by D. Levesque
“And all the rest?” I ask slowly.
“Yes, all of the races we named off are real. There are others, who did not have the power to create a Portal but came through with one race or another, but yes. A lot to take in, isn’t it?” Lori says, patting my arm reassuringly.
“Yeah,” I say shakily, running my hand through my short wavy blond hair.
“I don’t say this to be cruel, Kevin. But either you will find out you have Magic inside you and you will live and learn all about the different races, or you won’t, and well… You know what my father already said,” she says, looking directly at me.
“Yeah. But even if I have this Magic inside me, I still have cancer,” I mention to her with a shrug of resignation.
“One thing at a time, all right?” Lori says softly.
I’m about to answer her, but suddenly we stop at a large set of doors. Magus Targun slams his staff down on the marble floor and the doors open on their own. Inside is a small room, with lots of furniture, books, and, to put it bluntly, a mess.
“Ignore the mess,” Magus Targun says as if reading my mind. “It’s taken me over sixty years to get it to this point. I know where everything is.”
“He really does,” Marrisa says with a snicker.
She sees me smile at that comment and she scowls and turns around, heading to one of the many chairs and sitting down in it with her legs crossed.
Her father, on the other hand, starts walking all over the room and grabbing various items. Mostly, from what I can see, plants and dried goods. He brings them all over to a small cauldron that’s sitting on a desk and pours the items into it, before going back to find other items. I grab a free chair that doesn’t have too much clutter on it and sit down and watch him.
He continues for a good ten minutes, mumbling to himself throughout. At times he appears angry when it appears he can’t find something, but then, he finds it and lets out a sound of triumph each time. I thought he said he knew where everything was? After the plants and dried goods he had moved on to small bottles containing liquids of different colors, and these he also pours into the cauldron. Sometimes he just adds a few drops and other times he dumps the entire contents of the bottle in. Those that he empties, he throws over his shoulder, and somehow they disappear before they even hit the floor.
“Now I just need one more item. Preeka!” Magus Targun shouts suddenly, making me jump. I notice, on the other hand, that his two daughters don’t even flinch. Guess they are used to him doing that, I think with a grimace of annoyance.
“What!” shrieks something that appears abruptly on the desk next to the cauldron.
I can’t help but stare in shock. I have no clue what it is, but it’s hideous. It’s about three feet in height, with green skin, a bulbous nose, and warts all over. It has no hair, and its black eyes are twice the size of a human’s, and they’re bloodshot. Its teeth point in all directions and it has a large black tongue, which it uses to lick its teeth now and then, almost like a nervous tic.
“I need a Firedragon’s fin. Do we have anymore?”
The creature, Preeka, gets a thoughtful look on its face, and then, without warning, it is gone. I don’t mean it runs away or it takes off. I mean, it just disappears! Suddenly it’s back, and in its hand is a shiny red scale that seems to radiate flames, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting the creature.
“Ah,” Magus Targun says with a huge grin. He reaches down and grabs a large thick leather glove, which he places on his hand before grabbing the scale. The second that thick glove touches it, it starts to burn, and scorch marks appear. Almost reverently, Magus Targun places it over the cauldron and lets it go.
What happens next is not what I, well, expected. There is a loud explosion, and a wave of sound throws my ass out of the chair I was sitting on. The impact to the ground knocks the air out of my lungs and I get up slowly, trying to catch it back. Once I am standing up, I look around and see that Lori and even Marrisa are doing the same thing. It looks like the wind got knocked out of them as well.
On the other hand, Magus Targun and this Preeka creature weathered it well. They are both grinning over whatever is in the cauldron. And Preeka grinning is scary as shit. What the hell is that thing?
“It worked!” Magus Targun says with a gleeful expression.
“You weren’t sure?” Lori asks him incredulously.
“Well, sure I was, sort of. But it’s been ages since I had to make this. It’s not exactly a test that we give out once a year,” he says, with annoyance that no one else is as happy with his success as he seems to be.
