by Al K. Line
"Can't have it without. I don't hold with this new-fangled notion of just having salt, that's not right that ain't."
"Absolutely. But, er, that was quick."
"Quick! I'll have you know back when I was a lass and serving the old Heads, oh must be three hundred years ago now, I'd have their food in front of them before they'd even finished asking for it. I'm old now but I do my best. You enjoy, love. Anything else, just call me on the magic box."
She smiled sweetly, patted my head, then left.
Dancer rolled his eyes, Mithnite nicked a fry so I slapped his hand. "Oi, they're mine."
"Enough! What are you doing here? What's happening?"
"Tell him," I said through a mouthful of food. Damn, it was a fine burger.
"You tell him your bit so I know exactly what's happened, then I'll tell." Mithnite sagged more, almost lying on the floor now.
"Okay, but I'm going to have to eat this first."
For five minutes the two men stared at me while I ate, but it didn't stop me and I enjoyed every last mouthful.
Then I told my tale of twins and ice cream and Kim and dogs and Intus and the rest.
"You utter dick," said Dancer.
"Am not. It was an accident. Sort of."
"So tell us," said Dancer.
So he did, and Dancer was right. Mithnite was a dick.
Dreams of Being Human
Reluctantly, Mithnite told us the whole sorry story, at least inasmuch as he knew it. Some parts were vague, others he couldn't recall at all, but he remembered more than enough for it to make sense, if escaping from the netherworlds and becoming a human wizard can make sense. I hated to admit it, but he'd handled the whole thing surprisingly well considering for most of his life he had no idea who, or what he was. His human life, not his other, immortal life.
Mithnite kept the story of his childhood vague bordering on silent, saying only that his parents weren't the most loving and he couldn't wait to get away, which he did as soon as he could. He went through a hard time but finally found a family of sorts within the magical community. He got a mentor, a teacher, an old and powerful wizard who lived on the outskirts of the city and took in a few boys every few decades, teaching them how to become wizards.
Under such conditions he flourished. Loved the study, the passion, the wildness, the power, the tapping into the mysteries of the universe, and pretty much anything to do with the Hidden world. He studied hard and practiced whenever he could. Finally, after feeling alone and insignificant for so long, he felt at peace.
Then he began to have strange dreams, which turned to nightmares, finally becoming waking dreams he came to understand were flashbacks to a time that couldn't have been possible in a place he knew existed because he'd summoned demons, albeit of the lesser kind, from the dark places. Mithnite grew increasingly agitated and his teacher became increasingly erratic which further stressed Mithnite out.
Then there was an incident at his teacher's home. The old guy lost the plot and his violent and strict nature exploded in a vicious assault. One of the other students was killed. The man was unstable and Mithnite left. Now homeless, and without a mentor, his mood darkened along with his memories.
What had begun as a nagging suspicion that he wasn't exactly who he thought he was became something else. He'd had a whole other existence away from this place, he was something else and had bullied his way into human affairs when he wasn't meant to do so.
He sank deeper into a funk but pushed on through, trying his best to keep on top of things and keep practicing. It was around this time that Faz found out what had happened with his teacher and offered him a place to stay with us.
It wasn't long before he was caught up in all kinds of craziness with us, and each adventure, each interaction with the Hidden of this world and the many others, unlocked something further in him until he finally knew for sure that he was no human. Or he was, but he never used to be, discovering abilities within himself that frightened him but also allowed him to help his friends when they needed it.
He could step between the worlds, pull aside the veil and walk through. It was hard, and tiring, but he could do things most Hidden strove to achieve for decades if not a lifetime.
It scared the shit out of him.
But he didn't tell anyone for fear of being cast out, for fear of being made to return. He was sure that if he ever told his story then that would somehow bring down retribution and he'd be gone, snuffed out. He wasn't even sure if he'd return to the life he'd once had or if that would be it, an end to everything.
