Chapter Ten
“Is the fire spell the only magic you know?” Racine asked me in a curious tone. “I’d like to know what level of knowledge you are starting with.”
“I know a few battle spells,” I explained. “Fire, ice, disarm, negate, shield… I don’t know any summoning magic, though, and it seems like that is your specialty.”
“It is indeed.” Racine nodded. “I’ve been summoning my entire life, and only recently have I been able to conjure up the larger creatures like my wolf-men.”
“They’re snarling, but they don’t seem to be very upset,” I observed as I glanced over at the cages full of the werewolf creatures. “How do you control them once you’ve summoned them?”
“Partly through my sheer will power,” Racine informed me in a proud tone. “But it can be difficult to control so many at one time, so I have a wand I use to help keep them calm.”
“Isn’t that cheating?” I asked, even though I personally didn’t care. I just wanted to understand how it all worked.
“No,” Racine hissed, and he shot me a red-hot glare. “A wizard must only follow the rules of magic.”
“I’m not sure that’s how it works.” I raised one eyebrow. “Don’t you have to obey the duke and the king, too?”
“Not for long,” Racine muttered under his breath, and my ears perked up with curiosity.
“What did you say?” I pressed.
“Nothing,” Racine lied, and he beckoned me over to the workbench where he stood. “Now, let’s get started.”
I considered making a new save point, but I wanted to be able to respawn to right when I first met Racine since I didn’t want him to tell anyone there was a man in town who knew magic. I was sure the duke would want to find out about that, and the longer I could keep Arginold in the dark, the better.
“So, how do you summon monsters anyway?” I asked to redirect the conversation back to the topic at hand.
Namely teaching me everything the court wizard knew.
“There is a bit of a ritual involved, but it is relatively short, and the creatures will remain active until killed, so the time doesn’t really make that much of a difference.” Racine seemed to get a little bit more excited the more he talked, and then he was buzzing through information faster than I could absorb. “You’ll need something tangible to represent the creature you are trying to summon, like a chicken feather or a claw.”
“How did you get the werewolves?” I asked.
“All sorts of magical animals and mysterious creatures live in the wild southern lands,” Racine explained. “It was quite arduous to get my first set of werewolf hair, but I’ve been able to maintain my supply easily ever since then.”
“Awesome.” I grinned and headed toward the cages. “I’ll just grab a few hairs, then.”
“My boy, you are nowhere near ready to summon something as large as a werewolf.” Racine clucked his tongue like he was reprimanding a child. “We will start with something much easier and work our way up to the bigger creatures.”
“Alright.” I obediently turned back to the workbench and picked up the chicken feather I saw there. “So, what do I do?”
“First, we must grind up the feather into a powder.” Racine snatched the feather from my hand, tossed it into a mortar, and began to grind it with a pestle. He rubbed and twisted until the feather was nothing but a pile of white dust, and he scooped some up to show me how powdery it was. “This is the consistency you want.”
I noticed a resemblance to the gray blue ash the werewolf creatures I’d fought had disintegrated into, but it made sense, since it was the basis of the conjuration spell.
“Second, you must know the magical sigil for each animal or creature.” Racine jerked his head toward the bookshelves. “I have countless volumes full of magical instructions over there, but we do not have the time to go through all of them, so I will teach you the one for chicken for now.”
“Okay.” I accepted the mortar full of white powder Racine handed me, and I eyed it curiously. It was pretty cool how with a chicken feather and a few magic words, I could summon a creature from somewhere beyond. “Hey, Racine, where do the things come from? Like do they teleport from somewhere in this world or from a different dimension, or are they newly created?”
“It would take me a lifetime to explain the finer details of my craft to you,” Racine sighed with exasperation. “Let’s stick to the chicken lesson, alright?”
“I have plenty of time,” I informed him. “I’d like to know as much as you do, even if it takes me all night.”
“Impossible,” Racine scoffed. “Even a magical prodigy could never learn that much in one night.”
“Maybe I am a prodigy,” I laughed.
“While it is true I do not know that much about you,” Racine said, “I don’t really care to know more. I just want to get this over with and collect my gold.”
“Fine,” I chuckled. “I’m ready. Show me what to do.”
“Very well. Come stand in the middle of the room.” Racine instructed me on how to stand properly in order to conjure something, and then he taught me the movements and words I needed to perform.
After I’d gone through it three times, I was ready to try it for real, so I grabbed the powdered feather and held it in my left hand.
I repeated the gestures the court wizard had taught me, and I said the magic word, but nothing happened. Racine eyeballed my stance, corrected me in a couple of places, and then indicated for me to try again. I went through the motions with him watching closely, and he modified my arm position slightly.
