by Scott Baron
Charlie looked at the polished area. He had thought it had been made that way by tools, though for what reason he was unsure. Now he realized the truth of it. Hundreds of hands, over thousands of years, had slowly worn it down, transforming it over lifetimes.
“You’re saying thousands and thousands of years of trial and error evolved your galaxy’s magic system?”
“Yes. And now you too are a part of that system. I’ve sensed something in you. It’s small for now. Just a tiny spark. But magic is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets and the easier it is to wield and control.”
“I don’t have any magic in me. I’m human. It’s just not possible.”
Ser Baruud cocked his head slightly. “But you do, and one day that spark may be fanned into a flame.” He sipped his tea and caressed the rock beside him. “Think of it like walking. To an infant the task seems utterly impossible, yet that same child will one day run and jump, not even thinking about their former state. So it is with magic.”
“But I can’t even do anything with a slaap, let alone without one.”
“The konus and slaap are among the devices most often used by those with no power. They can be charged, like the ‘bahtrees’ of your world you’ve spoken of. This allows all to wield magic. But others use them to focus and enhance their own internal gifts.”
Ser Baruud finished his tea and rose to his feet. “You have potential, Charlie. A power within. That is why the killing word very nearly worked. Your anger was visceral. And while anger is a terrible place to cast spells from, you have shown you do have the ability to cast. It’s not the words alone. If it were, any fool could use magic.”
He gathered up the cups and pot and turned toward the compound walls.
“I’ll leave you here to consider all of this. I know it is a lot for your mind to handle at first,” he said as he walked away.
Charlie rose and took his master’s still-warm seat. Without thinking, he found his hand slowly caressing the glossy groove in the rock as he thought about what living in this galaxy truly meant.
Chapter Sixty-One
Charlie was given a konus to wear at all times from that day forward to help him feel the power and become accustomed to it. Only it wasn’t just any konus, it was the weakest, most underpowered one on the entire planet. Perhaps the entire system.
It was the magical equivalent of training wheels, elbow and knee pads, and a giant helmet, but if that was what it would take to let him safely train, he was okay with that.
What he quickly learned as well was the konus he wore was also restricted from all but a handful of rather benign spells. Ser Baruud knew his secret. His list of spells running through his head. So it was he was limited to the basics. A simple pushing spell, designed to move an opponent, or object, should the need arise. Its counterpart, a pulling spell, to accomplish the opposite. Things of that nature.
There were also a handful of what he considered borderline cheap trick spells. Tripping spells, itching spells, blurry vision spells, any of which seemed ridiculous against a trained opponent, but Charlie persevered and practiced them every day, finding some pleasure in at least pestering those he could not defeat.
Soon, his unconventional sparring sessions took on a different feel, and despite being clobbered by his opponents constantly, Charlie learned to apply his rudimentary defensive spells to minimize the damage.
One in particular, the “Konus magusi” spell, had an unexpected effect. He learned this when he accidentally cast it while touching his restraint collar. The spell was designed to weaken whatever attack an opponent had cast, but in casting his purely-defensive spell with his hand on the enchanted collar, he found he had unintentionally fed the spell into the charged metal.
The result was a crackling of energy in the slender metal band, followed by a surging of his own power, as if in reducing the neutralizing effect of the band, even temporarily, he was suddenly free to use far more of the magic at his disposal.
Of course, Charlie was a non-magical being, and from a different galaxy, no less, so that was obviously impossible, but he found the sensation intriguing nevertheless.
Weeks upon weeks of training passed, and the previously perceived handicap of having access to only a handful of spells began slowly turning into an advantage of sorts, as Charlie was forced to rely on agility, deception, and misdirection to drain his opponents’ weapons of their energy before launching a counterattack.
Outside the arena, Ser Baruud and he continued to play chess daily, and while the martial master was now winning as often as not, Charlie felt his abilities growing simply by the casual, unguarded conversations they had during those rare moments of downtime. In the arena, it was all about combat, but over the chessboard, his training tended toward the more philosophical.
“You have learned some interesting things about yourself these past weeks, have you not?” Baruud asked during one such game.
“I believe so,” Charlie replied. “The less I force the spells, the more the konus seems to react. It’s almost like as casting becomes second nature, the lack of conscious effort is what makes the device work.”
“But you know it’s a magically charged tool. Its powers are fixed by what it was imbued with by its creator. So how do you improve on what cannot be improved?”
Charlie had already been thinking long and hard about that and had formed a rough hypothesis. “It’s kind of like a limiter on an engine. I mean, you don’t use engines here, but the principle is the same. Something used to restrict the gas flow so a vehicle can only reach a certain top speed. Only, in my case, the limiter was myself. It’s not so much that I’m outpacing my konus, it’s that all this time I had been underutilizing it with my own internal limiter.”
Ser Baruud smiled. “Very good, Charlie. You have learned a lesson it takes some students years to comprehend.”
“Well, you did say I was an empty vessel.”
