Alex sighed, easing his glasses upward to massage the bridge of his nose.
“You’re the second person to call me a beggar tonight. And that’s not helping my rotten mood.”
“Oh, no? I apologize for ruining your evening.” The Probationer moved subtly, bringing a non-magic but still deadly Colt 45 up to point at Doom’s face. “Might this improve your mood?”
“Do you know how to…”
The Probationer clicked the safety off deftly.
“…use it?” Alex finished calmly. “You do. But why the big hole?”
“What?”
“I’m just saying, your hole’s caliber is too big.”
The Probationer blinked, looking confused.
“Damn it,” Alex spat. “I’m trying to say you’re a bottom boy. A knob jockey. Been dropping any soap in jail? Hey, stop it, I’m not kiddi—”
“Oh, I got that!” the Probationer yelled. “Are you crazy? I could shoot you right in the—”
Before he could finish, Alex latched his right hand around the student’s wrist, locking it down firmly, and rested his thumb against the trigger. His left hand shoved the muzzle away. Then, using both hands, he jerked it toward himself.
Everything happened faster than the Probationer could blink. Suddenly, there he was, clutching a sprained wrist and staring down the barrel of his gun.
“I told you,” Alex said firmly, no longer clowning around, “I’m in a bad mood. Where’s Bromwoord?”
“H-he t-told m-me n-not t-to l-let a-anyone i-in,” the Probationer stammered.
“Would you be so kind as to make an exception for me?” Alex smiled.
He probably shouldn’t have done that. The smell of cologne and baby cream was instantly complemented by the sharp, sour stench of ammonia. Spreading over the floor between the boy’s feet was a pool of unpleasant-looking liquid.
Oh, wow. Jeremy was much tougher.
“S-s-sure.”
The student pressed something beneath the counter. A part of the wall with a griffin’s head mounted on it (a fake one, of course; just one real griffin’s head would’ve bought half the old man’s shop) slid aside, revealing a passage that led to a staircase spiraling down into a dark cellar.
Dwarves sure do love their caves.
“Good,” Alex nodded.
Letting some magic seep into his hands, he used a bit of mental force to draw a simple pentagram on his palm and then cast a rotting curse.
“These kinds of toys aren’t for kids… They’re not kids’ toys at all. Hell, what am I saying? I sound like an idiot.”
Lamenting the fact that he’d apparently lost his gift for eloquence, Alex headed toward the staircase as the Probationer, still trembling, watched his gun dissolve. It spread over the counter like an odd discoloration in the wood.
Chapter 4
After descending the staircase, Alex found himself in a spacious room that was dimly lit, making it appear much larger than it actually was.
“Dwarves and their caves,” Doom drawled in amusement.
The sloping brick walls were styled to look like natural stone. No baseboards; just gutters with gurgling water.
But that was a necessity, and not merely a designer’s weird flight of fancy. Apart from the small office hidden behind the frosted, bulletproof glass, the room had lots of incomplete and illegal artifacts scattered across oaken tables and bound in metal.
Alex approached one of the artifacts, a knife apparently identical to the one he’d seen in the smuggling shop’s storefront. Considering that the knife he was looking at was made of a rare alloy containing a bit of magic-blocking adamantius, it could easily penetrate protective magic up to the capacity of 100 or even 150 mana points.
The item wasn’t registered, of course, so Alex couldn’t scan it using his lenses.
It was still incomplete, but it was already emitting magic that could actually be sensed, if not from a mile away. And it was right there, in front of Alex.
“Ah,” he drawled, bathing his fingertips in the air above the blade.
They tingled slightly. And he was a Mystic! That made him a relatively strong, mid-tier magic user there in Atlantis and someone like Gandalf the White to the rest of the New Earth world.
Or at least someone like Harry Potter, although that was a series Alex didn’t particularly enjoy. The dark wizards were always defeated.
For long ages, a tingling sensation like the one he was enjoying or an unexplainable feeling of uneasiness had been the only way humans could detect magic.
Small wonder human magic all but died out.
