Of Beasts and Bells

by J E Mueller

  The lights suddenly changed, going from bright to flickering candle light. My eyes drifted around the room looking at the various sconces that came alive as if they really were on fire. It would have been alluring if the room wasn’t so big and void of anything else. Instead, it felt lonely and a little eerie.

  “They’re neat, aren’t they?” I heard Nadia say and I turned her way.

  “They are. I haven’t seen lighting like this anywhere.”

  “It’s an expensive enchantment.” Nadia shrugged. “Well, to do so with so many lights. Still, you'd think it would be a bit more popular. It’s fun.” She gave another shrug before walking back over to me and offering her hand out.

  I smiled at her and accepted the gesture.

  Nadia positioned our hands and arms correctly before starting to describe the steps, motion, and how to stay connected. In many ways, it reminded me of waltzing. The strides were longer but Nadia took the lead and guided me through the motions. After being guided through long steps and slower turns, and far more spins than I was expecting, I started to get the hang of it.

  I wasn’t sure how long we were dancing, even less sure what time it was in general. When we finally decided to stop, we were both laughing, tired, and slightly sweaty. With smiles, we went out onto the balcony. It stretched the length of the ballroom, being almost large enough for an event all of its own.

  The cooler evening air caressed my cheeks and cooled my exposed shoulders. For a moment it felt good while we leaned on the railing overlooking the gardens and the woods in the distance.

  “This place must have been absolutely stunning for events,” I commented as I glanced around. It was starting to get hard to see as the sun seemed to vanish into the trees.

  “It was,” Nadia readily agreed. “It didn’t take much to make it look amazing. A few seasonal decorations, maybe a few changes in enchantments and ta-da. Perfection. We were always sought out for events and never disappointed.”

  I didn’t doubt her. The pride in her voice wasn’t even arrogance, just simple and factual. “When you’re back to normal, what would be the first event you host?”

  She glanced at me thoughtfully before looking into the distance. After a few moments she finally replied, “I don’t really know…”

  “Well, beating this weird cursed enchantment thing would be worth celebrating. Like a welcome back to reality party.” I shrugged, not entirely sure where to go with my own idea.

  Nadia gave a slow nod. “That does sound fun. Maybe call it a ‘Homecoming’ since I suppose I’d be returning home to the community.” She paused before giving me a sidelong look. “Would you come?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Of course I’d come, though is it really going if you’re already stuck somewhere?”

  Nadia frowned as she took my words in. “I guess I never technically released you, even if I haven't considered you a prisoner here for a long time.” She sighed and shook her head. “I am sorry for that. You are free. If you want to leave, I can escort you to the edge of the woods. The wolves are nothing to me.”

  I shook my head. “I do miss my brother, but solving this is more important. I’m sure he’s uncovered several things about this now himself and isn’t as concerned. Maybe. He never worries about the actual important things.” I gave her a half smile.

  She gave a sad smile in return. “You should go to him. Let him see that you are fine, and if he found something useful maybe that’ll be the hand up needed here.”

  I frowned, but she did make a good point. “I hate that you might be right. If Marcus did find something useful, he may have trouble getting back here. I don’t really want to leave you here though.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Her face was neutral and while I knew in my gut it was a lie, there was no way to tell for sure.

  I smirked at her and crossed my arms. “Better not talk trash about me while I’m gone. I don’t want the toaster tattling on you.”

  Nadia chuckled in reply. “We both know if it was anyone, it would be Luce. He can’t keep his mouth shut on gossip. I bet the Daeum had to put extra magic on him to keep him from blabbering everything.”

  I laughed at that for a moment before letting myself get serious. “Well, what’s the new game plan then? Getting out of the woods won’t be difficult with you, and once outside of this place I can use my phone. In theory it’ll be alive since it’s been off. Maybe.”

  “Just charge it?” Nadia shrugged. “We do have electricity, and that way you’ll know for sure it’ll be fine.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. The common sense approach made me laugh again.

  “Okay, I’ll do that. When do we put this into action?”

  Nadia thought for a moment. “Tomorrow afternoon I suppose. If we leave around then the woods won’t be as frigid. In theory.”

  “That is almost the worst part of the whole spell. Why make it so cold if everyone is already trapped in here?” I shook my head shivering at both the thought and the steadily cooling air.

  Nadia nodded. “It is a bit overkill, isn’t it? I hardly notice the difference.” She glanced at me rubbing my arms for more warmth. “You, however, you are much less made for the cold. Let’s go back inside.”

  “Soon enough you will be too,” I mocked lightly as I gladly led the way into the warmer castle.

  “No, I can always be warm.” She smirked. “Just because I can’t use magic in this form, doesn’t mean I don’t have magic.”

  How had we not talked about this yet?

  “Fire magic?” I asked curiously as she led the way out of the ballroom.

  “Nope.” Her smile widened. “Guess again.”

  I tried to consider what else would make sense. For a moment I followed her in silence trying to come up with more than one idea.

