3

I always wake up instantly, and today was no exception. I’m capable of waking up and eating a full meal or starting to work five minutes later. My sister claims that proves I’m a changeling, created solely to torment her. Me, I kinda doubt the changeling part…

Surprisingly, I felt rather good. I really expected to wake up to serious pain, but it seems that I was none the worse for wear. Perhaps I was rebuilding my body so quickly the nerve impulses just couldn’t keep up. If so, I’d better keep it up.

A couple of minutes later, my eyes had adjusted to the light. First thing was the toilet, naturally, and I followed that with a glass of orange juice and some crackers with garlic cheese spread and olives. I wasn’t too terribly hungry, but breakfast was part of my usual routine, and I knew how much I was going to need every little bite.

The book agreed that my idea of using the park as a practice area for spell practice was more prudent, but it put a serious hole in my clever idea. There was no way I could take all the food I needed to practice seriously. Actually, I might manage the food, though it would all be cold. But there was no way I could carry the liquids, and subsisting on the piped water was something I preferred to avoid.

It mitigated the warning, informing me that it takes years for an aura to settle about a place, and even with the sheer number of spells I was playing with, the actual power was fairly miniscule. That punctured my pride, but better pride than hide. Especially with the added warning that the park was likely to be the heart of the local wood court.

It seems that the earth and fire courts are usually remote, mostly deep within the earth. Flame tyrants and gem lords did not show up with any great frequency. The air courts are just as rarefied, though the book warned that pollution might have driven some sylphs, zephyrs and mistwraiths to madness or worse. Water courts had much closer connection with people, and little of it was friendly. The great courts of the oceans were little concerned, seeing humanity’s wastes as a strictly temporary annoyance, but the freshwater and coast courts were in many cases twisted by the effluvia.

The closest friend and foe was the court of the wood, sometimes called the fey court, a misnomer. It was thought to be the most unpredictable, which was likely to be an erroneous assumption based on sheer amount of interaction. The book mentioned that even in elder times, there was little contact with the spirits of air, earth and fire other than bindings. The living things of the earth belonged to the court of wood, even the domesticated varieties. The book recommended that I avoid pets, as they formed a weakness in the protections.

Protections? It seems that every true home holds a mystical shield over its inhabitants, built up over the years. The stories of vampires and thresholds held some truths, though only magical creatures were affected.

Of the spirit court, the book had nothing to say. It was the most mysterious of them all and the hardest to reach.

I was determined to master six new first order spells today, and when twilight fell, I’d managed that much and a bit more. The slicing spell was coming along easily, and I’d actually managed to grow myself a real beard and moustache with the growth spell. It made for an excellent disguise, as no one would believe I was a teenager with something like this. I actually looked adult. Really grown up. It was interesting. Did I want to keep the beard and/or moustache? Soon enough, I’d have enough control to freeze the growth, so the annoyance of having to shave did not figure into the decision at all. I’d have to consider the matter. Shaving with the slicing spell was quite nerve wracking and awfully slow, but it did the job, and I learned an awful lot about the epidermis.

The new spells I’d managed to cast were interesting. One allowed me to chill an area, enough to freeze a small volume of water if I kept it up long enough. The second created a small amount of illusory mist, and the third conjured a tiny mote of light I could move about by exerting my will, with about as much output as a candle. Another was a version of slice that worked on objects, with sufficient precision to actually sculpt. It was horribly inefficient, of course, because it affected such a tiny area, but it was quite useful. With this spell and the one that allowed me to turn inanimate objects to powder, nothing material could hold me. Assuming, of course, that I had time and rations enough to cast the spells repeatedly. The fifth spell was the most minor lifequench spell available, a brute force approach that did not rely on any knowledge or skill. Killing three ants was almost enough to kill me. I actually collapsed after the third casting, and had to rest for several minutes before I could recollect myself sufficiently to sit and eat.