It still seemed like a dream to him; he couldn't reconcile the spotty memories he had with the life he now led. It was too disparate. On the one hand he was flesh and blood, albeit with a connection to the Empty, on the other he was this thing, this creature of other, darker places, where humans are punished and tormented, or suffer to make good on the lives they abused. Mithnite shuddered as he told us that in extreme cases they're made to suffer for an eternity.
He was a Creator, but he recalled enough to know it was no glamorous job designing planes of the afterlife. No, he cleaned up the breaks in the system, the fractures between the infinite worlds created for each and every individual.
His role was to rebuild the broken bits, or patch them up, and as far as he knew that's what he'd always done, forever. Since humanity first walked the earth and became aware of what they were doing, that sometimes they did good and sometimes they did bad, Mithnite had popped into existence and spent his time under the tutelage, then the instruction, of Kim, doing as he was told in his own kind of hell.
Maybe it was hell, maybe it was a punishment. He said he'd been over and over it endless times, wondered if the whole thing was a sick joke and he'd died on earth and was living a hell of eternal mopping up of the problems in the endless hells and that was his own purgatory. Or maybe him being back as a man named Mithnite was part of it, and it was all a test, or a punishment. To be haunted by his past and allowed to believe he'd found a way to get a second chance, only for it to all be taken from him. That one day he'd wake up back down there in some nasty place and be laughed at for believing he could ever have the chance to be happy again.
"I don't think so," said Dancer.
"But it could be. I could be dead and this is just an elaborate setup to give me hope. Then it's snatched away and I'll be somewhere gross. I bet a Creator is sitting in a room somewhere right now feeling smug because he knows it's all almost over."
"It doesn't work like that. I should know, I can raise the dead."
Mithnite wiped his eyes and leaned forward in his chair. "How does that help me?"
"Because I have spoken to the dead, on numerous occasions, and one thing I know for sure is that those in hell, or any of the afterlives, good, bad, or indifferent, they all know where they are and why. There are no tricks involved, the system doesn't run like that, and trust me, there is a system, an inviolate one. You die and then you get what you deserve. It's cruel but not as cruel as you're thinking. Still one hell of a story though."
"So this is real?"
"It's real. Nobody's playing games with you, Mithnite." Dancer was surprisingly calm and gentle with him, didn't go off the rails for putting us in a dangerous predicament, for coming into our lives and complicating things. He was kind and understanding.
"So you're here, and it's real, and you escaped that other place, the job you had. That's good, right?" I asked, smiling at him, my heart breaking for the pain and the hope I saw in his eyes.
And then it was all dashed as he understood, Dancer's words revealing a truth just as hard to accept. "So that means this is real, this is me now, and they want to take me back. That just makes it worse. Now there's more to lose than ever."
"We won't let them," said Dancer. This was way beyond his remit, way beyond what he had to do and certainly beyond anything a Head should involve himself in when his Ward was out of control and everything stood on a knife's edge as it was.
"
Really?" asked Mithnite, head shooting up.
"You mean it?" I asked, my hopes lifting to think there was a chance Mithnite could stay.
"As long as you two clean up this damn mess, I give you my word I'll do all I can to ensure Mithnite gets to live as a human until he's a senile old wizard with a beard down to his knees."
"Yes!" Mithnite punched the air.
I groaned, as somehow this mess had resulted in me getting a temporary partner. Not good. I wanted to do this on my own, not have a reincarnated demon janitor as my help. No offense intended, of course.
The ceiling shook and dust drifted lazily down into a room untouched by sunlight. Why the hell had Dancer chosen a bloody bunker as HQ? I felt like I'd already been entombed. What was worse, I kind of liked it.
How to Escape Hell
"What I want to know," I said, partly out of morbid curiosity, partly just in case the knowledge would come in handy for my own afterlife, "is how exactly did you get out?"
We all stared up at the ceiling as more dust drifted down, and I wondered if the troll could break through. Dancer didn't look overly concerned, more curious than anything, which put my mind at ease.