“There, now try it again,” he said with a frown of concentration. “This could take all night before you ever see any results, but I’m only teaching you how to summon the one creature. I have more important things to do with my time, obviously.”
“Like what?” I countered with a taunting smile.
“I do not have to explain myself to you, Mister Tom,” Racine said with an upturned nose. “If that’s even your real name.”
“Well, it’s a nickname, but same thing.” I laughed. “I don’t think you actually have anything better to do tonight. I mean, you were lounging around eating grapes when I came in, after all.”
“How dare you mock me,” Racine hissed. “Do you want to continue to learn from me, or would you rather be dragged out by the guards?”
“Let’s just get this over with,” I said as I ignored his rude tone. Learning how to summon would be worth dealing with the asshole, but he sure didn’t make it easy to be around him.
I tried a few more times to summon the chicken, and I felt a little ridiculous as I wished with all my heart that a feathered fowl would appear on top of the little pile of powder I was sprinkling onto the floor. Then my ears began to ring, and a painful ache shot through my skull like an arrow. I had enough experience with magic to know those symptoms meant I was getting closer to my goal, so I doubled down on my will power, and I frowned with concentration as I tried yet again.
Suddenly, a blue flame-like light erupted in the center of the room, and when it faded away, a small white chicken stood in its place. It didn’t have a beak, but instead, a human nose was situated between its beady eyes, and I laughed out loud at the sight of the weird creature.
Still, I’d summoned something, so I was beyond happy with the results.
“Fuck, yeah!” I whooped with joy, but then I saw stars in my field of vision, and I felt my body go slack. I reset back to my save point with my last conscious thought.
Chime.
The pain in my head was gone, and I had progressed further along than I’d truly expected to during my first attempt.
It was a great start, and now I was eager to learn even more.
I’d just entered the room, and the court wizard looked up at me expectantly from the couch with his grapes still clutched in his hands. I went through the whole process of bribing him to teach me again, and then we made our way down into his cave-like workshop full of werewolves.
“So, the first time I summoned a creature,” I said when we were about to get started. “It had a human nose instead of a beak. What’s up with that? Did I do it wrong?”
“It’s completely normal to have some… abnormalities… during your first summoning rituals,” Racine assured me in an oddly nice tone. “I’m sure with enough practice you will be able to clarify your spell.”
“What else can you teach me besides the chicken?” I asked.
“You already know how to summon a chicken?” Racine verified, and I nodded. “Well, then, you won’t mind showing me.”
I stepped up to the workbench, found the chicken feather, and began to grind it up in the mortar and pestle just like Racine had during my first try. I turned the feather into a white powder, and then I moved into the center of the room and performed the ritual just like the court wizard taught me.
My head split with a massive headache, but I didn’t lose consciousness, and a moment later, my chicken was pecking at the floor by my feet. It had webbed duck feet and large turkey-like tail feathers, so it looked more like an amalgamation of various fowl than it did a chicken, but I was still pleased with the results.
“There.” I grinned. “Not even a single human body part on it, either.”
“You are more powerful than I expected,” Racine allowed in a cautious tone. “Where did you learn how to summon creatures like this? I thought I was the only one in Sorreyal with the ability to do so.”
“Oh, just this old man I used to know,” I half-lied. “Now, what else can you teach me?”
“Why are you in such a hurry?” Racine asked. “What are you planning to do with this new magic I will teach you?”
“I’m going to give you a bunch of gold, and that’s all you need to care about.”
“There’s not much in this world that makes me happier than gold,” Racine confessed.
“Well, if you want it, then you gotta show me something to make it worth my while,” I said. “What about one of those werewolf creatures?”
“It would take you thirty years to learn something so powerful,” Racine warned me. “Let’s start with a crow. I think I still have some crow feathers around here somewhere…”
The court wizard began to rifle through his stuff that laid scattered about on his workbench, and then he held up two obsidian-colored feathers for me to inspect.
“So, we grind them up into a powder,” I said as I took the feathers from his hand and moved toward the mortar and pestles. “But is the spell very different from the one used for the chicken?”
“Not too different,” Racine allowed. “But it can’t be the same exact spell or it wouldn’t work.”
“What’s the difference?” I asked as I began to grind up the pure black feathers. The powder residue was black, too, and I was excited to see what happened when I attempted the spell.
I’d managed to get a decent looking fowl before, but with enough practice, I could summon anything I wanted to. Images of me with an army of magical creatures flashed through my mind’s eye, and I grinned to myself as I pictured the total annihilation that followed.
