by D M Gilmore
“Wonderful,” Ms Hong said, her grin returning to a sneer. “Now get out of my building before I have you removed.”
Chapter 2
When Asher returned to the IM department, the usual chatter and noise of his coworkers had gone eerily silent. Disparate faces peeked out from their cubicles to watch him as he walked by, on the way to his own. They stared as he passed, but said nothing to him. Nothing needed to be said, they had all seen this before. There was a look on a person’s face when they did this walk that said everything that needed to be said.
The silence was suddenly broken by the sound of clapping hands as Jack stepped out of his own cubicle and began to walk beside Asher. “So they finally got you, eh Night Light?” He asked, draping his arm over Asher’s shoulder. Asher stood maybe five feet and ten inches tall, with Jack looming a solid six and a few over him. “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” he laughed.
Asher shrugged himself out from under Jack’s arm and ducked into his cubicle. A cardboard box was waiting on his desk chair, with the words Good Riddance Night Light written on the side in black marker. He clenched his fists at the sight and sighed. Outside his cubicle, the normal chatter and noise of the IM department picked up in volume.
“Thought I’d help get you started, you know, since you’re not gonna be here anymore,” Jack laughed, leaning against the threshold to Asher’s former cubicle.
Asher continued to ignore his former coworker as he set himself to work packing up his things. He had never kept much around his cubicle in the first place, there would be too much to incriminate him as a drake, but the one thing he kept close was a picture of his family. He picked up the digital photo frame and stared down at the smiling faces therein. A short, stocky woman with dark brown hair was sitting on a plush sofa, with a baby drake in her arms. The infant had rusty orange scales, and a pair of stubby horns the colour of dry sand. The child was suckling on the finger of a male drake that was leaning over them from the other side of the sofa, his own scales a dry pottery brown with a pair of dusty grey horns curling around his head, and a silver ring slipped over his finger. The drake and the woman were looking up and smiling into the camera.
Seated on the couch next to the woman was a small boy whose eyes glowed yellow, the roots of his hair already having gone snow white at so young an age. For a moment, Asher was hit by a wave of nostalgia. He couldn’t have been older than five years old when they had that picture taken, a couple months after his younger brother Ruth had been born. He sighed and shook his head as he turned the frame off and tucked it away in the box.
“Who do you think they’ll get to replace you?” Jack droned on, and Asher noticed for the first time that he hadn’t stopped speaking. “I’m hoping for a cute infused girl, maybe one with elf ears or something.”
“Shut up, Jack,” Asher growled, grabbing a red drake bobblehead off his desk and whipping it at the offending man.
Jack flinched in surprise, but couldn’t move fast enough to dodge. The bobblehead struck him in the eyebrow and bounced to the floor. The plastic figure’s head popped off and bounced away, while the body rolled until it stopped at Asher’s foot. The figure had been a joke gifted to him by Jack a few months after Asher had been hired, so that he’d always have a bit of his baby brother nearby. He had never cared for the thing, and it gave him a little bit of catharsis to break it this way.
Jack winced in pain, a small cut dripping blood down his face, as he recovered from the blow. “Fuck you, Itzcovitch!” He growled back, cracking his knuckles. “Fuck you, pardrake trash!”
Pardrake. The worst people used to describe someone who was a drake through the use of draquartz, rather than having been born that way. Most of the time, it wasn’t offensive. A drake could call another pardrake, and neither would blink an eye. But Jack wasn’t a drake.
“You know what?” Asher growled, stomping over to Jack and putting himself into the other man’s personal space. Jack had a good five inches on Asher’s own height, but that didn’t matter, he was already fired, there was nothing else Jack could do to him. “Fuck you, Pearlman. You think you’re better than me, just because you’re not infused? Just because you don’t have a drake sibling? You’re wrong, asshole.” Asher picked up the box with the picture frame in it, the only possession on his desk that he actually cared about. With a grunt, he elbowed Jack in the stomach and pushed him out of the way. “Do you really think anyone’s impressed by this act? Everyone knows you’re just making up for a drunk, deadbeat dad that didn’t hug you enough.”
Jack gritted his teeth and narrowed his eyes, but made no further attempts to follow. The department had once again fallen eerily quiet, even as a few phones rang with calls waiting. Once more, the people Asher had come to know as coworkers, though not necessarily as friends, stared as he walked past, the cardboard box tucked under his arm.
When he made it to the elevator, he turned around and shouted through the department. “Oh, and Night Light? That’s a shitty nickname! Get better insult material, Jack!”
With a ding, Asher stepped into the open elevator, flipping off the entire room as he went. It hadn’t occurred to him until he made it out of the building and into the rear parking lot that causing a scene in his former place of work might be grounds enough to void the contract he had signed not even ten minutes earlier. With a groan, he decided he didn’t care, and stomped over to his beat-up green sedan. The old wagon was dented in a dozen different places, and one of the tires was the wrong size, but the price had been right and Asher had needed a ride.
With a gesture, the rust-lined trunk popped open. He stuffed the box inside, and took a black backpack out. For a moment, he brushed his hand against his pants pocket, considering putting the ring on there and then. With a sigh, he decided against it, pulling open the driver side door of his car and slipping inside.