"Um, promise you won't laugh?" said Mithnite, looking embarrassed.
"Nope," I said, thinking he deserved this.
"If I laugh it'll only be because it's damn funny," said Dancer, not known for his mirth.
"Then I'm not gonna tell," said Mithnite glumly, worry lines on his young, fresh skin.
"If you want our help then you'll tell." Dancer winked at me but stared hard at Mithnite when he looked up.
"Fine. But you gotta understand I can't remember it all. Most of it's kind of fuzzy and there are a lot of gaps in my memory."
"Just get on with it. There are other things happening in case you've forgotten," warned Dancer.
"Okay, so, I was given a job by Kim. A repair where two afterlives were bleeding into each other. Both had millions, maybe billions of souls in, and I had to go make sure they remained separate, no contamination. One place, time was so slow it almost ran backwards, this was the punishment. Not sure why it was appropriate but anyway. Every movement, every action, every word, everything you did, it was all slowed down so the folks in there were frustrated beyond belief, hated that every move they made gave them an eternity to think about other stuff."
"Probably for the impatient people," I mused.
"Maybe," said Mithnite. "Anyway, they were contaminating this other place where it was the opposite. Everything was rushed and people whizzed about like crazies. Every time they did something, said something, even thought something, it would go by so fast the whole vast world was nothing but a blur. You couldn't make sense of it."
"For the lazy?" wondered Dancer.
"Could be. There was a problem, something was amiss and energies from one place were leaking into the other and vice-versa. I had to go seal the gap, do a full repair, no shortcuts. And while I was there, I noticed that some of the people close to this break were disappearing, just popping out of existence. That doesn't happen. You don't get out like that, it's not how it works."
"Let me guess," I said, knowing Mithnite well enough. "You couldn't resist, could you? Wanted to see what happened?"
"Yeah, something like that," he grinned. "I watched them and it seemed like they were getting caught up in the conflicting energies, and things somehow overloaded the system, like it all broke down and as the rules were broken they simply couldn't be there any more. A paradox, I guess." Mithnite shrugged his shoulders, less concerned with the why than the how.
"To be honest, I figured it would send them somewhere else, a different afterlife, but this was the first time I'd ever seen a problem that worked like this. So I wondered what would happen, where I'd go. I, er, well I went to check it out. Stepped right into the middle of the meeting of the two places where the energy was at its wildest, and poof, I was gone. Next thing I knew I was getting these weird dreams here as a student and the rest is... you know the rest."
"You found an area where the rules didn't work, where all realities collided and as the, okay, I'm winging this, as the universe didn't know where to put you or what to do with you as this was unheard of, it sent you somewhere handy, sent your soul to a place it could live with, allow everything to carry on functioning." That made sense to me. Sort of.
"I didn't even know there was reincarnation, we didn't get to find out what happened after people left the places we maintained," said Mithnite.
"A lot of people don't get reincarnated."
"What happens to them?" I asked, genuinely interested, obviously.
"Other stuff," said Dancer, grimacing.
I figured it was best not to ask; he'd seen too much of the people he resurrected for me to believe it was anything good.
"Okay, so your boss is after you and you don't want your old job back. Get busy with Kate on this and I'll try to figure something out. But if you meet Kim again, and I'm sure you will, just do what all the best enforcers do."
"What's that?" I asked.
"You run away. You run away bloody fast."
On the Hunt
The crowd soon left, their impromptu act of aggression dissipating as quickly as it had formed. With Mithnite in tow, I left nervously through the front door, wary of trolls or angry dwarves keen to practice their axe throwing. All quiet.
Until now things had felt almost like a game, me running around like a kid suddenly given crazy superpowers, feeling invincible and slapping around untold Hidden, but it all felt worryingly real. Not only could this lead to casualties on the Hidden side but Regulars could easily get caught in the magical crossfire. This kind of focused anger could blow our world apart, create animosity and feuds that could run for centuries if it wasn't dealt with fast and a satisfactory resolution found.
