“Hell no,” said the man, but his grip loosened just enough for Stavius to break free and place his arm over the man’s neck.
“Which do you think will last longer, my ribs or your neck?” Stavius asked as he shifted his weight onto the man’s thick neck, causing him to gasp for air.
“I yield. I yield,” croaked the man in a raspy voice as he let go of Stavius.
Stavius stood and looked around. The three fighter illusions were gone. The woman was still retching on one side. ‘Naked guy’ was curled up on the field sobbing with cherry red buttocks. And ‘fat man’ was lying on his back, holding his neck and gasping for air.
“Impressive, young man,” said the giant as he walked over to Stavius and looked at his fallen troops. “But now it’s time to fight me.”
Stavius looked at the giant and made an instant decision. This man was not wrapped in any illusions. He was big, and he was wearing full battle armor. Stavius was also confident that this man was a highly-skilled combat fighter.
Stavius threw down his pretend battle ax and said, “No.”
“Son, I don’t think you understand the rules here. This is my class, my field, and you do what I say,” growled the giant.
“Not this time,” argued Stavius. “These first two challenges were reasonable tests of my abilities but fighting you now would be foolish, and I have no desire to get a senseless beating.”
“So, you are refusing to fight me?” asked the giant in disbelief. “You’re supposed to be a fearless hero, destined to save the world, and you’re afraid to spar your teacher?”
“No, not at all,” corrected Stavius. “I’ll certainly fight you, but just not now.”
“I’m confused,” laughed the giant. “Would this afternoon be better for your schedule? Perhaps after tea?”
“No, I’ll fight you after you’ve trained me how to win,” replied Stavius. “I’ve proven that I can fight. What I need now is your training.”
The giant stared at Stavius and said, “Maybe you aren’t as stupid as I thought, kid.” Then he reached out his hand and said, “The name is Bor, and yes, I’ll teach you how to fight and win. Walk with me.”
Stavius shook Bor’s hand, only slightly worried about a Craan-style sucker punch, and began walking towards the village with him.
“I get how you beat Craan,” began Bor. “He’s pretty easy, once you figure out his game. But how did you manage to beat the others?”
“Well, I just fooled them into thinking I was going after one of the illusions and then focused on their weak spots. They were only wearing bits and pieces of protective clothing, and the one I spanked wasn’t even wearing pants. I mean, I know it’s hot out today, but who shows up to a fighting lesson naked?”
“Wait, are you saying that you can see through illusions?” Bor asked as he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Yeah, I’ve always been able to see through them, and I’ve only recently figured out how to see enough of them to know what people are trying to project,” answered Stavius. He couldn’t believe that he had just blurted that out.
“You’re an animal! You’re an absolute animal!” shouted Bor.
Stavius was devastated. He had been feeling on top of the world after pulling off an incredible feat, and now he was outed as being inhuman. The sudden fall from hero to freak nearly stopped his heart, and he was ready to run into the woods and disappear.
Bor was shouting again. “That’s the most amazing gift I’ve ever known! I could conquer any army on this planet if I had a dozen men like you. You’ve got to teach me how to do that!”
Stavius was dumbstruck and only managed to say, “What?”
“Ninety percent of all armies are illusions,” explained Bor. “The problem is that you never know who is real and who is an illusion until it’s too late. Employing illusions gives armies defending a castle an enormous advantage because they’ll have spotters high on the walls who are trained to identify and direct troops towards the real attacking soldiers. Also, most castle walls have weak spots or even secret openings which are simply hidden by illusions. Illusions provide defenders ways to add reinforcements, supply their troops, or even escape if necessary. We could successfully storm any castle anywhere with the ability to see through those illusions. We would be unstoppable! I’ll teach you everything I know about fighting, but you’ve got to promise to teach me this skill.”
“I’ll try,” mumbled Stavius, “but I’ve been this way all my life and I’m not sure it’s something that can be learned.”