The beat-up old car sputtered to life when he pushed the ignition button, the entire vehicle rumbling and shaking violently, and a cloud of black smoke billowed out of the exhaust pipe. Without wasting a breath, Asher tapped his other pocket, and woke up the sleek device inside. His phone flared to life with a crackle of mana, filling the world around him with his personal holographic display. Icons and buttons floated in the air around him, and several graphics popped up alerting him to waiting messages.
They could wait. He swiped through the icons until he came upon a series of application icons. They all had generally unmarketable names, as well as the most basic of stock graphics for their icons. That didn’t bother Asher, given that these were spells he had coded himself. Despite working in Integrated Magic support, his talents lay primarily in the development of spells.
Mana, the primary source of energy used all over the planet, always wanted to take a shape. Most of the time, this shape was that of a drake, which was how draquartz was able to turn a human into a drake, or the manaflux caused a baby to develop as a drake while in the womb. Spells were programs that commanded mana to take a specific shape, and a skilled enough spellcrafter could accomplish just about anything given enough development time. He liked to consider himself a member of that group.
Asher tapped the icon labelled Fixit, and sparks of energy flew over the surface of his car as the spell commanded the mana powering his phone to take a new shape, the shape of invisible membranes that pushed the parts of his car back into their proper place and held them there for as long as the spell was maintained. His car immediately ceased making noises, the smoke instantly turned from cloudy black to a nearly invisible white. With a sigh, he hit the home button on his autonav and settled in a for a quiet ride of contemplation. Just because his car still had gas pedals and a steering wheel, relics of a bygone age, didn’t mean he wanted to use them.
He allowed his mind to drift in and out of thoughts as his car weaved through streets and accelerated onto the Gardener, a winding and twisting highway that would take him out of Toronto and back to the Scarborough broodtown. Traffic was dense, but with AIs do
ing all the driving, there was no risk of accidents. After a few exits, his car got off the highway and pulled into a road surrounded by densely packed buildings in various states of disrepair. Drakes of all shapes and sizes wandered the streets, some pushing carts full of junk, others sitting on stoops and drinking from bottles in brown paper bags.
The car finally pulled to a stop in the parking lot of his dingy old apartment building, sliding into its preprogrammed spot like a dog into his house. With a gesture, Asher turned off the engine and disabled the spell holding it together. The car sagged as Fixit dissipated, as though it were saddened by the loss. He had always meant to take it to a mechanic, but repairs were more expensive than mana, and Fixit did the job a lot faster.
The apartment building wasn’t drake exclusive, but some of the tenants who didn’t know him in both forms still gave him sidelong glances as he stomped by, foregoing the elevator in favour of running up five flights of stairs. The ring in his pocket felt heavy, and his fingers itched with anticipation. Soon, he mused, he’d be back in his own skin.
The door to his apartment opened with a wave of his hand, the identification panel to the side lighting up and acknowledging his presence. The lights were out and the curtains were closed, leaving the apartment in darkness that left him stumbling around blindly. Finally, his hand grasped at the switch on the wall, and he flicked it into the on position.
The living area of his apartment flared to life as it was filled with bright white light. It was sparsely decorated, with a few comfortable chairs flanking a rusty brown sofa, and hologram projector set into the wall opposite. The floors were cold linoleum tile, and the walls were a coat of eggshell white. The kitchenette, off to the side, lay in a disastrous mess. Pizza boxes lay strewn all over the countertops, and empty bottles of coke littered the floor, crushed after having been stepped on.
Shaking his head in frustration, Asher raised his voice. “Ruth!” he shouted, stomping over to the couch.
Asleep on the sofa, with his tail hanging off one end by several feet, was Asher’s behemoth of a brother. Even by drake standards, Ruth was big. He hadn’t been measured recently, but Asher figured he had to be eight feet tall, maybe taller. His chest was broad and rippled with muscles, his sand coloured stomach scutes pulled tight over his abs. His crocodilian snout hung open, revealing a set of razor-sharp teeth, perfect for rending flesh, and his tongue lolled out to one side. He slept on his back, with his twelve-inch long horns hanging over the armrest of the couch. Along the base of his chin were five stubby horns, formed into the rough shape of a beard. Extra horns were a dead giveaway that he was a fuldrake, a person born a drake. Pardrakes like Asher only ever had two horns, fuldrakes like his younger brother could have any number more. He snored loudly, still blissfully asleep, despite Asher’s outburst. Part of him wanted to leave his younger brother to sleep. Ruth worked at the mana station, usually starting around eleven at night and getting off shift around seven in the morning. He had to sleep during the day. The mess, however, was unacceptable.
With a sigh, Asher grabbed the pillow under his brother’s head and gave it a quick tug. Ruth lurched forward as he was pulled with it, and he yelped in surprise as he narrowly caught himself before falling to the floor. “I’m up! I’m up!” he stammered, his voice deep and gravelly, as though a perpetual growl.
“Uh-huh,” Asher said, plopping the pillow down on his brother’s face, eliciting a slight oof from the drake before it fell off. “Clean up your mess,” he said, wrinkling his nose as he caught a whiff of something foul, “and go shower. Dude you stink.”