Baruud chuckled softly. “Yes, though I must admit that was not entirely intended as a compliment at the time,” he replied with a wry smile. “Give me your arm,” he commanded. Charlie immediately complied, and his teacher gently touched the slim metal ring around his wrist.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes, I believe it is,” the Wampeh replied. “I am going to teach you a new spell. It is only barely within the capabilities of this konus, and you will have no time to practice it, but I want you to utilize this tool in this afternoon’s training.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Good,” Baruud said, taking off his own konus for the moment. “Now, repeat these words. ‘Klaatu endatha.’”
“Klaatu endatha,” Charlie repeated. He felt the slightest of tingles in his arm, but no more. “Was that supposed to do something?”
“It is a combination spell. A block and counterattack. But you’re thinking the words. They are brand-new to you. You need them to flow as second nature, like you described earlier. Strive for that state when you fight this afternoon, and perhaps you may finish a match with your feet on the ground, instead of your rear.”
“Gok. Charlie. In the ring,” Teacher Fazool commanded.
The two men stepped into the combatant’s arena. Ser Baruud sipped tea, watching from his seat on the sideline. The master slipped his slaap onto his hand and touched the outline on the ground. “Invario doman ubantunu,” he said, charging the arena with a protective dome, as he did before every session. The spell, while preventing stray castings from injuring bystanders, would not, however, keep the fighters’ physical bodies from passing. Magic was the only thing it held at bay.
He nodded to his assistant.
“Begin,” Teacher Fazool ordered.
Gok was Charlie’s friend, and the two had grown reasonably close during their time in the gladiator camp. In the arena, however, they fought without reservation. They were not enemies at that moment, but neither were they friends. Regaling one another with jokes and stories would come after the fight. D
uring was a whole other story.
“Yap zina!” Gok hissed, launching a sneaking attack, low at Charlie’s legs, the spell designed to upend his opponent.
Charlie dove to the side, conserving his energy, dodging with physical prowess rather than magical.
Gok smiled. He knew the extent of his opponent’s abilities, and given their limitations, it was only a matter of time before he landed a solid spell. In the meantime, he moved in close, peppering him with annoyance spells as a boxer would throw a flurry of jabs––not to cause damage, but to create an opening.
“Bandu,” he quickly blurted as Charlie frantically evaded the attack.
Charlie grunted hard as the magical blow sent his feet sliding back in the soil. He had been prepared, but it still nearly took the wind out of him.
“Yapzi,” Charlie countered, releasing one of his least powerful spells.
Gok wasn’t expecting that one, and the surprise sensation of flies swarming his face threw him off his attack, buying Charlie much-needed seconds to scoot clear of his next bombardment. He smiled at the success of his little trick.
“Dipangu,” he followed up, Gok wincing from the sudden, and totally overwhelming stench of feces.
I’ve got this, Charlie allowed himself to believe. Maybe this time he really would come out ahead. Spells were flowing easily, like Ser Baruud said.
That moment was shattered when Gok kicked him square in the chest, knocking him into a backward roll. Charlie had become so enthralled with the magical aspect of the fight, he had neglected the physical.
A series of punches and kicks flew his way, but Gok couldn’t do any damage. When it came to hand-to-hand combat, everyone knew Charlie was better. All the years of training, which he had always considered just another part of his service requirement back on Earth, had left him outclassing those who had always relied heavily on magic.
Ducking a looping hook, Charlie threw a quick jab to Gok’s midriff, followed by a Muay Thai kick to his thigh, nearly dropping him to one knee.
Gok flung a disabling spell at him as he lurched back upright, but Charlie slipped the attack, putting himself in the clear, and with a wide-open shot. Gok realized his mistake and blurted out a quick stun spell, but Charlie had already begun casting.
“Klaatu endatha,” he said, the new spell popping into his head and out of his lips without even thinking about it.
A blast of power flowed down his arm and out through his hand, channeled through his konus. Gok’s spell was pulverized, but unlike most counter-spells, this one took the shattered energy and reconstituted it, throwing it back at its sender with additional force.
Gok grunted hard as his own stunning spell hit him full-force and then some. He shook on his feet a few seconds, then dropped to the ground, groaning from the blow.
“Oh, shit, are you okay?” Charlie said, rushing to his friend.
Gok looked up at him from the dirt with a pained smile. “Where in the worlds did you learn that move?”
From his seat on the sideline, Ser Baruud sipped his tea contentedly, the hints of a smile teasing the corners of his eyes.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Charlie had experienced a breakthrough, and with it came a rapid improvement in his combative skills. Spells flowed fast and easy, even more so when he stopped trying to figure out why only those words were not altered at all by his translation spell. Apparently, the sounds were beyond translation, as Ser Baruud had said, so he finally just let go and accepted that fact.
It was as if a mental block had been removed. The words controlling the power contained in his konus were connecting with the magic-imbued device with increasing ease, and his sparring sessions were ever-improving. His spell arsenal, while still limited, was put to increasingly clever use.