“The word for chicken will be exchanged for the word for crow,” Racine explained. “And the arm movement is slightly different, to indicate a flying animal.”
“That makes sense.” I nodded in understanding.
Finally, the obsidian powder was ready for my experimentation, and I moved to the center of the workshop to begin. I sprinkled the powder in the design I already knew to initiate the summoning circle, and then I performed the arm movements and said the magic words.
Sweat beaded across my forehead and down the nape of my neck, and I suddenly felt very dizzy, but I didn’t lose consciousness.
Then a bright blue flame erupted into thin air, and an obsidian bird flew out of the fire before the flames doused themselves. I watched in awe while the black crow flapped its wings and circled overhead, and I grinned as I turned by eyes back to Racine.
“Not bad for a first try,” the court wizard complimented. “I could do better, though.”
“Show me,” I said.
He grabbed some of the black powder from the mortar in my hands, and then he sprinkled it onto the floor and performed the summoning ritual. A crow identical to mine flew out of the blue flames, but it was twice the size as the one I’d summoned.
Racine was just showing off, but I didn’t mind.
“Get it to fly where you want it to,” the court wizard commanded as he kept his eyes on the birds flying over our heads.
“How do I do that?” I asked as I followed the path of his gaze with my own.
“With your will power, of course,” Racine snorted. “I thought you said you were a wizard. One of the most fundamental aspects of magic is the ability to focus your will power.”
“Alright,” I said, and I took a deep breath.
I concentrated on the smaller black flying dot, and I imagined taking control of its direction. I instructed it to swoop low and fly close to Racine’s head, and it started moving in jolting, sharp motions. Then it began to descend from the vaulted ceiling of the cave-like space to soar closer to our heads, and I cackled when it plopped out some poop that fell smack dab in the middle of the court wizard’s wrinkled forehead.
“Absurd!” Racine cursed, and he strode over to a basket full of wands.
The court wizard rifled through them for a moment before he withdrew one, pointed it at my bird, and fired a blast of ice at it. The ice shard shot through the air like a bullet, and feathers exploded in a cloud of black when it impacted my summons. The gray-blue ash filtered down slowly to the ground, but it didn’t make a nice neat little pile like the werewolf ones had, probably because it had been in mid-flight when it had died.
My chicken, turkey, duck abomination squawked at me as if to confirm my theory, and I shook my head at the ridiculousness of what had just happened. It was totally worth it, though.
“What’s next?” I asked in an excited tone, but this merely earned me a scowl from Racine.
“I only promised to teach you how to summon one thing,” the court wizard argued. “Now, it is time for you to show me the gold. Maybe once I know the coins are real I will be willing to negotiate for more of my knowledge.”
“If it’s going to be that way,” I said. “Then I’m just going to start over.”
“What do you mean, start over?” Racine furrowed his eyebrows in confusion, but I didn’t take the time to explain.
Chime.
Racine blinked at me from his position on the couch, so I immediately dove into my spiel and completed the bribe to get into his workshop. Once we were back in the cave-like area beneath the castle, the court wizard eyed me shrewdly.
“What kind of magic do you know already?” he asked. “Where did you study? You seem so young.”
“Maybe I know an anti-aging spell,” I said in a vague tone, and Racine’s eyes sparked with curiosity. “Maybe I am just naturally gifted. We’ll never know for sure.”
This time, my chicken came out looking completely normal, but my crow had a vibrant parrot’s tail flapping from its backside. Racine still seemed impressed with my skills, though, so it was worth the headache it caused me to summon them. The two birds flapped and scratched while they explored the space, but I knew they weren’t going anywhere until they were killed, and I certainly didn’t have the heart to do it. Still, it didn’t matter. I’d eventually reset to my save point, and they’d cease to exist.
“I think I’m ready to learn how to summon a werewolf,” I informed Racine in a confident tone.
“You are far from the level of power it takes to summon such a strong creature,” Racine argued with a shake of his head. “We can try something a little bit bigger than the birds, but if you take on too much at once, it could kill you.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked
“We will summon a common dog next.” Racine frowned.
Racine showed me his jars and vials, and then he pointed out the one labeled as canine, so I opened it up and grabbed a few dog teeth from inside. We ground them up into a creamy-colored powder, and then he taught me the ritualistic arm movements and the magic words.
The blue flame burst, and a bark emitted from within the flames before a scraggly-looking puppy hopped out and wagged its tail. It was black and brown spotted, and its ears were lopsided, but it seemed happy since its tongue was hanging out the side of its mouth.