“Takes a stink to know one. Have you smelled yourself recently, bro?” Ruth grumbled, pulling himself up into a seating position. He yawned loudly and scratched at his chest with long, sharp claws as he adjusted himself into a comfortable position on the sofa, rubbing some sand from his eyes. With a grunt, he gestured in the air and called his personal display into his field of view, quickly checking the time before dismissing it again. “You’re home early. Work have a half-day or something?”
“Or something,” Asher grumbled, stomping back over to the kitchenette and grabbing a can of cold coffee from the fridge. Without elaborating, he popped it open and chugged the whole thing.
“Is that why you’re still in the monkey suit?” Ruth asked sleepily, pulling himself to his taloned feet and grabbing a discarded white t-shirt from off the floor. He sniffed it once, decided it didn’t smell too bad, and tugged it on over his chest.
“Haven’t had time to change,” Asher grumbled back, crushing the emptied can in his hand and dropping it into a blue bin by the table.
While Ruth got to work throwing out his pizza boxes, Asher plopped down on the couch. He debated internally whether or not he should tell his brother about getting fired, and ultimately decided against it for the moment. There was no point in worrying Ruth right now, especially since he still had some money coming in for a few months thanks to Lovecraft’s severance package. More than that, Asher grinned, tonight would be an important night.
“Hey, Ruth, you’re still on for Erebor tonight, right?” Asher called over his shoulder, at the scaly back of his brother.
“Yeah, I’m still on board,” Ruth grumbled under his breath. “Smog’s commission, right?”
“The very one,” Asher confirmed, hopping back to his feet and strutting over to the bathroom on the farthest end of their shared apartment. His bedroom was through the door opposite the bathroom, and looked very much in the same state of disarray as the kitchenette had been, much to his shame. “Lemme change, then you can shower.”
Asher sighed as he locked the door behind him and stripped out of his work clothes. The hatefully confining leather shoes were carelessly kicked off. The tie was tugged off his neck and hung on a nearby hook, while he practically tore the dress shirt open in his desperation to get it off. He set his sleek black phone onto the counter while he removed his pants and underwear, then held his breath.
The next step was always a real rush.
He dug his hand into his pants pocket and fished around for his ring. His fingers touched the cool metal, and he felt energy surge into his system from within. As the ring slid onto his finger, he could feel the power of his draquartz filling every cell of his body. The energy pulsed and flared as it touched his very DNA and commanded him to change. There was a white glow that filled the room, and when Asher next looked into the mirror, it was from a much taller perspective.
Where before had been a scrawny human that barely passed average height was now a drake of dark grey scales and white trims. His glowing yellow eyes took on slit shaped pupils, and his lips parted into a grin, revealing rows of razor sharp teeth. He quickly straightened his pliable crest, running his scaly fingers over the wave-like shape. His horns, a meager six inches long each, stretched up over his head and crooked a few times, giving them a slight lightning bolt shape before tapering into a spike. He looked like a smaller, differently coloured version of his brother, and it suited him just fine.
“This is the real me,” Asher affirmed to himself, looking his reflection in the eye, “not that stupid monkey that I had to pretend to be. This,” he hissed, recognizing the growl of his voice, “is me.”
Chapter 3
Asher could feel the thumping bass of Club Erebor long before he could hear the music. From outside the building, the ground shook with the pounding beat, sending vibrations through his legs. He pulled the hood of his black synthetic jacket over his head, effortlessly threading his horns through the seamed holes on the sides. His firm crest left a bulge in the fabric, but the effect was mostly unmarred. Asher smirked as he imagined how he looked, with his hood up and his shiny black coat reflecting the lights of the holographic signs floating in the air around him. He must look like something out of a movie. Even though the term ‘wizard’ was antiquated since the discovery of magic, Asher still liked occasionally living up to the stereotype, with mystery and theatrics in some of the things he did. In additi
on to the coat, he also wore a pair of mana-powered watches, one on each wrist. They were loaded with a series of spells that he could need when conducting deals with less savoury types: lockpicking, fireballs, shields, the usual retinue of staple magic when dealing with people like Duncan Smog.
While Asher was basking in the fun of living out his fantasy, Ruth had taken a much more practical approach to his wardrobe. As was his normal, he wore a plain white, zip-up, t-shirt, and instead of pants he wore the grey jumpsuit that served as his uniform when working at the mana station, with the arms tied around his waist, just above his tail. Unlike Asher, he wasn’t armed to the teeth with spells, but it wasn’t like he needed to be. In a brawl, he’d always have the upper hand: he was big, he was strong, and his claws were sharp.
Club Erebor wasn’t hard to find, if you knew where to look for it. The pounding bass and the congregating drakes of all shapes and colours were usually a dead giveaway, once you started getting close, but for the uninitiated it could be hard to locate. The Itzcovitch brothers, thankfully, were far from being uninitiated. As they approached the nondescript building on the edge of the broodtown border, the line of eagerly awaiting drakes shouted in frustration as the copper-coloured bouncer turned away from them and turned his attention to the brothers.