More often than not, he was keeping up with his gladiatorial comrades, matching them, and sometimes even exceeding them, in one-on-one combat. Part of that was due to his improved use of the magical device, but just as much was his physical fighting skill. It was one talent Ser Baruud had him focus on with grueling exercises, often performed long after the others had retired for the day.
“You are not from a naturally magic-wielding galaxy, Charlie,” he told him. “Yes, you have the use of a konus. And one day you will be trained in the slaap, and perhaps even allowed to attempt a claithe, rare as they are. But at your core, you are not of this realm, though you do appear to have some unusual power connection I still cannot quite place.”
“But I’m learning. I can cast spells proficiently now,” he said, tapping the slender band of his konus.
“Yes, you can. But what if your konus fails? What if you’re suddenly left without magic to defeat your enemy? The others, they do not organically think in terms of strictly physical combat. For them it requires conscious effort to transition, and that is a weakness. You, however, do not possess that flaw. I think it is precisely that which could see you become one of our greatest students yet. If the training doesn’t kill you, of course.”
“Well, yeah, there’s that, naturally,” Charlie said with a laugh, limbering up for his daily post-training training. “So, tell me, Ser. What would you have of me today?”
The Wampeh slowly untied his overcoat and placed it on the nearby chair. “Today, you fight me.”
Charlie kept his face calm, expressing none of the sheer panic that had flooded his veins at the utterance of so simple a sentence. ‘You fight me.’ Words that sent a blast of adrenaline through his body, and rightly so. Ser Baruud was a legend, his skills second to none. He had used Charlie to demonstrate techniques plenty of times, but now, Charlie was to face him in single combat.
I hope he was just kidding about the training killing me.
Baruud, he noted, had foregone his usual weaponry, leaving his slaap and even his konus on the low table. He would be fighting Charlie as an equal. At least as far as magical assistance went. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t make him feel much more confident.
“Place your konus on the table, then let us begin.”
Charlie did as he was told, sliding the band from his wrist. It was strange, he had grown so accustomed to wearing it that he felt almost naked without it. Underpowered as it was, the device gave him a sense of confidence, knowing he could call on its stored power if the need truly arose.
The pale Wampeh shifted his center and seemed to almost fly across the soil with barely a movement, the force driving from his hips and legs as he planted a solid palm in the center of Charlie’s chest, sending him toppling over backwards.
“Why didn’t you block the attack, Charlie?” he asked as his pupil rose to his feet and dusted himself off.
“Because I wasn’t ready. I had only just taken off my konus, so I thought––”
“Never think your enemy will abide by any archaic rules of decorum. You are engaging in combat, and someday it may be to the death. If you can achieve that end with a single stroke, even if it does not fit your sense of fair play, all the better. It would serve you well to remember this.”
“I will, Ser––”
Another flash of his pale hands, but this time Charlie twisted away from the blow, throwing a parrying block while launching his own counterattack, a low leg kick snapped out from his front leg. Baruud easily avoided the blow, but Charlie felt his foot just barely graze the man’s pants. This earned him a small grin from his master.
“Better,” Baruud said. “Now, let us train in earnest.”
For the better part of a half hour, Charlie was basically pummeled by the inhumanly fast grandmaster. He was, however, holding his own much of the time, despite the blows cascading off his body. A few months prior and he would have been unconscious on the dirt in the first twenty seconds.
Other pupils, as well as several of Ser Baruud’s teaching assistants, gathered to watch the contest, and with the feeling of critical eyes on him, Charlie dug a little deeper, pulling out all of the stops, calling up the unconventional combat tactics drilled into him all those y
ears ago when he had been moving up in the ranks. He hadn’t forgotten them, per se, but lack of use and the diminished physical capability that came with a more sedentary existence had pushed it from his mind.
Now, with months of physical labor and martial training whipping his body back into peak condition, those old lessons came almost subconsciously as his hands remembered what his mind did not.
Faster they went, the pale warrior’s blows unrelenting. Charlie nearly kept up, but couldn’t quite match his speed. Then, in a counterintuitive move, Charlie leaned into a blow rather than away from it, absorbing the impact in the manner of a Russian Sistema fighter, using the recoil to launch his own flowing combination attack, both faster and more surprising than either had expected.
“Enough,” the Wampeh said, stopping the exercise.
Ser Baruud stepped back, a grin on his face where a dot of red blood spotted his pale lips.
“Oh my God. I’m sorry, Ser,” Charlie blurted.
Baruud smacked him on the head with a laugh. “Do not apologize for striking your opponent in combat. I have suffered far worse, you know.”
The onlookers were murmuring amongst themselves. Charlie had landed a blow on the Master. It was like a pigeon flying at Mach one. It just didn’t happen. And, yet, somehow, it did.
The smiling Wampeh put his arm around Charlie and began walking.
“You see what happens when you let your mind flow with your body?”
“I think I finally do.”
“Good. Now, let us get something to eat. I know I could devour a full-grown gramundi! Tomorrow, we begin your next phase of training, so eat well. You’ll need the energy.”