  “I guess ice magic would make you more immune to the cold.”

  “Not that either.” She gave a small laugh.

  I followed her back to her room as the list of possibilities ran through my mind. Nothing seemed to work as well as the first two suggestions.

  “I give, what is it?”

  “Shifter magic,” she replied with a satisfied smile.

  “Oh that’s awesome!” I didn’t even try to hide my excitement. “What’s your primary form? Do you have a secondary form? Do you have any other magic masteries?”

  Nadia sat on the edge of her bed and kicked off her heels.

  “If you’re really that curious, my prime form is a dire red wolf. I do have a secondary form of a Pteronura Brasiliensis.”

  The smirk on her face told me she didn’t expect me to know what that was. However, at one point I had a small obsession with said species and knew more than I should admit about the thirteen types.

  “So, a giant river otter. Do you stay true to its size? I’m sure with a dire wolf that’s less difficult, but transforming into a creature about your true size would be harder.”

  Nadia looked surprised for a moment. “I am fairly close to it’s normal size, yes. They can get up to five foot six but I am a bit smaller than that. Shifters can change into much smaller forms without any negative impacts though.”

  “So you’re from a shifter bloodline then and not just a shapeshifter.” I smirked, having no problems showing off my bit of knowledge as I sat down in an oversized chair.

  Nadia gave a slow nod. “Yes, I suppose being a Shifter is different than a shapeshifter. They can’t gain or lose mass without repercussions and possible death.”

  “What about other magic masteries?” I asked. “I can’t remember if Shifters get more than their changing abilities.”

  “Not always. Maybe about thirty-five, forty percent do,” Nadia explained. “I do have the basics mastered. I can’t access the overall power source and do more specialized things like enchanting or casting. I did specialize a bit in mental communications, but aside from establishing a mental link for talking, I cannot read thoughts or project unwanted messages. The individual must first a
gree to the link in order for communication to happen.”

  “That is still really really cool.” I had a million questions about that, but a yawn overtook me. “I guess you’re safe from the twenty questions game for now though.”

  Nadia gave a small laugh. “Safe for maybe eight hours.”

  Laughing, I headed off to bed.

  ——Marcus——

  We had barely gotten back to the apartment when a loud knock came at the door. We all glared at the interruption and waited to see if they’d just go away. The knock persisted again, and again, so I was finally forced to answer it.

  Of course it was the last person I wanted to even consider dealing with. The only good thing that came out of this entire situation was the fact that Ash did not have to deal with Donny.

  “Marcus! My good man!” he stated the second I had the door open enough to see him.

  “Sorry Donny, I’ve got company. Can we chat another time?” I tried to reply pleasantly while giving him enough information to take a hint.

  Donny was a brick who couldn’t take a hint. In fact, he actively pushed past me. “Ah, Marcus’s friends! How fun.” He turned back to me. “I didn’t think you were a social kind of man.”

  The guys looked as annoyed as I felt by the interruption.

  “Yep,” I replied through gritted teeth. “So, we’ll see you later then?” Hint hint, dude bro.

  “Of course, I don’t want to keep you from your friends,” Donny said as he made zero movement to the door and instead stood firmly rooted in place. “I was just wondering where Ash is. We haven’t seen her around the last few weeks and that seems a bit odd. She’s normally more of a busybody.”

  Busybody was not what I’d call my bookworm sister. “She’s been out of town visiting a friend.”

  It was only partly a lie. She was technically just outside of town.

  “Oh good for her! I’m surprised it’s been so long,” Donny stated, not letting anything I say unroot him from my apartment. “About when will she be back?”

  “I’m unsure,” I replied honestly before letting another lie slide in. “She’s working on a magical research project. You know bookworms. Once they get involved in research there’s no telling when they’ll be back to reality,” I tried to joke.

  It wasn’t too much of a lie. If Ash did find a way out of that cell, she’d be doing all she could to solve that mess.

  “Ah, I guess those reading types do get that way,” Donny stated, failing terribly to hide his disappointment. “Maybe she’d like some company from another friend. I might be able to help with her project.”

  “Donny, we both know you have zero insight on the inner workings of deep magic and even less of an idea of how to deal with an arduous magical storm. However, if you want to pretend to be a braggart, you’ll just have to impress her another time. As I have stated on several occasions, I also will not give you her number. If Ash wanted you to know where she was, she would have told you. Have a good night.”

  Donny wasn’t sure what to say to my statement, and probably didn’t understand half of it. I rarely used so many ridiculous words, but the moment seemed to call for me to be a bit more obnoxious with my vocabulary. It seemed to be a long painful second before Donny’s brain rebooted and he left in a huff. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go in the future, but it was a problem for another time.

  “Who was that?” Stan asked with a small, uncomfortable laugh.

  “An annoying small-minded stalker with a weird obsession for my sister,” I replied honestly.

  “Dude, he needs to be tased. That was way too over the line.” Jon shook his head in disbelief.