I right the chair that had gone ass over tea kettle with me and I brush the dirt off my pants, not that there’s really any dirt in here. It’s a mess, but I will give Magus Targun credit. It’s clean. It was more habit that made me brush off my pants, than anything else.
“Now, young man. I need you to come drink this,” he says proudly.
I walk over to the cauldron tentatively, moving to the other side of Preeka, and I look in. All I see inside the cauldron is blackness. Darkness. Nothingness. I look at Magus Targun with concern.
“You want me to drink that? I can’t even see it!” I tell him slowly.
“Oh,” he says in embarrassment, looking into the cauldron himself. “We missed the mint leaf, Preeka.”
Preeka screeches and is suddenly gone again, but within two seconds its back, and in its hand is a sprig of mint, which it drops into the pot. As I watch, the color changes from black to green, the same green as the mint leaf that was just dropped in.
“There,” Magus Targun says proudly, one hand pointing to the cauldron as if displaying his newborn child.
“And I’m to drink that?” I ask him nervously and with some trepidation.
Instead of answering, he nods vigorously with a big grin on his face.
“Dad,” Lori says with a snort. “I think you are scaring him more than encouraging him. Can you at least put it in a glass or vial so he can drink the contents?”
“Oh,” her dad says with a scowl. “Fine. Preeka, get me one of those size three vials. Might as well make it a clean one,” he says, looking at me first before adding that last part.
Preeka doesn’t do its disappearing act this time, but instead jumps across the table to another table, and then another, until it’s at some box, where it reaches in and brings out a glass vial. Then it jumps back and without a thought, plunges its hand into the cauldron with the green liquid, before pulling it out again. It hands it to Magus Targun, who takes it proudly and then turns and offers it to me.
“Hmm. Will this hurt?” I ask him, almost afraid to hear the answer.
“No, it should be fine,” he says, nodding vigorously.
I look at him suspiciously, but since I am dying anyhow, I figure this might make it go quicker, and I down the contents of all that shit that he put into the cauldron. I expect it to taste exactly like the last vial I ingested, like shit, but I get an unexpected surprise, which makes my eyes widen in wonder. That shit tastes like a McDonald’s shamrock shake!
“Hey, this doesn’t taste half bad,” I say, when suddenly I feel an explosion in my head that brings me to my knees, and then, without warning, I feel nothing, other than my head hitting the floor.
I am still aware enough to hear Magus Targun say, “Well, that’s a good sign. He didn’t explode.”
Chapter Six
I feel odd. Like I have a body, but it’s not in its proper shape. It feels like I’m being squeezed through a filter and there’s pressure on one part of my body and strain on the other.
With a suddenness that shocks me, I wake up. The floor feels hard underneath me. I open my eyes and the sight that greets me makes me scream. To be honest, I am sure I sound like a little girl.
“What the fuck!” I cry out in shock.
My cry makes Preeka, who had been standing on my chest looking down into my face, squeak as well, and suddenly the hideous creature disappears in a displacement of air. I
actually feel the air that the creature was standing in move back into the space it just vacated.
I get up on my elbows and look around the room. We are still in the lab. I rub my head, which is pounding.
“How long?” I say, and it comes out hoarse. “How long was I out?”
“Ah, the young man is awake,” I hear on my right. Looking over, I see Magus Targun working away at something on a bench. He cleans his hands with a rag that is on the table in front of him and comes over, squatting down next to me.
“What happened?” I ask, looking up at the imposing man.
“Well, you didn’t explode,” he says with a grin.
“Yeah, I think I remember hearing that before I passed out. What did you mean by that?” I ask him, perplexed.
“To test for Magic in someone there are certain compounds, shall we say, that mixed together are rather explosive. Not in the vial itself, but once a person drinks them,” he says with a shrug and a quick grin. “But I am happy to say you did not explode, as is evident by you still being alive and in one piece. But that now means I have a much bigger issue on my hand,” he says, sighing and getting back up. He reaches a hand down. I look at it and grab it, and he helps me to my feet.