“Well, perhaps it doesn’t matter,” grinned Bor as he put his arm around Stavius. “For the first time in my life, I think we might have a hero capable of fulfilling the prophecy. Would you mind if I joined you at your table for lunch? We have so much to discuss.”
MARK’S HOUSE, EARTH
I have been pacing back and forth in the hallway outside my bedroom for over an hour. Malik is reading my diary in my room, and my mind is coming up with ever worsening scenarios with each passing minute. Right now, I am imagining him silently laughing at me and texting my secret dreams to his buddies. I realized I should have never let him read it, but it was either that or go crazy.
I’ve been back on Earth for a week, which means I had my most recent Mearth dream last Saturday, and it’s been the worst week of my life. Mom says I’ve been acting strange and that she thinks I’m depressed. Let’s see; I just came from a magical universe where I am a hero being trained to save the world, and now I’m sitting in my parents’ house in Cincinnati. Yeah, depressed sums it up pretty well.
Dad says I’m just acting up because summer is ending, but Mom thinks it’s something more and wants to send me to a psychiatrist. My answers to that are no and definitely no! Can you imagine how quickly I’d be locked up in the looney bin if I told a shrink the truth?
The truth is that I haven’t been able to eat the bacon cheeseburgers or barbeque ribs I used to love because I still have some of Staven’s memories in my mind. Some bullies slipped him a magically-enhanced apple when he was a kid, and he spewed diarrhea and puke for three days from eating magical essence. He felt like he was going to die, and wished that would happen several times. The prank actually could have been fatal, which is why poisoning someone with magical essence is considered a severe crime with harsh penalties. The kids, however, argued that they figured it wouldn’t hurt Staven since he couldn’t even do illusions and was pretty much an animal anyway. Staven’s parents didn’t press charges, which might’ve been due to the bullies’ parents being wealthy clients or to his parents partly agreeing. Either way, Staven, and now Stavius and Mark, couldn’t get anything that might contain magical essence past their lips and that included meat.
The truth is that I’m living in a suburb of a city in southwestern Ohio preparing for the eighth grade instead of as a hero living in a magical universe preparing to fight battles and fulfill a thousand-year-old prophecy.
The truth is that when I got out of bed last Saturday and looked in the mirror, I saw an overweight, acne-faced, thirteen-year-old kid with glasses, greasy hair and a deformed arm. I never realized how much that bothered me until I saw myself reflected as a handsome and fit seventeen-year-old man. I felt crushed and wanted to go back. I also knew that I could never share this with anyone without being sent to therapy for the rest of my life.
All this began eating at me and got worse and worse until I had to do something. I couldn’t keep it inside, so I finally confided in my best friend, Malik, and asked him to read my diary. He might never be my friend again after this, but I had to trust someone.
“Dude, that is one heck of a story,” said Malik as I stood staring at him sitting on my bed.
“So, do you believe it?” I asked. He probably thought this was all a joke, but his answer was going to define my life.
“Not a word,” he said.
My world collapsed. All my fears and doubts just came crashing down. The impact of Malik’s disbelief was worse than if he had
found out about my feelings for Nancy Wellington. No, wait, that was in there too! Oh, my life is over.
“But it’s evident that you believe it for some reason,” he continued. “So, I’ll play along. After all, we’re best friends, right?”
I could’ve hugged him at that moment, but didn’t because that would be weird. Well, maybe not. Guys do it in the movies sometimes, but no, it would be weird.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, here’s the deal. My mom says I’ve been online too much this summer and have to get out of the house to find something more creative to do. I’d say that your story is the mother lode of creativity, so let’s turn it into a real-life role-playing game and have some fun with it this summer. We can get Ethan and Tyler on board, have some fun, and make my mom happy. The only requirement is that, since you’re the hero, I get to be in charge.”
“Um, what do you mean by a game?” I asked. “And what do you mean that you’re in charge?”