It was a graphic depiction of just how dangerous I was to myself. Never mind the slavering hordes of monsters, it was my judgment and actions that would put me in the most risk. I resolved to be even more careful, and dismissed the incident. There was nothing else to do. I knew that I was being silly. That was one promise I almost certainly wouldn’t be able to keep.

Last, but not least, was a minor bit of telekinesis. I moved a droplet of water all around the kitchen table, and later I used the remains of the ants. The really tiny ants, not the big ones. I could look up the family, genus and species, but the taxonomy of ants was a bit below my horizon.

I took a refreshing swim, and then settled out the kinks in the hot tub, pondering just how cruel I was going to be tomorrow. I reviewed the campaign material, and wrote up some possibilities for things they might do, after giving their character sheets a thorough scan. It took less than an hour, and left me in a bright mood. I didn’t rub my hands together and cackle evilly. That was for tomorrow.

I felt very awake, so I went through all the spells again. Twice. That was enough to wipe me out. My jaw muscles were actually sore from chewing so much, but I was quite cheerful. The book intimated that I might be able to try one or two of the simpler second circle spells tomorrow evening.

I reviewed the spells I intended to learn next, deciding to postpone breaking the circle, as the book said that ascending a level of wizardry was called, to Sunday. What hours I’d have left after gaming would not be enough to do the attempt justice.

The soft downy sheets were most welcome. I lay on my back for a moment, luxuriating in the tactile feelings and reviewing things. I made a mental note to ask if breaking the circle had any specific consequences. I shuddered away from the thought of having to find a girl and a house in less than a month, and determined to check and answer the mail before going out tomorrow. Then I turned over, relaxed, and fell asleep.

Cicada whistles woke me up a few minutes before the usual wake up time. I stopped using an alarm clock years ago. Invariably, I found myself waking up a few minutes before it would have gone off, and I’d sometimes forgotten to switch it off. It was weird, really, but I always woke up when I wanted to, and I always knew what time it was when I woke up, within five minutes. I used to make a game of it, guessing the time and checking the clock, and I’d actually managed to hit the exact second once.

I had an hour and a half before I had to get moving. After toilet, I chose the traditional breakfast food, milk and cereal, with a big glass of grape juice.

My e-mail queue was flooded. The junk mail quotient was reaching critical proportions, so I spent a couple of minutes marking and moving it to my junkslayer program. It wasn’t any sort of answer, but it was better than nothing. It didn’t do something silly like sending back a million e-mails per address. All that would do is increase the traffic and pressure on already busy architecture, and it would be completely useless, since none of those computer-generated addresses were in any wise connected to the junkmeisters.

What I did was gather information. Intelligence was the key, in the military sense of the word. I tried to localize the vile, loathsome maggots, and I’d always fantasized about sending assassins after them once I had their physical bodies localized. What I’d actually meant to do was send the law after them. I licked my lips, tilted my head and CONSIDERED. Nah. Annoyance value, and even major economic damage, were not reason enough to actually kill them. Perhaps I could just frighten them, or curse them or something. I’d have to see.

In any case, they were fiendishly hard to catch, because they moved around so much. I only had three positives on file, and I decided that avoiding too much temptation was wise. I consolidated the files, which I’d prepared last month, and sent them anonymously to the relevant authorities.

I had a couple of e-mail chess games, with a Russian who lived in France and a Swede. I’ll probably have to resign from both, but I delayed the decision. There were twenty seven messages from friends that required answers, and I managed to deal with eight. All the jokes, movies, power point files and links went straight to the misc/other folder. Maybe I’d get to them one day, but considering that there were 193 messages marked as unread, I was not too hopeful.

My parents sent a bunch more pictures, and remarked that it was pretty hot in the deserts of Australia in the summer. After a brief overload of ideas as to how to respond to such a silly message, I decided not to. I sent a .jpg of a baboon scratching his/her ass by way of acknowledgement.

Karla sent me the date and locus for the meteor shower gathering, and I replied that I’d probably be there. It was the sort of thing you’d do with a girlfriend, and by then I’d bloody well better have one. I put down a reminder to ask the book about it. That sort of natural phenomenon probably involved elementals or demons or power.