“What problem is that?” I ask him cautiously as he heads back towards his bench. I walk behind him and once at the bench, lean against it, watching him as he puts things away and cleans up. He doesn’t answer right away.
Finally, after the bench is cleaned to his satisfaction, he nods and turns to me. “My daughter Marrisa will not be charged fully for breaking Article 1. But that still leaves you,” he says, looking at me directly now.
“So that’s good, isn’t it? That she won’t be fully charged? What does that mean for me?”
“That’s the crux of it. We have never had a situation like yours—a human in our world who can do Magic.”
“Wait, I can do Magic? Like that Hocus Pocus Harry Potter stuff?” I blurt out in surprise at his words.
“Harry Potter? Ah, one of the stories from your world. I had a book given to me once, and I perused it. Fascinating premise, but this isn’t Hogstart.”
“Hogwarts,” I correct him.
Waving my correction away with a hand, he continues. “You are the first human in known history to possess Magic. While it’s not strong, it’s there. I have confirmed it.”
“So, what kind of spells can I do?” I ask him, grinning at the revelation that I can do Magic.
Damn! Can I do the stuff he does? Like transport people from one location to another, or create magic potions?
“I would say you are just below where a first-year student would be as they go into Magical Academy, which isn’t much. Let’s see. Where did I put it?” Magus Targun says suddenly, moving away from his bench and looking through his pile upon pile of items.
After searching for a good ten minutes, with me following him, and at one point Preeka coming back and helping him look, he finally stands and holds something up. It looks like a stick. It’s roughly a foot long and about an inch thick.
“Is that a wand?” I ask him excitedly.
“What?” he says, turning to me in surprise. “Of course not. We don’t use wands. This item is a Foci. It lets a Magic-user focus their Magic. Now in your case, the Magic is very low, so I doubt we will get much, but let’s see what we can do. Take this,” he says, throwing me the stick or the Foci, “and aim for, hmm,” he says, looking around the room.
Finally, he must see something that he is satisfied with and points to a box across the room. “Aim for that box. Imagine Magic coming out of the end of the stick and hitting it,” he says.
“Are you sure you’re good with me, I don’t know, blowing it up?” I ask him, worriedly.
“Hmm. Rightly so. Preeka! Go remove whatever contents are in that box,” he shouts suddenly, making me jerk in surprise.
Preeka doesn’t answer him, but suddenly it’s got its head in the box and is throwing stuff out of it, willy-nilly. Finally, it stops and disappears, leaving the box open.
“Now, aim at it, and don’t be surprised if not much happens,” Magus Targun tells me supportively.
I look down at the stick in my hand. I thought it was wood, but it’s not any wood I have ever seen before. There is no grain. It’s smooth, more like it’s made of plastic, but it has a solid, heavy feel to it. Do I really have Magic now, as he said? He told me to just aim it and imagine something coming out of the end. Like what? I don’t even know what Magic looks like. Shrugging, I take aim at the box as requested, and in my head, I imagine a ball coming out of the end of the stick and hitting the box.
Suddenly, something white shoots out of the end of the stick and zips across the room. It hits the box, but instead of just moving it as I had expected it to, it ends up smashing through the box, which explodes into a thousand tiny pieces, and then hits the wall behind it, blowing a hole in it.
I look at the stick in wonder. There’s no smoke coming out, as one would expect with a gun. There’s no heat either, as I am dumb enough to check by wrapping my hand around the end that the Magic had come out of. I look over at Magus Targun in shock, and am stunned to see him looking at me with the same expression.
“What did you just do?” he finally cries out.
“What you said to do,” I tell him hurriedly. “You said imagine something coming out of the stick, so I did.”
“Let me see that,” he says and rushes to me with his hand out.
