by Robert Bevan
Julian lowered his head. “Yeah, it's a stupid pun, but I thought-”
“Not stupid at all, sir. Supremely clever!”
“Thank you,” said Julian, not feeling like he deserved this level of praise. “There was that, but I also thought it sounded like kind of a badass Latin-sounding name for a raven. You know, intelligent and fierce.”
Ravenus stepped back and brought his wings forward over his chest. “Is that what you think of me, sir?” He looked as though he might stumble and fall over.
“Well look at you,” said Julian. “You're bigger than any raven I've ever seen, and as far as intelligence goes, well I think you might be on par with my friend Cooper over there. No offense.”
“I can only dream of being the bird you think me, master.”
“Another thing,” said Julian. “I'd rather you not call me master.”
“But sir!”
“Yeah,” interrupted Julian. “I don't want you to call me sir either.”
“It would be highly irregular, and inappropriate if I may say so, for me to address you as anything but-”
“How does this work?” asked Julian. He thought for a moment. “Okay, how about this? As your master, I command you to not call me master.”
“Well played, sir.”
“Or sir.”
“Shit.” Ravenus jerked his head up. “A thousand pardons, sir… I mean…”
Julian laughed. “You’ll fit in well here. My name’s Julian. Just call me Julian.”
He explained their situation to Ravenus as best he could, starting with his transportation to this world, and ending with the leopard fight.
“That is a fascinating story, Julian.”
“Thank you,” said Julian. “What do you think about our plan for rescuing Tim? Does it sound feasible to you?”
“It's a brilliant plan, sir,” said Ravenus. “Completely flawless! I don't see how a single thing could go wrong.”
“Who the fuck are you talking to?” asked Cooper, scratching his ass with one hand, and wiping his closed eyes with the thumb and forefinger of the other. He walked over to the tree where Mordred had been perched and lifted the front of his loincloth to urinate on it.
“I'm sorry,” said Julian. “Did I wake you?”
“Not so much you,” said Cooper, “as some damn squawking bird.” He shook his member dry, coughed up some phlegm into his puddle of piss, and turned around to face Julian. “What the fuck is that?”
“This is Ravenus,” said Julian. Then, addressing the bird “Ravenus, Cooper.”
Cooper blinked his eyes a few times. “Seriously? You called it Ravenus? That's gay as fuck.”
“Your mom's gay as fuck.”
“So you got your familiar, did you?” Cooper asked Julian.
“I suppose so,” said Julian doubtfully. “Is that what you are?” he asked Ravenus.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“My familiar?”
“Oh, yes sir,” said Ravenus. “And quite proud of it.”
“Yeeeaaaggghhh,” said Cooper, contorting his face and putting his hands over his ears. “Can you shut that thing up?”
“I would have thought you'd be impressed.”
“You've got a big bird,” said Cooper. “I'm impressed. But I'm also fucking tired.”
“Big?” asked Julian. “That's what you're most impressed by?”
Cooper looked at his friend thoughtfully. “What? Does it do tricks?”
“It fucking talks, you dolt!”
“No it doesn't.”
“Sure it does,” said Julian. “We've been chatting away for the better part of an hour.”
“Dude, are you okay? Was that crossbow bolt laced with something?”
“Ravenus,” Julian said, “Please state your name for my friend here.”
“Ravenus,” said Ravenus.
Julian looked smugly up at Cooper, who was wincing again.
“Satisfied?”
“Seriously?” asked Cooper. “How do you get Ravenus out of Bwaaaarrrg?”
“He spoke as clearly as I'm speaking to you now!”
“He just screamed like a car horn.”
“You're insane.”
“You're the one talking to a bird,” said Cooper. “Listen, you can't actually talk to your familiar until you go up a few levels. What you've got now is an empathic link. Maybe that's stronger than I'd always imagined it was, but it's not-”
“He. Fucking. Talks.”
“No,” said Cooper. “He doesn't.
“Ravenus,” said Julian. “What's your favorite color?”
“I'm rather partial to lavender.”
Cooper laughed. “His favorite color is SCREEEEEEEEEEECH?”
“He said lavender.”
“Fuck, that's worse.”
They were interrupted by a loud moan from inside the tent.
“Goddammit!” shouted Dave, crawling out of the tent on two knees and one hand. “Who's raping a cat out here?”
“Julian's got a pet bird,” said Cooper.
“Oh yeah?” said Dave. He looked over and saw Ravenus. “Fuckin A.”
“Ravenus, this is Dave.”
“Pleased to meet you, sir. My name is Ravenus, as I expect you already know from my master's introduce-”
“Aaaahhh!” shouted Dave, covering his ears. “Make it stop!”
“What the hell is wrong with you people?” asked Julian. “He was just introducing himself.”
“He thinks the bird can talk,” Cooper said to Dave.
“Oh yeah?” said Dave. “What are his vocal cords made of? Chalkboards and forks?”
“You guys are dicks,” said Julian. “Go back to bed.”
“I'd love to,” said Dave. “Just stop stabbing that poor thing so we can get some sleep.”
Dave and Cooper went back to sleep. Julian sat down with Ravenus on his arm.