“Alood?” a surprised and very deep voice called out from the depths of the cave.
Alex turned toward the sound. At the anvil, next to the bellows (everything was automated, of course, but it still looked ancient), stood a dwarf, short even by the standards of his race, and shaped like a square: almost as broad in the shoulders as he was tall. He was absolutely bald and even beardless. A fight with the clan he’d been born into had resulted in him being exiled, shaved, and enchanted.
That incident had also set Bromwoord on the crooked path of a smuggler and, ultimately, ended with him residing in High Garden.
“Hi, old man,” Alex waved.
Bromwoord took his gauntlets off and put aside the metal tongs he’d been using to dip another illegally crafted item into a smelly solution.
The tub, which was full of a volatile alchemical compound, was what all the gutters were for. The devil only knew what substances were sloshing around in there, apart from water.
Alex had seen with his own eyes one of the dwarf’s debtors losing his right hand to one of the “decorative” gutters, his manhood very nearly following suit.
“Stones and rocks, Alood! Am I seeing a ghost? What did I do for Black-Bearded Budut to punish me with a visit from your phantom? You were nasty in life, and now that you’re dead… Damnation. I need to call the Inquisition!”
Tossing his leather apron onto the anvil, the dwarf rummaged around in the pockets of his oily track pants, looking for his phone.
“Calm down, Bromie.” Walking over to the dwarf, whose head barely reached his waist, Alex clapped him on the shoulder. It was like slapping a boulder. “It’s me. Good, old Alex Doom, wiser and slightly unshaven.”
Bromwoord recoiled at first. Shifting his gaze back and forth between his shoulder and the visitor, he muttered a curse in the language of the Himalayan dwarves before heading silently into his office.
Pushing open the glass door and climbing up a ladder onto the leather armchair he used when doing business, he opened the upper drawer of his desk and retrieved a dark bottle.
Once he uncorked it, Alex could smell the stunning aroma of dwarven mushroom liqueur, which was priced at 5 credits per ounce.
But he preferred whiskey, and he definitely wasn’t about to drink with a dwarf. Their ability to hold their alcohol was rivaled only by trolls. The strongest trolls.
“Bloody stones and rocks.” After staring at the glass bottle for a bit, Bromwoord took two large gulps straight from it. Alex winced. “The only way anyone’s going to call you good is if they’re comparing you to the Supreme Priest of the Bloody Skull cult. That’s pure orc shit. And old… Spare me, mortal. You haven’t even hit a century yet!”
Alex hummed. If his math was right, Bromwoord had turned 227 the previous month. A dwarf in his prime.
“But I still…” Alex ran his fingers over his stubble. “…have a better beard than you.”
The dwarf squinted at him. To dwarves, the size of their beards mattered just as much as the size of the body part the debtor had almost lost mattered to male humans.
“You bastard, Alood,” he said through gritted teeth. Taking two more swigs of the liqueur, he pointed at a chair. “Sit down.”
The dwarf’s office wasn’t much different from any middle manager’s. A powerful computer sported the bitten apple logo. There was a convenient, multi-functional table, some trinkets were
scattered around the screen, and piles of papers, a landline phone, and other miscellaneous office rubbish completed the picture.
And one of the walls featured the portrait of someone who was obviously his tribe’s chieftain.
Darts were buried in both his eyes.
Bromwoord hated that gray-haired dwarf.
“It’s good to see you, Bromie.” Alex held out his hand.
“I beg to differ, Alood,” the dwarf replied, though he took Alex’s hand in a firm handshake.
Alood. It was the name Bromwoord had given Alex when he was young, altering his original human name the way the dwarves did. He’d started calling him that the moment Alex had tried to steal his boots. Alex’s own boots back then hadn’t just been gaping; they tried to devour everything that crossed their path.
“How long did they put you away for? A lifetime?”
Alex held up three fingers.
“Even more.” The dwarf brought his hand down on the table. “Three lifetimes! What are you doing here then? If you escaped, don’t even think about asking me to hide you. I violated the New Convention once, and now even a glorified baby’s ass like your face has more hair than me. Stones and rocks! Why did you have to come here, Alood? I downed five bottles when they sent you to that island.”