I pass him the stick without hesitation and he takes it, looking it up and down. He points it again at the spot that I had been aiming at, and suddenly there is a large streak that goes from the stick to the box-well, where the box was located previously-followed by a loud explosion as a bigger hole is blown through the wall.
“What was that!” I hear a shout, and look at the doorway, where both Marrisa and Lori are standing. It was Lori who had shouted.
She has a weapon in her hand, and it’s aiming all over the place, looking for something. A target, I’m sure. Marrisa doesn’t have one, but she has a broomstick in her hands. They both finally see the hole in the wall and Lori puts her gun away, into an inside gun holster under her armpit, which is inside her business suit jacket. Damn, I didn’t know she was armed. Then again, she is a police captain, right?
“What the hell was that, Dad?” Lori says in exasperation.
“That was a bigger hole than the one he made?” he says, waving to me with the stick.
“What?” Lori says, confused.
“Wait! You’re saying he has Magic?” Marrisa cries suddenly, a happy look on her face.
“He does, and more than we thought,” Magus Targun says with a scowl. “I thought he would be just below a first-year, being human and such. But it seems that either the vial he had was more potent than we assumed, or it’s because he’s human.”
“How so?” Lori asks suspiciously. “How much stronger is he?”
“Let me see your weapon,” her dad tells her instead. Lori looks at him with some misgivings, but finally walks over, Marrisa following with a big grin on her face, and reaches into her jacket and takes out her weapon, extending it to him.
“Now, young man. Please take this. And aim for,” he looks around and finally points to another box across the room. “Aim for that. Same as before. Imagine something coming out of the end of the weapon and just point and pull the trigger this time. Have you ever handled a handgun before?” he says, suddenly lifting it away from my extended hand just as he was about to offer it to me.
“Yes. My friend’s dad owns a firing range,” I tell him, not going into details.
“Ah. Very good. So imagine as you pull the trigger that your Magic leaves the barrel.”
“All right,” I tell him. I look down in confusion at the handgun he had given me. It looks like nothing I have ever seen before in my life. I mean, it looks like a handgun. But like no handgun I have ever seen issued or made, and Mike’s parents make a shit ton of different weap
ons, from handguns to rifles.
For example, the barrel or the end of it. It’s blocked off. It looks like a typical handgun, but there is no safety, no hammer, no magazine release. I mean, it has a trigger. It has a sight. Nice firm grip. But that’s it.
I look up at him with a raised eyebrow. “How am I supposed to fire this? There’s no hole for the muzzle?”
“Ah, this is not a human handgun. Trust me,” he says with a grin.
Marrisa snorts in derision, and Lori, I see, is looking at me keenly. She probably wants to make sure I don’t point it at one of them. And what? Run? Where the hell would I ever run to!
Shrugging, I point to the box in question, and as instructed, I imagine Magic leaving the blocked-off muzzle as I pull the trigger.
Just as before, a streak of something goes off and flashes across the room, hitting the new box in question and blowing it apart, before blowing a hole in the wall behind it. Damn, that sounded like the gun that Marrisa had the first time we met, and she shot that guy’s hand off! So that was what she was firing? No wonder it sounded so different.
“Wow, this is pretty cool!” I say with a grin. Looking over, I see that Lori and Marrisa are both looking at me in shock.
“See!” Magus Targun says gleefully. “His Magic is stronger than I suspected.”
“Dad, he should not have been able to fire that thing! It has a Magical safety, and I never enabled it!” Lori cries in astonishment.
“I know! His Magic essentially blew right through it!” he says with a laugh.
“But that’s impossible!” Marrisa says, finally chiming in. “No one should be able to fire a weapon that has a Magical safety!”
“Well, I can do it,” Magus Targun says defensively.
“That’s because you’re a Master Magus!” Lori cries out in concern. “What you’re telling me is this human, who just came into his Magic because he drank a vial of the last elixir that gives someone Magical abilities, has power that’s on par with a Master Magus? Dad, I’m a powerful Magus and so is Marrisa, but we can’t even do that!”