He said, “Your alter ego, Stavius, has a team training him on Mearth, right? So, let’s create a team here on Earth to help train him as well.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“That’s why I’m in charge,” grinned Malik. He was getting into this. “You said that Stavius learns what you learn, right? So, let’s get some useful knowledge for him.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you should bail on soccer and go back to martial arts. I mean Stavius is not going to need to dribbling and passing skills to save the world, but some good karate moves might help. Besides, you hate soccer.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It was pretty amazing to be able to use some of those martial arts moves I learned, and Mom only put me in soccer because it doesn’t involve my arms.”
I was in a car accident when I was little, and my left elbow was crushed, which destroyed something called growth plates so my arm never really grew right. My classmates were never bothered by my shriveled arm when we were younger. Now, however, I can tell that it bothers most people and, even though I know that’s their problem, I realize that it’s mine too.
“We should also try to figure out who your Mearth teammates are over here to help them out as well,” Malik added.
“Mr. Urtish warned me not to do that,” I complained.
“Yeah, and how’s that been working for the past thousand years?” asked Malik. “How would giving their counterparts here an edge be a bad thing? Besides, this is all pretending. It’ll be fun trying to figure out who else we know who could be Mearth heroes!”
I was going to argue but knew he wouldn’t listen. Besides, he had a good point about that rule not helping much in the past.
“And, finally, we need to map Mearth to Earth,” he said with a proud grin. “That’s going to be some great sleuthing fun.”
“Again, what do you mean?”
Malik said, “I’ve decided that Mearth isn’t another planet, it’s an alternate Earth reality. I believe that the cave, the valley, and even the village where Staven lives are all alternate realities of places here on earth. And, I believe that they are all probably somewhere around Cincinnati.”
“OK, I somewhat agree with an alternate reality, because I was thinking along the same lines. But what makes you think it would take place in Cincinnati, of all places. It could be anywhere in the world, right?”
“Wrong, meathead. It’s your dream, and you’re going to base your dream on things you know. So, it has to take place around here,” Malik said with finality.
“Well, I don’t know of any caves around here, and there are no streets or recognizable buildings on Mearth, so I’m not sure about that,” I said. Malik looked as though he was considering bailing, so I quickly added “But I get it. It could be sort of like a treasure hunt to try to find a connection.”
So, we shook on it and created Team Stavius, Earth Division. Malik wanted to invite the rest of the gang and have them read my diary, skipping the part about me thinking it was real. I was OK with that, except for the part about them learning about my feelings for Nancy Wellington but Malik just laughed and asked: “Who doesn’t have a crush on her?” He said that Ethan even told him that the best part of his summer was when she smiled at him after kicking him into our goal. We laughed, but he made me swear never to share that with anyone.
I was feeling better than I had all week until he made one final remark. “And Mark, the next time you have one of these dreams, ask somebody when the last time a group of heroes went out, and try to find out what happened to their visitors from Earth when they didn’t come back.”
I hadn’t considered what might happen to me if Stavius failed. The Mearth prophecy might merely be a game to Malik, but I suddenly became very interested in, and nervous about, the answers to those questions.
Chapter 6
Magic Lessons
Stavius nervously sat on the single chair in front of the blackboard in the cave waiting for Ms. Birquel to arrive for magic class. He was dreading this lesson but made sure that he arrived early. Ms. Birquel, however, was late. Perhaps she wasn’t quite as anal-retentive as his history teacher or perhaps, as Urtish would say, this indicated her lack of respect for a student whom she wasn’t interested in teaching. Whatever the reason, Stavius was sitting here with Janus and was beginning to appreciate why everyone hated the kid.
Janus had decided to audit his class and was idly conjuring up swarms of bat illusions to dive bomb Stavius’ head. Stavius was able to ignore the illusions, but Janus’ game and his twisted laugh had gone from mildly funny to extremely trying. Janus was one of those people who didn’t know when to stop. He seemed to think that if something was funny once, then it must be funny for a thousand times.”