“I don't know what's wrong with them,” said Julian. “But I guess we'd better pick up this conversation again in the morning. Get some rest.” Ravenus nodded, hopped down onto Julian’s lap, and nestled to sleep.
Julian sat with his back against one tree, and faced another. He spotted a beetle crawling up the trunk and stared at it. A few hours later, he was surprised to find that it was completely dark outside. Had he dozed off? No, he could clearly remember the entire span of time. He'd just been staring at this tree. He'd always been a daydreamer, but this was different. He hadn't even been thinking about anything. Just staring. Anyway, he felt refreshed now. He felt like he could take another crack at that book, but not with only the starlight to read by. He could see his surroundings just fine, but it wasn't the sort of light you'd want to read a book under.
Now that the clouds had moved on, the stars were out in full force. In the tiny patches of sky that he could make out through the gaps in the forest canopy, Julian saw more stars than what he thought a full sky might offer on the clearest night back home. He was tempted to make his way back to the edge of the woods and take in the sight of this full sky, but he stayed near his camp. Was this what the sky looked like before smog and electric lights? It hardly seemed possible. Julian thought that it might actually not be. He had no idea where he was, after all, and this world might just have more stars above it than the one he had come from. It might even have a couple of extra moons, or none at all. He scanned few bits of sky for evidence of any moons. The results were inconclusive.
Julian spent the next few hours being bored. After enough time had passed that he thought the other two might have had their full quota of sleep, he considered waking them up. He decided against it. They'd be better off for the extra rest. It was still too dark to properly read, but Julian felt like his head was going to explode if he didn't distract himself with something. He sat down on a rock, and opened the book. He shifted around until a patch of starlight fell on the pages. This wasn't so bad actually. He wished he had done this hours ago.
He flipped through the book to see if anything in
particular caught his eye, and was surprised to find that after the first twenty-two pages, only about a quarter of the way through, the rest of the book was blank. He turned back to the first page. The glyphs, at first, held no meaning for him. It didn't take as much concentration this time before they started forming words in his mind. The words, in turn, were also meaningless to him, but as he focused his mind deeper, complete and comprehensible thoughts manifested themselves in his head. This pattern followed with paragraphs, until he found that the whole page culminated in a singular purpose. This particular spell would offer him a small amount of protection, a small edge in the face of certain perils. It looked as though it might come in handy, but from what he could make out in the text, he thought it was likely to fizzle out after about one minute. The payoff hardly seemed worth the amount of effort it would take to memorize all of the complicated gestures and incantations necessary to cast the spell.
He turned to the second page, and found it equally disappointing. It would grant him the power to detect whether or not something was poisonous. A practical skill under the right circumstances, yes. But this wasn't the sort of sort of thing he got into wizardry for.
Julian found that the spell on page three would allow him to read magical writing. Well he was already fucking doing that, wasn't he?
He kept flipping.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Boring.
Bullshit.
“Oh hell yeah,” he whispered.
As a child, he’d always been fascinated by magic. In more recent years, however, reality started to creep in just a bit deeper with every pizza he delivered. Pizza was real. Magic wasn’t. The imagination of his youth had been squeezed out of his soul like toothpaste.
But here he was, a wizard in a fantastic world, looking down at book of spells. The spell he was looking at now put the toothpaste back in his tube. This one would send bolts of energy out of his fingertips, which would make their way unerringly to whomever he cast it at. That's what being a wizard was all about. Practicality be damned. He stood up, set the open book down on the rock he had been sitting on, and started practicing the necessary motions and incantations.
He was so deeply involved in his studies that he didn't notice Dave and Cooper walk up behind him until Cooper spoke.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Julian turned his head around, his body frozen with one leg up, and his arms positioned in a way that made him look like he was trying to hug an invisible giant. He relaxed into a normal standing position and turned the rest of his body around to face them. “I'll show you what the fuck I'm doing,” he said. “Point at something. Anything.”
Cooper pointed to Dave.
“No,” said Julian. “Bad idea. Pick something else.”
“Fuck,” said Cooper. “I don't know. That tree over there.”
“All right,” said Julian with a wry smile. He closed his eyes, shook his arms to loosen up the joints, and brought his hands together. He opened his eyes and stared fixedly at the tree. “Bisulfate!” he shouted, and swung his left arm up over his head. “Ascorbic acid! Azodicarbonamide!” He raised one foot off the ground and stamped it back down.
“No!” Cooper shouted. “Julian, stop!”
Julian didn't stop. He thrust both hands forward, fingers stretched out. “Methylchloroisothiazolinone!” With that, the tip of his right forefinger glowed with a bright white light which grew in intensity until it burst into a glowing arrow. The arrow flew lamely toward its target in a shower of sparks, like a bottle rocket struggling against the counterforce of a small parachute. Julian lowered his arms and watched it fly. Cooper and Dave turned their heads slowly to follow the path of the projectile hobbling the rest of the way through the air into the tree, where it fizzled into a small puff of smoke and slightly charred bark. Julian shrugged and turned to his friends.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think you're a fucking idiot!” shouted Cooper. Dave shook his head.
