“Good morning Erin, you currently have nothing on your calendar,” the gentle, almost ethereal voice of my mirror, greeted me as I was preparing to sit at my desk.
I paused half way to my chair. My mage assistant was instructed to tell me what I had planned for the day when I first sat down in the morning. I found it a good way to get ready for the day. I would get a cup of coffee, pull up my chair, and my assistant would tell me all about my plans for the day as I put away my briefcase and pulled out my rune tablet.
“Mirror, I had things on my calendar yesterday evening, who cleared my day?”
I was hoping this was a mistake or someone needed me to run a new apprentice through company enrollment or something else common. A cleared calendar wasn’t a good sign, though. If it had been something benign I probably would have been told something earlier in the week, worse, only someone with higher security would be allowed to reset someone else's calendar. Today was Friday, 'companies like to fire people on Friday' flew through my head though I considered that they usually like to get a full day of work out of people before they did it.
“Office Manager Michael Calmick cleared your calendar at 6:35 pm yesterday, Ma'am.”
Calmick, I couldn’t stand the guy. Spellwork by the book, precise in his every action, and one of the worst mages I had ever been forced to work with. The guy could cast spells just fine, but his spellwork had no soul. It was all memorized formulas and strict adherence to processes which had worked before. That’s fine if you want to just build something, but part of our job was to streamline, improve, to create.
He was also a sleaze. I didn’t like sexual harassment, no one did, but if I had to put out for my career, I wanted it to move me ahead, not just to keep my job. A job I was good enough on my own merits to have earned thank you very much. I had turned him down twice before, with more than a little hands action by him on the last request. Already a violation of the human resource guidelines, but then I didn’t have a scrying of his actions recorded either so it’s not like I could really report him.
“Miss Weisz? Erin Weisz?”
A jumped sharply in surprise then turned around and frowned when I noticed the security people behind me. Three of them.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Come with us please, Mister Calmick needs to have a word with you in his office,” the large one said as he gestured me towards the office at the end of the open floor plan. I could see the shorter one in the back holding a wand unobtrusively by his side but pointed in my direction. Shortly after walking with the two thugs I glanced back and noticed the third thug was just standing next to my desk and watching me walk away.
It was early, I made a habit of arriving early since I was a morning person. I found myself getting the most work done in that early morning hour before the rest of the floor started to fill up. The off white cubicles barely suppressed the sounds of magicians and spirit assistants. FMI, Fendales Magitech Incorporated, was too cheap to spring for sound suppression in the mage section though it was all throughout the display floor, marketing, and sales.
I was unhappy that I took some relief that no one else was going to see me be fired. I had met all my production marks, nothing I had designed was failing, I had even built at least one A+ spell last year which was better than the market leader. I wasn’t the best mage here, but I was far from the worst either. If I had known Calmick was going to push things this far I would have just slept with him. I would have felt disgusting afterward, but it wouldn’t have been the first time I had to do something disgusting to survive.
At least it would have been my choice.
The slow walk to Calmick’s office was torture. I couldn’t see him behind his desk, the one-way spell on his office wide window precluded that, but I could imagine him sitting back in his leather executive chair arms behind his head watching me as I was marched to his door. Calmick’s window said everything that needed to be said about the man and his management style. He could watch you, you couldn’t see if he was watching.
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Once we entered his office he smiled his smarmy grin and then he gestured the two thugs out. Sometime since yesterday, he had removed the hard uncomfortable chair which left you with your chin just above the line of the desk. Apparently, his ‘discussion’ chair wasn’t humiliating enough for this, no, he wanted me to stand in front of him like a scolded child.
Calmick leaned forward and smiled, I think he was trying for a sweet tone as he asked, “Do you know why you are here?”
“You’re firing me because I said ‘no’ when you asked me out,” I said, upset that I hadn’t thought to set up some kind of recording spell.