“How did you come up with your name, Janus?” asked Stavius, trying to distract his annoying companion. “It’s pretty odd that you chose the name of a despised demigod.”
“My host’s name is Janus, and my visitor’s name is similar enough that combining them doesn’t result in an especially unique name,” said Janus. “So, we just stuck with my host name. But don’t worry, we’re both clever enough to not get confused,” he added with a smirk as thirty imaginary bats simultaneously dropped a load of guano onto Stavius’ lap.
Stavius was about to yell at him for the tenth time when his teacher arrived.
“Janus, stop it right now out or get out,” grumbled Ms. Birquel as a large fruit bat flew into her hair. She set down her coffee and said to Stavius, “Very well, young man. Let’s see what you can do. Copy one of these.”
Stavius stared at her in confusion. “Um, copy one of what?”
“Why any of these illusions,” she said, with disdain.
Stavius realized that he still had his illusion vision dialed down from ignoring Janus. Illusion vision was a term he created, and he was extremely proud of it. Stavius turned illusions fully on and his whole world transformed. Ms. Birquel reversed aged from fifty to twenty, and her plain linen tunic changed into a long, dark blue, silk gown covered in glowing stars. Janus was wearing a huge, fuzzy purple top hat, and there were thousands of bats suspended from the cavern ceiling. However, there were also three objects now sitting on the teacher’s desk: a featureless, gray ball, a porcelain statue of an elephant, and a small figure dancing an elaborate routine with silk scarves swirling about her.
“Sorry, I had my illusion vision turned off,” muttered Stavius.
“Oh, so it is true,” said Ms. Birquel with a raised eyebrow. “Your exploits with Bor have caused quite a stir.”
She was right. Stavius’ performance on the tournament field had earned him some respect from the villagers, and Bor’s enthusiastic endorsement of his abilities had smoothed over most of the hard feelings from his thoughtless remarks. However, now everyone truly hated him because he could see through their illusions. People realized they had to wash and mend their clothes and comb their hair. For that matter, people had to wear clothes now, which made them hot and grumpy in the l
ate-summer heat. Many were spending time puttering around inside the cave because it was far more comfortable than the 110-degree temperatures this part of the world reached most summer afternoons. Now they were complaining about the utter darkness instead of the oppressive heat.
Stavius might have gained some respect and acceptance as a hero trainee, but he was disliked almost as much as Janus.
“Well, young man. I’m waiting,” his impatient teacher said while tapping her foot.
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Stavius sheepishly admitted.
“You can’t even create a simple, featureless sphere that doesn’t cast a shadow?” marveled Ms. Birquel. “How is it possible that you have never learned any magic?”
“Um, I was never any good at it, and people eventually stopped trying,” admitted Stavius.
“Unbelievable,” groaned Ms. Birquel. “Well, let’s start from the beginning then. There are five forms of magic in the world: Illusion, Transformation, Enhancement, Scaling and Teleportation. You know about Illusion, even though you claim to be unable to do it. I must say that I find this hard to believe since even infants can illude with no training whatsoever. It’s one of this world’s greatest parenting challenges. Imagine playing peekaboo or hide and seek with a baby who finds it endlessly funny to disappear.”
At that moment she produced the loudest fart Stavius had ever heard. He tried to stifle his laugh but failed and let loose a belch when he opened his mouth.
“Janus, either control yourself or leave!” screamed Ms. Birquel as the sounds of her flatulence and Stavius’ burp continued to echo off the cavern walls.
“Hey, I was just demonstrating how illusions can be audible as well as visual,” Janus innocently explained. His explanation might have been more believable if he wasn’t doubled over laughing.
“Just stop it, Janus,” Ms. Birquel growled. “Most children grow out of this sort of behavior by the time they’re six. I’m going to ask you to leave now.”
“Um, can you let him stay?” pleaded Stavius. “He’s right. I never knew you could create audio illusions. I still wouldn’t if it weren’t for his little stunt.”
Stavius Page 6