“Because you were happy or sad?”
“Three.”
“Three what?”
“Three because I was happy, two because I was sad,” the dwarf said. “So, did you escape or what?”
“No one has ever escaped from that island, Bromie.”
“You could’ve done it,” he replied with a snort. “You’re crazy, Alood. Only a crazy kid like you would’ve stolen a cat. A cat, stones and rocks!”
Alex rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and muttered a barely audible curse.
“Would you stop that? Is everyone going to keep bringing that bloody cat up until I kick the bucket?”
They fell silent and then laughed aloud. The very next moment, both of them straightened up, staring at each other seriously.
“Why are you here, Doom?”
“You know why, Bromwoord. Before they got me, I left a small notebook at your place. If memory serves, it had three brand-new, top-of-the-line dark magic combat spells, all Mystic level. Inflation has been killer since I’ve behind bars, though I’ll give you a discount since we’re friends—you owe me ninety thousand credits. Thirty per spell.”
Bromwoord tugged at his nonexistent beard thoughtfully and then opened another drawer. Slowly and purposefully, he pulled out a small magic staff covered in so many radiant runes you could barely see the metal surface. He placed it in front of Alex.
[Item: Cold Fire Staff. Item rank: С. Maximum mana generation: 750. Elements: Ice, Fire.]
Wow. He even got a license for it. Alex’s lenses wouldn’t have shown him anything if that hadn’t been the case.
“So, human,” Bromwoord started in a cold, hostile voice. “You came to my home to demand money? I think you forgot your place, Alood. Get out now, or I’ll deflower your ass with this staff. That is, if you didn’t lose your anal virginity on the island.”
Chapter 5
If Alex had been the same person he’d been four years before, he would’ve responded with a full-fledged attack. His Decaying Fire spell would have forced Bromwoord to defend himself, and he would have followed it up with Hellish Lightning, his fastest and most powerful spell.
Seizing the initiative would have bought him enough time to figure out what to do about the damn staff. As his teacher used to say, magic wasn’t like fighting with clubs, where the larger club won. It was a duel with rapiers, the kind of encounter where victory went to the person who was smartest and most skilled.
But he wasn’t the same person. Four long years had gone by.
They may not have been good for his health, physical or mental, but they’d still taught Alex a few things, restraint and prudence chief among them.
The last time he’d checked his magic capacity, the doctor had clocked it at 1132 mana points. That was above the minimum threshold of the Mystic level, which ranged from 1000 to 3000 points.
In other words, Alex was a level eleven Mystic. Not bad at all, even regardless of the fact that he’d reached that level at age 16.
Over the time he’d spent in prison, he couldn’t possibly have lost more than 30 mana points.
But Bromwoord was holding a magic battle staff capable of releasing 750 mana points instantly, unlike Alex’s spells, and it would be using two elements at once. That meant Alex would have to shield himself against both if he wanted to avoid taking damage.
He might have been able to do so if he cast his spells quickly enough, but that was highly unlikely.
He was powerful, not omnipotent.
“What’s the matter, Bromwoord?” Alex sighed. “We used to work together so well. I pulled a few things over on you, you pulled a few things over on me. It may not have been honest from beginning to end, but it was great. Mutually beneficial, too.”
“I’m not going to repeat myself,” the dwarf said through clenched, square teeth. “Get out, Alood. Don’t make me do something I’d hate to do.”
Again, the man Alex had been four years ago would’ve flared up instantly, but the Alex of that day just caught the dwarf’s turn of phrase.
“You’d hate to do it? Why?”
As far as Alex could remember, the dwarf had never been tender-hearted or good-natured. He wouldn’t have been able to keep his business running for so many years in Atlantis’ most crime-ridden district otherwise.
“Try to put yourself in my shoes, Alood. I want my beard back. Stones and rocks, at my age, I should be thinking about a wife! Two wives, even!”