Then I packed up the gaming-dedicated laptop in the gray-black laptop-dedicated backpack, a very nice present my parents brought back from… I think it was Romania. I picked a nice pair of pants and a more formal light blue shirt, the leather Harley jacket Hank lost on a bet last year and picked up the dicebag and a number of handouts. I could roll things on the computer, but using the dice was more fun and contributed to the atmosphere. We actually had a roulette for the dice.

Why dress more formally? Only one of the gamers was younger. I needed to establish authority in a non-verbal way, or at least, it helped to look more adult and polished. Perhaps the cliché of acned, geeky teens as the stereotypical rpgers was correct, but my group was quite different. Most of them were on the rebound, as it were. People who’d played in the Eighties or Nineties, and found that they’d not lost the taste.

This was the first group I’d actually played with table-top, so I couldn’t really compare it to anything else, but these were real pros. I played for a year before trying to run a game, and you wouldn’t believe how difficult it was at the start. Expositions and speaking brought up all my fears about speaking in public. I stuttered a lot. It was a gruesome spectacle.

But I pulled through, and the experience helped a lot. I was still really bad at speaking in public, and it never stopped messing me up, but I could handle it now. With the group, there were no more problems at all.

Paladin is a two story shop with a spacious basement in a small shopping centre, quite close to my place. I could have walked there in a quarter hour, easily. I drove alertly this time, conscious of the fairly insignificant weight of the little pistol.

I was early, as usual. Arriving early was something of a fetish of mine. Bill, the proprietor, looked up at the beep. He’d put up a motion detector that alerted him whenever anyone came in.

Bill is a big guy, though he isn’t any taller than I am. What he is, is wide. He’s almost as wide as he is tall, with an enormous belly. Wisps of a goatee, somewhat balding, always with a cheerful smile plastered on.

I hate salespeople, in the abstract. Bill was a salesman without a doubt, but I liked him. I always thought that salespeople got that likeable aura after selling their souls to the devil, or whatever was willing to buy at a discount. It left me very confused, and occasionally burdened with purchases I really should have thought more about. I have to work on the willpower thing. I wondered if wizards were immune, and said “Good morning, Bill. The usual’s ready?”

The usual was a curtained off room in the back of the first floor, with a generous supply of gaming materials strewn about. “Hey Logan, you wouldn’t believe what came in today,” he raised a box, and immediately lowered it. “Oh right, forgot. You don’t bother to actually pay for computer games,” he grinned, showing a missing tooth. “Matt and Chris are already in, but Trina called in sick. Or rather, her daughter’s traveling or something, and she’s stuck babysitting at the last minute. She said she talked to her people, two or three said they’ll come in to watch and help you npc things.”

“Wait, let me see what I can do about it,” I pulled out my cell phone. I don’t give the number to anyone other than family, as I simply do not want to be disturbed while on the road, or at all for that matter. I’m an e-mail person, and I don’t particularly like using the phone. On the other hand, it was vital in case of emergencies… and useful in cases like this.

“Hey Jack, listen. Your sister does babysitting, right? Good, could you ask Linda if she can do it here and now? I’ve got a lady who needs some help. I’ll pay double her normal rate, and I’d appreciate it if you could help with the wheels. She can? Great!” I gave him the address and Trina’s full name, and gave her a call.

Needless to say, Trina was ecstatic. Grading papers and dealing with babies were not what she’d expected to do Saturday morning and noon, and she quickly went to call up her players. Jack Kingston went to school with me, and we’d met when the worms we’d put in the school computer system caused a net meltdown when they met. We’d actually managed to sit down next to each other in the computer lab, working on fixing the problem. It was very funny, in retrospect. Linda is one of the cheerleaders, and not particularly nice to us, but they do need money. Single parent syndrome. Jack is one of my first choices when it comes to delegating a piece of programming, which is the only reason he has a car. A very quiet guy, I couldn’t quite fathom anything about him.