With Mithnite now a pressing concern, I felt weighed down and out of my depth, torn between trying to do something to ensure he got to stay with us and leaving the matter to Dancer while I focused on my job. As we walked through the night back to the city, I tried to get my emotions in check and focus on what I knew. It didn't take long to organize my thoughts because the list was very short.
All I had to go on was the actions of the magical miscreants, no leads and nobody I could go to who could produce the answers I sought. So what to do?
"Got any ideas?" I asked Mithnite.
"About stopping this chaos?"
"Yes, unless you'd rather go deal with Kim and his kids instead? And his dog?"
Mithnite shuddered. "Nah, let's leave that to Dancer. He said he'd find a way to help. I trust him."
Strangely, so did I. He was an odd character, no doubt, and far from what he seemed. Much of how he presented himself was little more than an act, but I knew and trusted him, even with my life and Mithnite's. He'd find a way if he possibly could so we had to help by sorting out this mess. "Agreed. So, ideas?"
"Sorry, this is way over my head."
I gave Mithnite a smile, trying to tell him it was okay and that we'd sort it, sort everything, but I didn't feel that way. How did Faz deal with these kind of situations? I thought back over the countless jobs he'd been involved in since we first met. It usually started with a vague, tenuous lead and he took it from there, following up on magical trails or doing the rounds of contacts until he smelled something fishy. Then he bashed a few heads and people bashed his and then he was on the case. There'd be a bad guy to chase down and usually that involved a lot of convoluted craziness until finally there was a showdown and he emerged victorious.
I'd already had a number of run-ins, starting with the goblin at the traffic lights, the scrum at Madge's, and the chaos at the Hidden Club. What did they all have in common?
"Bloody goblins."
"Eh?"
"The goblins. Everywhere I've gone, they've been the ones at the heart of this. Starting the trouble. I got jumped by one, at Madge's one kicked things off by attacking a troll, and at the Hidden Club they wer
e pretty keen to start a fight too."
"That's what they're always like," said Mithnite dismissively.
"No, they're normally a lot more sneaky. Sure, they start fights all the time, but not like this, not when it doesn't look like they can win. They may be stupid but they aren't that stupid."
"They are, they're idiots."
"That's what many think, but I know them, know what they're like. They're sneaky, and they've got brains, they just choose not to use them very often. But goblins are intelligent. You only see the violent side of them, but they're the best chefs in the country, hold all the top positions. That's why chefs are renowned for being so mean and bossy, the goblin nature comes out even when working with Regulars. And they can fix anything, love tinkering with machines, old ones, and can build no end of cool stuff. Most motorized inventions are down to them. They're smart all right."
"If you say so." Mithnite didn't seem overly impressed but I knew I was right.
"Okay, time to get back to the city and get the car. We've got some green gits to go visit." I patted my shoulders and after a lot of eyebrow waggling on both parts Mithnite reluctantly hopped on.
By the time we got there I fancied another burger or three, but everything was closed and the city was deserted. Even the night crawlers were home in bed now.
But not me, I was just getting started.
Just Warming Up
The car was freezing so we sat for a few minutes, relaxing into the leather while the heater blasted us. Mithnite was thankfully quiet so it gave me some time to think and go over again the events that had got me this far.
Whichever way I looked at it, there were goblins involved in this and they were more brazen than ever. Sure, they were prone to starting fights over the slightest of perceived insults, made worse by the fact there was so much about them ripe for making jokes, and they were touchy about their appearance, but even they knew when to draw the line—they drew it at trolls and even vampires.
Although, so did everyone else. But at the moment, every Hidden species in the city was more than happy to try to bash my head in with any available item. The goblins had been different, the prime motivators. As if they had an extra boost of confidence and didn't have even a scrap of fear left in their systems.