Sweat poured down my face and immediately soaked through my shirt, and my head began to ache as I struggled to maintain control of the dog. It wanted to run around the room and explore, but I wanted to make it sit with my will power.
I concentrated with all my might, and I furrowed my brow as I stared down at the happy-looking puppy. Finally, it tilted its head to the side and looked up at me in confusion before it plopped its ass down onto the ground.
“Good boy!” I said with a wide grin, and the summoned dog wagged its tail even harder.
“You act like it is a real beast,” Racine snickered.
“It’s real to me,” I shot back. “Why do you have so many werewolves, Racine, huh? What are you going to do with all of them? Attack innocent people?”
“That is none of your business,” the court wizard snapped. “I have taught you to summon, now show me the gold.”
Chime.
I had just entered the room, and the court wizard looked up at me expectantly from the couch with his grapes still clutched in his hands. I went through the motions of bribing him, and then we descended into his workshop once more.
“Show me what you already know,” Racine began as he gestured to the center of the room.
I ran through my animal conjurations, showed him an ice spell, a fire spell, and my shield spell quickly, and then I jerked my chin toward the cages of werewolves.
“How do I summon one of those guys?” I asked in a casual tone.
“That may be far above your current level of expertise,” the court wizard said. “Why don’t we begin with something smaller, but just as deadly if not controlled.”
“What did you have in mind?” I asked with a coolly arched eyebrow.
“Are you scared of bears?” Racine chuckled and rubbed his hands together before he turned to rifle through his jars and vials. He retrieved what he was looking for, and he held it up for me to examine.
There were several long brown hairs inside, as well as a couple of teeth, but it was hard to tell what animal they were from. The jar was labeled “brown tree bear,” though, so I pulled out a few pieces of the brown fluff and began the process of turning it into powder.
Racine watched my technique closely, and he gave me a quick tip on how to grind up the hairs faster, but then he was satisfied with my end result and nodded approvingly.
I moved to the center of the room, performed the ritualistic arm movements, and said the magic words, except I replaced the word for dog with the one for bear. I crossed my fingers in hopes for the best, but then the plume of blue flame erupted from the floor and danced toward the vaulted ceiling.
I leapt back to get away from the blaze until I realized I didn’t feel any heat radiating from the flames. It was a magical fire, but I wasn’t sure if it would still burn me or not. Before I could ask Racine about this, however, a brown bear lumbered out from the flames and let out a vicious roar.
My head felt like it was going to split in two, but I took a deep breath and pushed away the pain as I summoned all of my will power in order to control the bear. I stared it down with my brow creased in concentration, and I worked the muscle in my jaw as I pictured it sitting calmly on the ground.
The bear roared again, but then it shook its head like it was in pain, and it rested on its haunches. A moment later, the beast looked up at me, calm as it could be, and I resisted the urge to dance with joy.
“Well done,” Racine said with obvious reluctance.
“Now, about the werewolves,” I reminded him.
“What about my gold?” he countered.
“What are you and Dumas planning?” I shot back as I realized this was probably the most time I’d spent with him yet, and it was probably about time to restart. “Are you plotting against the dukes?”
Racine inhaled sharply, and his pale eyes narrowed suspiciously at me. “Who are you?”
“Oh, Racine!” a woman’s voice suddenly sang out from the stairs, and we both turned to look in the direction the sound had come from.
Suddenly, a gorgeous red-haired woman with enormous breasts jutting from the tight restraints of her corset bounced into the room, and I did a double take as I tried to maintain control of my bear.
“Sarisha, darling, I told you not to interrupt me while I’m working,” Racine said in a voice much sweeter than I’d heard him use toward me.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” the beautiful woman snapped.
Apparently, this was Racine’s wife, and my jaw nearly hit the floor when the realization struck. I looked from his wrinkled bald head to her wavy red locks, from his scraggly patchy beard to her full rouge-covered lips, and I tried not to laugh.
No wonder the dude was jealous all the time.
“My apologies, my love,” Racine purred in a sickeningly sweet voice, and Sarisha turned up her nose with a huff.
“You never let me see you working,” the court wizard’s wife complained. “Who is this man you’re down here conspiring with?”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” I said as I bowed. “My name is Tom. You are radiant, Lady Sarisha, truly a vision.”
“Ewww. You are a servant.” Sarisha’s gaze flicked over the servant’s uniform I’d forgotten I was wearing. “How dare you address me so casually? My husband should punish you for even looking at my beauty. Poor people should know their place.”
Alright, so she was a massive bitch, and the two of them made a perfect couple. It all made sense now. He had money and status, and she had the looks. They were two horrible people each using each other for their own selfish needs.