“Smooth, man,” Bill nodded respectfully, “good thing I haven’t pulled anything out, yet. Take a look at this book, Logan. Right up your alley,” he shoved a paperback my way. I picked it up, nodded, and went to our room.

Matt worked for my dad as a general assistant and busybody, and I knew he was up for promotion sometime in the next three months. In his late thirties, married plus two, he retained all of his mane of dark blond hair. A bit taller than me, he didn’t exercise much, and his armchair paunch showed. Generally easygoing, he made an excellent storyteller and really knew how to use his voice.

Chris was Christine, his daughter, a year younger than I am. She had an older brother, but he was probably nursing his hangover by now. Matt had paid to send him to college, somewhere far away, or so Chris had dryly informed me a couple of weeks ago. She is a very pretty redheaded, heavily freckled and pale, with green eyes and a sarcastic, defensive manner.

Looking at her again, I realized that I really like her. We all had different standards where it came to beauty. My personal preference was for pale, slim, dark haired girls with modest curves and blue eyes who were shorter than I am. I’ve learned that girls, especially teenaged ones, are terribly insecure about their bodies. It’s strange. If only they knew that guys, in general, just aren’t that terribly picky.

Chris, while short and pale, wasn’t anywhere near my physical ideal, as she was quite curvy. But I was pretty sure we would get along splendidly, and I was definitely going to ask her out.

“Morning, Chris, Matt. Need a hand with anything?” I asked them as I put down my stuff.

“Nope, thanks, I’m all set up,” Matt replied. It was traditional that we began with whoever got there first, so Matt was first on line.

“What’s that book?” Chris asked.

I looked at the book, and offered it to her. “Another dnd offering. They generally make for extremely light reading,” I shrugged, pulled out a seat, and put my character sheet face down before it. Chris started to read the book while I set up my own game master’s corner of the table.

Not counting Trina’s group, there were eleven of us, which made it a bit awkward for Exalted, a game that was basically designed for five or so players. With the summer vacation, there were only seven players left in our group.

Veronica Arleigh, a marriage counselor and general psycho, played our assassin of Night, the dark skinned lethal shadow from the southern city of Gem, Yanthra.

Ronald ‘Dork’ Urlington, an architect, is our fearless smiter of evil and all dark things, the bumbling Zenith priest Arkoto from the chaos of the river provice in the east.

Kevin Urnherd is a lawyer who’d gone to college with mother. She always referred to him as scumbag, with a smile. He played our intellectual voice, one of the arrows of heaven, the twilight sorcerer Iyridal the Uplifted, a bookish fellow who’d managed to leave the Realm of the Dragonblooded, the terrestrial exalted who hunted down the newly risen solar exalted, just in time.

David Brinks is a fireman. I’m not sure how their ranks go, but he’s a chief or officer or something. He’s playing a changing moon lunar exalted, one of the tricksters. We’d saved Urial the Fox from death at the hand of an enraged elemental dragon, and he’d pledged his service.

Jon Kray owns a jewelry store, Glitter, in the nearby mall. He joined us a couple of months ago, after a painful divorce, on Veronica’s invitation. He was no longer feeling his way back into things, and his enthusiasm was sometimes dangerous. He’d chosen to play one of the lost eggs of the dragonblooded, an air aspected sorcerer named Phenar Godblight, and we’d helped him with a spiritual problem, quite literally. Matt had to nudge to rules a bit, to make sure his character stayed more or less on par with the solars.

Chris had uncharacteristically picked the most difficult caste to play, in my opinion, the Eclipse diplomat, they of the smooth tongue and mastery of graces large and small. Rentara was from the north, from the spirit-ruled city of Whitewall.

My character, Neelar Graycloak was a Dawn warrior-general, a former officer with the seventh legion of Lookshy. Exalted played to the anima style, with a nod in the direction of martial arts movies.