Just last week I had considered putting up a recording spell that would run non-stop while I was at work, technically against policy, but it’s hard to complain when an employee is caught harassing another. HR would be rung out to dry and a nice fat settlement might come from it. Of course, I would also be blacklisted with every magitech fab shop on the West coast.
Calmick slapped his hand on the desk and pointed at me as he exclaimed, “That never happened.”
I smirked a bit, it was all I really had. I was going to make the little prick squirm if I could, I was able to see the color of the writing on the magical writ, it was pink and I was being fired. The only question now was what this asshole was going to say I had done and why he was doing it.
“No, you are being fired because of your non-compete clause,” the smile that spread across his face then would have looked right at home on a shark. All flashing teeth and gums, not so much a smile as a barring of teeth.
“That’s crazy, I’m not working for anyone else,” I protested.
With a theatrical wave of his hand he declared, “During a routine security sweep of your work rune tablet, this was found.”
The spell which formed in the mirror that he swung from its adjustable ceiling mount was complex and deeply interconnected. It had taken me two years of effort, with every trick and tweak I could think of, everything I had learned from every single project we had worked on. It was five percent more efficient than the next closest competitor while also outputting fifteen percent more power, more importantly, the user's body heat was the main feedstock to the engine.
It was my spell for a luxury transport construct. It was supposed to be my ticket to leading a team. The spell required an expensive platinum and rubies base for the ring, nothing less would be capable of holding the complex rune form, but just wearing the ring for a few hours would be enough to recharge the device for a day's worth of travel.
I had spent weeks just working on the shape of the constructs illusion as it formed. It was my greatest work.
“I wasn’t working on that for anyone else! I was going to...,” I began before Calmick cut me off.
“You were going to sell it to the highest bidder and take FMI proprietary spell forms with you when you did.”
I could feel the walls around me press in and I was working to keep from throwing up on his desk as I muttered, “No.”
“Yes! but I caught you before you could do it. Since you created this on work resources, your company assigned rune tablet, this spell is the property of FMI. Your things should be gathered in the box outside. Good day.”
I walked out of the room in a daze. Thug number three pushed a cardboard box with some scrap paper and a picture of my Aunt in a little silver frame, into my arms. All that work, gone. Just, gone.
I could see it now, the little weasel presenting my work on Monday to upper management and the raise that would come with it. He would present it as his work and since I did everything in the hours before anyone else arrived, I had no proof that I created it. He would have all weekend to figure out how my spell worked and he would claim all the credit.
Legal wrangling would probably take years if the court would even be willing to hear me out. I wouldn’t be able to afford the legal bills to fight even if I had a chance and a lawyer willing to try.
No one would take a chance on hiring me since I was fired for a violation of my contract with FMI. I had a few articles and press releases to my name, but I mostly worked behind the scenes. While I was a master of transformation and transportation spells and my rune design work was top tier, I hadn’t done any direct enchanting in years. I mostly designed spells, I didn’t do the work of actually enchanting things. If I ended up blacklisted I might have to go back to charging mana stones or direct casting of cosmetic spells in the mall.
Maybe I could move to the East coast and try for a design shop there or try and find a job in one of the quick fab design shops. One of those companies which pop out thousands of designs a year for custom requests. I couldn’t imagine spending day after day designing yet another animated sex doll, though.
My Aunt’s face just stared up at me with her quirky smile among the remnants of my career. She always told me that with a bit more effort, if I kept trying, I would succeed, I couldn’t help but succeed. I stared at her smile the entire train ride back home to my empty apartment. I knew what I was planning to do. I knew it was a violation of everything she had taught me, an acceptance that what my parents had done to me was right, that power was what made things right, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. The most I could hope for was to be a small cog in a big world, one where all the possibilities, all the power, was spoken for.
I wanted that power.
Slowly I turned over the frame and hid the smile of the woman who had raised me and prepared to do something she would have been horrified by.
I was going to bargain with a demon.