Who was I to stand in their way?
“Forgive me,” I said as I struggled not to laugh at her. “I’ll let you two talk.”
“Don’t touch anything,” Racine hissed, and I held up the palms of my hands in a gesture of surrender.
I meandered around the workshop and pretended not to listen in on their conversation, but it was difficult since it was so hilarious.
“Racine, when are you going to take me to the circus?” Sarisha’s voice turned bitter and angry. “You never let me even leave this filthy castle.”
“Your eyes seem to wander whenever we go down into the town,” Racine said in a harsh tone.
“Don’t you want to show me off?” she whined.
I poked around in the jars and vials for a minute, but I didn’t find anything that held my interest, so I made my way over to the cages full of relatively calm werewolves. They were quite interesting to see up close, and I gazed at them through the iron bars while I eavesdropped on the court wizard’s conversation with his wife.
“Of course, my love,” Racine said. “But can we discuss this another time?”
“You never make time for me.” Sarisha let out a very fake-sounding sob and put the back of her hand to her forehead like it was high school drama class. “Do I even matter?”
I shook my head in awe at her theatrics, and I didn’t envy the court wizard’s life at all.
A werewolf stirred sleepily and then rested its back against the cage. I noticed several hairs sticking out through the bars, and I inhaled sharply at my luck.
Racine wouldn’t even notice me taking a few.
I quickly reached out and plucked a handful of werewolf hairs from the creature’s back, and it yelped in pain.
“What are you doing?” Racine demanded hotly. “Get away from there!”
“Sorry, sorry,” I said, and I clasped the hairs firmly in my fist as I made my way over to the workbench. “Don’t mind me, just doing some magic.”
“Sarisha, now is not a good time,” Racine said as his eyes followed me across the room. “We will talk later.”
I tucked some of the werewolf hair away before I began to grind up one of the strands into a fine, brown powder, and then I moved around the arguing couple to the middle of the room.
“Fine,” Sarisha huffed, and she whirled around with a whip of her flame-colored hair. “I will be eagerly waiting to be important to you.”
Racine sighed as he watched her go, and then he turned to me with narrowed eyes.
“What are you doing?” he asked again, and it seemed his wife’s appearance had made him momentarily forget my mention of Dumas and the duke.
“What’s the word for werewolf?” I asked with a shit-eating grin.
“How did you--”
“I’m resourceful, and I’m not scared of your pets,” I laughed. “Now, teach me the word, and you’ll never hear from me again.”
“Until I get my gold, you are not leaving my sight,” Racine informed me. He pursed his lips together in thought for a moment, but then he sighed. “Veer Vof.”
“Thanks.” I smirked, and then I turned to perform the summoning ritual. My head still hurt every time I said the magic words, but the flame didn’t leap out of control this time, so I assumed my will power was growing stronger. Then a werewolf creature stepped out of the fire, tilted its head up to the ceiling, and let out a spine-chilling howl.
I’d done it. I’d summoned a fucking werewolf.
“Fuck, yeah!” I cheered and pumped my fist in the air.
Suddenly, the werewolf turned to look at me, and it snarled menacingly.
“Oh, shit,” I gasped, and I realized I still didn’t have it under my control. I focused my will power, and I felt an energy fighting against me. It was like the werewolf was resisting me, and my head began to scream in agony.
The werewolf charged at me with saliva dripping from its fangs, and I leapt out of the way.
“Racine!” I shouted in an urgent tone. “Do something!”
The court wizard ran across the room to the doorway, and he paused at the entrance to the stairs.
“Good luck!” he called over his shoulder before he let out an evil-sounding cackle. Then he trotted up the stairs and out of sight.
Chime.
The court wizard looked up at me expectantly from the couch in his sitting room with his grapes still clutched in his hands. I was still pissed at the asshole for leaving me to fend off the werewolf by myself while I was completely unarmed, so I shot him a red-hot glare.
“Your wife is having an affair,” I said instead of introducing myself.
“What!” Racine leapt from the couch and chucked the bowl of grapes across the room. “Who are you? How do you know this? With who?”
I considered what to say, or whether I should say anything at all, but then I got a brilliant idea.
“She’s been sleeping with the duke behind your back for years now,” I said, and the lie just rolled off my tongue.
“What? Tell me everything! I’ll destroy him!” Racine’s face turned red with rage, and he growled as he lunged toward me with his hands aimed for my throat.
Fuck, he was pissed.
But now I knew exactly how to get to him, and how I was going to fuck with the two assholes who had sent werewolves and mercenaries after me and my people.
This was going to be fucking epic.