We’d settled down at the table, and Matt began, “Now, as I’m sure you all remember,” we all smiled, “You attacked the fair folk who ambushed Ulito Swan at Garvon gorge, and drove the cataphracts and hobgoblins off. She was gravely injured, and fell into an enchanted sleep. The orderly flame researchers tracked things back to the last of the Rainbringers, Hirakuto Haijamo, and sent you to fetch the egg of Nogh, to fix Ulito right back. They even loaned you the silver pin of jade and fury,” he nodded at me. “You raided the immaculate temple at Kaitrin, north of Paragon, for information. You learned that the Storm Mother Krintika has the egg, but facing her directly might be counterproductive, since your learned researcher,” he nodded at Kevin, “tells you that she enjoys the favor of the goddess of the deep grottoes and the elemental dragon of water who rules the sea southeast of the Realm. Rentara told you that you really needed an edge in that sort of bargain. Unfortunately, an open attack by anathema on an immaculate temple near Paragon brought the wyld hunt down right on your heads. A mysterious exalted which you recognized as one of the servants of the maidens, the old advisors of the Solar Deliberative, saved your sorry asses, and suggested that you retrieve the molten trident of Hanithryn, which makes water elementals cringe and cower. He directed you to the crypt of broken shadows at Multhryn, a town north of Sijan. Traveling there, you managed to piss off the deathknight Prince of Shadows, when you shattered an attack of nemissaries and sundry undead on the supply caravan headed for the Marukani redoubt. The survivors recognized Neelar, which might affect Lookshy opinion of anath… solars. So, you’ve reached the crypt. There are nemissaries and deathknights on your backtrail, and you just shattered a bone lion. Roll perception plus lore and intelligence plus occult, difficulties four and five.”

The sound of dice clattering was loud. “Got it!” Kevin exclaimed.

“Amazing,” Matt shook his head. “While the thick stone door which leads down into the darkness of the crypt is shattered, the gems and inlay of precious metals that once adorned it gone, there are shadowed markings of first age glyphs. They issue a stern warning to graverobbers – there’s a scarab guardian here.”

“Scarab guardian?” Chris asked, and everyone looked at me. If it’s in any of the books, I usually remember it.

“Beetle swarm, can join together to form one big nasty, tireless tracker,” I responded.

“Let’s prepare a trap outside,” David suggested immediately, “dig a pit and add some of that firedust we bought from the desert nomads. Maybe even a lot of the dust, cover it, and fricassee the beetaloid,” he added. For a fireman, David had an unholy fondness for roasting bad guys.

“Yanthra, Urial, take point and check for traps. Arkoto, take the rear guard. If the undead come up, you’re the one who can deal with them. I’ll be 10 yards behind point, then Iyridal, Rentara and Godblight. Phenar, can we leave your little familiar (a winged monkey) outside? Will he be able to follow us in and report?”

“Charisma plus social, difficulty three,” Matt added, and dice rolled again.

“Ok, we’re going in.”

It all worked out in the end. The traps were handled, treasure retrieved, and the scarab guardian turned on the deathknight and nemissaries once we threw the goods at them. Neelar’s borrowed sword, the silver pin of jade and fury, threw Sorrowful Blight of Gray Darkness back into the underworld, and the fire and pit trap mostly worked. Kennard, one of Trina’s players, had stepped in to play the deathknight.

Yanthra insisted on giving the crypt another thorough search, with substantial dividends. A hidden room held a small collection of books, of which only five had survived the passage of time. Knowledge of the first age and new spells were better than coins.

After assigning experience, we munched on the honeycake Trina had brought in thanks for providing the babysitter, talked back on what we should have done, and I asked Chris, “So, what are you doing with all the wonderful vacation time? No tanning on the beach, right?” I smiled at her.

“Not hardly,” she snorted. Last year she’d gotten burned, skin peeling off for a week. “I’m working more time, selling perfume and cosmetics at Lady Claire’s. I’m… wait, wait a minute. You never just ask something. There’s always a purpose. You…,” she stared at me, green eyes wide, mouth open. Her cheeks were flushing. On her, it looked very good.