  “Maybe your sister is better off where she is,” Richard mused and we all gave a brief nod. None of us liked dealing with guys like that.

  “Well, back to saving Ash from the enchantment, then we can work on where you’re moving. There’s no way you should stay here with people like that hanging about,” Stan commented.

  “Agreed.” I was originally planning on staying the year’s lease but after that moment with Donny, I was beyond done. “Why don’t we scout that area of the forest? Maybe it’ll give us the right inspiration.”

  “I wanted to see how that magic works. I’m down for that plan,” Richard agreed.

  “We should wait a little bit. I don’t want to run into dude bro in the parking lot.” Jon glanced at the door cautiously.

  I hated that he was right about that.

  After twenty minutes, we headed out. Getting there wasn’t hard, and yet, it was super difficult. The guys kept trying to tell me we were going the wrong way, and at one point there were no woods until I convinced them to stare in that direction. Their eyes looked glazed over for several moments before they saw it and looked surprised.

  “There’s not going to be an easy way to get around this.” Richard gave a low whistle. “It had no problem messing with our minds.”

  “The real question is why did it stop messing with our minds?” Jon added looking warily at the forest.

  “Because we were deemed either worthy enough to know or not a big enough threat not to know,” Stan said in a low voice before opening the car door. “You said it gets colder as you walk into the woods right?”

  I nodded as I got out and followed him. “Yes, but I'm not sure how cold exactly since I don't remember the trip in or out. Just that bit of trying to escape.”

  “If there was snow, I’d assume it’s mildly cold, though it’s magical so who can really guess,” Jon commented as we all headed into the woods.

  We walked for several minutes before the woods started to get cold. When we could start to see frost and snow we stopped.

  “Twelve minutes of normal walking to get to the frost and cold. Interesting,” Jon stated, looking at his watch. “I guess if someone accidentally was allowed in they’d be none the wiser if they got right back out.”

  Richard nodded. “It won’t let me save the location to my phone so we’ll just have to go with that for distance.”

  We heard the snap of a branch behind us and all turned around to see a dark figure. They froze when we turned around and ran back the way we had just come.

  For a second, we all glanced at one another before taking off after the figure.

  It wasn’t a surprise the person we were chasing was faster than us. Stan was the only one of us who regularly worked out and even he wasn’t exactly keeping up. When we broke free from the woods a car was shooting off and I cursed loudly.

  “How did we not see or notice him following us?” I yelled, not bothering to hide my anger and annoyance.

  “Who?” Jon asked breathing heavily.

  “Donny,” I yelled the name as I paced back and forth having recognized the car. “How the heck did that jerk even get into the woods?”

  They didn’t reply at first. Everyone shrugged and glanced around as if the answer was on a tree, or rock, or something physical.

  “I don’t know, but we need to head back,” Stan finally stated, his voice calm. “We need to go through your things, find what can help us get past those wolves, and get there tomorrow. If we don’t, I have a feeling he’s going to try.”

  I groaned. “It’s not like I would mind him getting eaten by wolves, but I know him and his friends love to hunt so he’ll come back prepared for that much.”

  “He won’t know what to do about the castle or the beast but I’m certain he’d be the kind of guy to make things worse.” Richard sighed.

  “Exactly.” I nodded as I opened the car door. “Guess we’re on to plan Z.”

  Jon sighed as he got in the passenger side. “Can we call it plan D at least?”

  “Why?” I reluctantly asked as I started the car.

  “Plan Dude bro?” Stan guessed with a laugh.

  “I hate you all.” I sighed as we headed off.

  Chapter 9

  ——Astrid——

  Morning didn’t feel right. Everything seemed to hang heavy in the air and I
couldn’t puzzle out why. There was a shift in the current normal, sure. I would be going home for a bit to see what Marcus had uncovered, but I would be back. Why did it all feel wrong and like a final goodbye? Why did my heart ache over it?

  I pushed it aside as I went about getting ready and headed downstairs. The time lapse wasn’t making sense anymore. Had I been here three weeks? Four? Sixteen years? Maybe not that long, but it truly felt like several months.

  Nadia seemed to be more of a blank canvas this morning, hiding every emotion as we ate and chatted. I wasn’t surprised. She was probably sad to lose the one being who wasn’t afraid to treat her as a normal person. I wasn’t going to bring it up though when everyone else was around. They didn’t need to be part of that conversation. Their constant gossiping wasn’t solving anything and I didn’t want to add more kindling to that fire.

  I found I wasn’t exactly sure what to say the moment we had a chance to speak alone. Mentally, I hemmed and hawed about it before I gave in and went the simple route.

  “I’m sure things won’t take long with Marcus. I’ll probably be back tomorrow or the day after,” I stated bluntly as Nadia walked along the armory looking for something.

  Nadia shrugged as she picked out a sword and strapped it to herself. “Take the time you need. I understand you’ve been away for a while and may have several things that need catching up on,” she replied neutrally. Once the sword was belted and seathed into place, she continued her search.