familiar sound of a dog barking. In a world filled with horrible beasties and phantasmagoric entities, it was good old fashioned canines that shook the boy to his core.
And this one sounded especially big.
On observing a hesitant Nick, Bailey said, “Don’t worry, it’s only Aslan.”
“Aslan?” Nick forced himself to stand straight and shake off his cowardice. Even so, his hand never left the hilt of his athame.
“My familiar,” Bailey explained as a huge shaggy black dog scuttled into the main room. It slammed into the old man, nearly knocking him off his aged feet. While the warlock petted and babied the monstrosity, Nick tried not to tremble.
Still, a silent ‘eep’ might’ve escaped his pursed lips. The dog was much too large to be a normal earthly canine, and its eyes much too red.
In the instant he recognized it as a barg the beastly dog stuck its snout in the air and sucked. Its head darted back down. Crimson pupils were suddenly aimed directly at Nick. Easily three-feet to the shoulders, the barg would stand taller than Nick on its hind legs. Fur bristling, maw pulled back in a growl, it sauntered towards the boy.