“Well, it was somewhat less spectacular than what I was expecting,” admitted Julian. Then he grinned. “Still, pretty cool that I can do that, don't you think?”
“Yeah,” said Cooper. “Pretty fucking cool, except that now you can't.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You only get to do that once per day,” said Dave.
“No way,” said Julian, smiling the smile of a man who knows something his adversary does not. “I memorized that shit.”
Dave sighed. “Go ahead then,” he said. “Try it again.”
Julian rolled his eyes and turned back toward the unfortunate tree. “Okay, here goes.” He shook his arms again, and brought his hands together. He closed his eyes, and then immediately reopened them. “Shit.”
“Uh huh,” said Dave. He poked lightly at his leopard skin gauntlet and winced.
“I can't remember a single word of it!” said Julian. “I spent an hour memorizing all that! How can it just be gone like that?”
“The magical energy flows from your mind, or something like that.”
“That's bullshit!” shouted Julian. “That's not the way memory works!”
“That's how it works in the game,” growled Cooper. “It's in the rulebook.”
“My arm's killing me,” said Dave. “I'm going to go pray for my spells.”
Julian nudged his spellbook off of its rock with his foot, and sat down. “So I've got to spend another hour studying that shitty spell?”
“Not today,” Cooper grumbled.
“Why not?”
“Because you're a first level wizard,” said Cooper. “And a dumb one at that.”
“Watch it,” said Julian. “Your Intelligence score is four points lower than mine.”
“That's why I'm not a fucking wizard!”
Ravenus flew in and landed on Julian's shoulder. “What's all the fuss?”
“Cooper's mad because I used up my only spell,” said Julian.
“What did you use it for?”
“I shot a tree.”
Ravenus shifted his weight several times from foot to foot. “Was the tree...” he paused to find the right words. “...threatening you in some way?”
“No,” said Julian. “I'd just never casted a spell before, so I wanted to try it out.”
“Congratulations!”
“Thanks.”
Cooper grimaced at Ravenus. Julian pressed on.
“I don't understand why I can't just study it again,” he said to Cooper. “We've got the time, don't we? I mean, Dave's going to need some time to pray or whatever, isn't he?”
“You only get to memorize your spells once per day. At first level, you only get one first level spell. A wizard can get bonus spells based on his high Intelligence score. You, however, don't have a high Intelligence score, which is why I advised against you being a wizard in the first place.”
“But I wanted to use magic.”
“I told you to be a sorcerer. You have a high enough Charisma score to be a decent sorcerer.”
“What does Charisma have to do with sorcery?”
Cooper shrugged. “Not much,” he admitted. “I think they just wanted to make another class based on Charisma because nobody wants to be a bard.”
“So you're telling me,” Julian said, “that if I sit here and study that same spell again, I'll be unable to memorize it?”
“That's what I'm telling you.”
“But that doesn't make any sense.”
“Game balance,” said Cooper, as if that explained everything. Julian only stared back at him. Cooper sighed. “If a wizard can keep casting every spell he knows willy-nilly, then wizards would be far too powerful. As it stands, some people already feel that they are overpowered at higher levels.”
“So you mean to say that we're living in a world where the laws of nature, physics, and reality are governed in turn by half-baked rules some guy made up?”
“In a nutshell.”
&n
bsp; “And game balance always trumps logic?”
“Pretty much.”
“So I'm pretty well screwed then? Forever doomed to be a shitty wizard?”
“Nah,” said Cooper. He slumped down against a tree. “You can always choose to be a sorcerer when you get to level two.”
“You can just switch horses like that?”
“Not exactly. At least some of you will always be a shitty wizard. But you don't have to take any more levels of wizard if you don't want to. If you take a level of sorcerer at level two, then you'll just be a level one wizard and a level one sorcerer. If you find sorcery suits you, you can keep going with it. If not, you can always take a level in something else. I wouldn't recommend spreading yourself out too thin though.”
“What do you recommend?” asked Julian. “I mean, I really should do what's best for the group. This isn't a game anymore, after all.”
“Go with sorcerer. Dave and I can hold our own in a fight pretty well. Hell, so can you. But we really should have some sort of spellcaster in the party.”
“What about Dave?”
“He does clerical spells, and I have a feeling he'll be using a lot of those to heal us. The sorts of spells you use are arcane, and they have a variety of different uses, not the least of which is blasting the shit out of large groups of enemies.”
“That's sort of what I had in mind going in.” Julian looked over at Dave. “Who is he praying to, exactly?”
“Dunno. Some god or another.”
“And this god is just going to up and give him whatever spells he wants?”
“Any of the level one spells.”
“To what end?”
“What do you mean?” asked Cooper.
“I mean, I don't see what's in it for the god.”
Cooper yawned and pulled a hunk of yellow sludge out of one ear with the claw of his pinky finger.
“I'm sorry,” said Julian. “Am I boring you with talk of Dave over there actually communicating with the divine?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Ravenus,” said Julian. “Cooper here just asked me to ask you where you were hatched.”
“Really?” said Ravenus. He flapped down to the ground. “Because, you see, it's actually a very interesting story. I was-”