Alex squinted at him. Then he had a flash of insight.
“Was it the Syndicate? Did they get to you?”
“Those human gangsters?” Bromwoord snorted. “If it was them, I’d happily give you your money back, and then I’d also buy that thing poking out of your pocket so seductively. And none of your homophobic jokes, please.”
Alex pulled a small notebook out of his pants pocket. Using ink he’d made from the rubber soles of his prison sneakers, he’d written down about a dozen different spells over the four years.
“Think about it, Bromwoord. This is pretty good stuff right here.” Alex waved the notebook back and forth slowly, then put it down on the table next to Bromwoord. It was close enough for him to see the greedy flash in the dwarf’s square-pupiled eyes. (Dwarves seemed to only have square body parts.) “Dark battle magic. Several curses. Two of them with a bit of demonic magic mixed in. The maximum mana generation goes up to four hundred, enough to pierce any cop’s magic-proof vest.”
“And they’ll get through it?”
“They will,” Doom replied with a nod. “I’d stake my reputation on it, not to mention—”
“Enough!” The dwarf, his staff still aimed at Alex’s face, shook his head like a dog trying to get dry. “Stop trying to change my mind with your tall tales. You had a reputation, Alood, but that was four years ago. There’s new talent on the market now, and law enforcement is really tightening the screws on dark magic and dark magic practitioners. If something like that found its way onto the streets, I’d be arrested in a flash.”
“Why…” Alex didn’t finish his sentence. He looked into the dwarf’s eyes and cursed, loudly and emotionally. A sudden pain stabbed at his heart. It wasn’t a strong one, but it was still unpleasant. “I should have guessed how the prosecutor knew about all my cash flows.”
“You’d have done the same, Alood,” Bromwoord replied with a dismissive wave. “What else could I do? The uniforms leaned on me hard. I’m already bald, and if I were broke, too, I’d spend the rest of my days in some circus gnawing on stones to make humans laugh.”
“So, you sold me, Bromie. You sold me out to avoid inconveniencing yourself.”
“You’d have done the same, dark wizard,” the dwarf s
aid again.
No, I wouldn’t have.
“If you need e-cash that badly, I’ll discount the stuff and—”
“I don’t need it discounted. Not for free. Not even if you pay me!” the dwarf barked. His breathing became ragged, gray vapor burst out of his mouth, and his chest rose and fell like a bellows. Outside his glass-enclosed office, the many magic items and artifacts started to quiver. The staff wasn’t the only argument the dwarf had to back him up there in his workshop. “Don’t you get it, Alood? A little while ago, I got a visit by some men so powerful that…that… Damn you, Alood! Don’t make me do it. I’m asking you in the name of Black-Bearded Budut, don’t force my hand! Please, just leave.”
Alex finally realized what was behind the dwarf’s outburst.
In all their years of illegal activity, all the dozens of deals they’d made with the worst bastards of High Garden, he’d never seen Bromwoord show fear.
Not even once. Until that day.
The most unnerving part was that he wasn’t afraid of Alex. It was the people he’d just mentioned that terrified him.
“Who could have you this scared, Bromie? Who was it?”
“I’m saying this for the third and final time, Doom. Leave.”
For a few moments, they played a silent staring game. As Alex peered at the man—dwarf, rather—his heartbeat gradually slowed.
He should have been used to it by then. He should have accepted that simple truth a long time before.
Dark wizards don’t have friends.
They only have temporary allies and eternal enemies.
“This is the last time we’ll be meeting, Bromwoord, son of Baburd.” Alex stood and went to button up his suit only to realize he wasn’t wearing one. There was no vest or even dress shirt, either. He’d been arrested while jogging in track pants and a T-shirt, and an attorney had brought him the leather jacket he was wearing. It was the only help he’d dared offer. “Because the next time we come face to face, I’m going to kill you.”
His piece said, Alex turned and left the workshop of his old—no, not friend—former business partner, one who was now on the other side of a barricade along with the rest of the world.
Dark Wizard's Case Page 3