“Goodness. Beautiful and smart,” everyone was looking at us, stifling smiles. Damn, I was doing this in front of her father. But there was no going back. If only I had some bloody useful magic.

“Was there something you wanted to ask Chris?” Matt asked me in a deliberately unassuming tone of voice. The dirty rotten evil rat bastard.

“So there was,” I managed not to grit my teeth and moan in anguish. Dammit, the only thing I could think of was that meteor shower, and it was more than a month away. “Chris, my dear, are you free Monday evening? I’d love to take you to dinner. And yes,” I smiled at her, ignoring everyone else and the sounds they were making, “I’m asking you out.”

She dropped her eyes and slid them sideways, looking at her father. His countenance was perfectly bland. Keeping the smile pasted on my face was more draining than killing an ant. With first circle life magic, that is.

“Sure,” she said softly, cheeks flaming, and slid the sheet of paper that held her character information up to shield herself.

I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding inside, and raised the laptop’s screen, my own shield.

The dnd campaign I was running was born two years ago, and a double dozen characters had come and gone. The adventurers were now very powerful, and of course, in serious trouble.

Chris was playing an elven rogue, thief and general troublemaker, Katrina, while her father was playing a cleric of the sun god, Vard Holloran. David, unsurprisingly, was using a pyromaniac sorcerer he called Blaze. Kevin played a gnome illusionist, Rekriz, Veronica an elven archer, Gloriana, while Jon and Ronald were the tanks, a dwarven defender and a human barbarian, Korug Earthshaker and Brulg, respectively. Brulg, so called because that was the sound he’d made when I asked him what the name was. Ronald was drinking a hot cup of coffee at the time, and you can still see the stains on the carpet.

“Now, as I’m sure you all remember,” they laughed as I quoted Matt, “you’re all dying. The best estimate of the time you have left is ninety days. That’s what happens when you annoy demon lords with clever repartee and say no when they ever so politely ask for your souls. You called in debts with wizards and alchemists, and managed to slow the progress of the soul poison, but there’s only so much sand in the hourglass. The fountain of life in Tanelorn is your only hope. But finding the City of Peace is a fool’s dream. Fortunately…” I smiled at them, widely, to the accompaniment of groans.

“There are many legends of the true way to Tanelorn, and you’ve been collecting books in a frenzy and annoying every sage and diviner you can find. The most recent journey was beneath the waves, to the lair of a kraken. Victory at last, but Blurg tried to open a chest. The whirlpool deposited you in a dank, dark dungeon corridor. Korug can tell that you are half a mile beneath the surface. You already have a list of the contents of the chest, as Kat disarmed the traps and opened the lock. So then, whither do you go?”

“Teleport away?” Kevin asked hesitantly, “I’ve got a scroll.”

“Me want smash,” Ronald responded.

“Blurg has a point. Two points, actually,” Matt added. “There’s doubtless something interesting here, and we’re in fairly good shape. Also, I’ll bet ten thousand gold the spell will fizzle. Any takers?”

There were no suckers, and Chris rolled a die, “Even up, odd down. From my orientation,” she added.

“Straight?” Jon asked, eliciting a few smiles and glares.

“Up it is,” Chris said, “I’m moving slowly, carefully, watching and listening. Of course, I’m spiderwalking on the ceiling,” she added.

“Brulg follow,” was Ron’s contribution, “and I’m following right behind, ready to grab him before he plummets into the pit,” Jon added.

Marching order decided, the Bluestar company proceeded to tear their way through a colony of deepbears, ignore the altarstone that functioned as a gate to a place they really needed to go, retreated from the terrible stench of a troglodyte encampment and survived an ambush of mind flayers. They used a bit of diplomacy and translation magic to ally with a strange bipedal birdman, who led them through a maze of illusion against an ancient lich imbued with the power of earth. They couldn’t find the lich’s phylactery, but recovered an old library that contained a number of clues. Next time, they vowed, they’d check the other side.