A few hours later, it was pouring down rain as I drove home. Numpy was waiting for me on my front porch along with a large fly hiding under the awning.
“Hey Numpy! Are you hungry?” I asked in the high-pitched voice I used to talk to animals.
“Mroww!” he screamed at me, impatient for the door to open. I obliged, and both he and the insect came in. I sighed audibly as I got Numpy some food; another bug in the house. I grabbed a coke, popped a couple of Vicodin, and collapsed on my couch to watch Star Trek (TNG not that TOS garbage.) I watched TV for a few hours with my cat lying on my chest before I ordered a sandwich on my phone. After dinner I went upstairs to get some sleep.
The next day was Saturday, not that that meant much to me; I had to work like nearly every other day. I let Numpy out, hopped in my car, and drove to the shop. Carlos was already there, and he greeted me by shouting, “DUDE! I heard you beat the shit out of a monster!” Apparently, he had talked to Cassie.
“No, no, I just made sure it knew I wasn’t going be victimized by it,” I said with a smile. Carlos thought everything I did was cool.
“Was it really a sex monster?” he asked in a more hushed tone.
“Did Cassie tell you that?” I questioned him incredulously; there’s no way Cassie had even said the word “sex” to this kid much less referred to something as a “sex monster.”
“No, but she said it was a succubus, and I looked it up in this!” he said referring to a book he had out on the counter. The book was called, On the Classification and Description of Nonhuman Mesistic Creatures by Ignatios Vlachos, but at the Krymmeno, it was commonly referred to as The Big Book of Monsters. I made the mistake of mentioning it to Carlos, and he studied it religiously. Luckily, it’s thicker than the bible with smaller print and very dry, so it wasn’t likely to cause nightmares or anything.
I sighed, “Well, a sex monster is an apt description.”
“What did it look like?” he asked excitedly.
“Everyone sees it differently; did you ever see the Catwoman movie?” I asked with a smile.
“I did. There’s a lot of competition, but it might be the worst superhero movie ever made. Why?” While he spoke, he squinted at me.
“I saw the succubus as an unmasked Catwoman minus the tail. You would have seen her as someone else; I did see her true state though, and she was not sexy. She had different sized eyes, and a big warty nose, a snake tail, and hooved feet!” I said dramatically.
“Ewwww!” he laughed. “I would have seen her as Olivia Rodrigo!” he said with a weird smile on his face.
I nodded pretending I knew who that was and replied, “I hope you never see one; they’re not just pretty. They put some kind of horny spell on you that consumes your every thought. It’s quite disconcerting, and if you go through with it and sleep with them, it will rip a piece of your soul at to eat. Even worse, sex with a succubus is addictive, so it’s harder and harder to refuse. Basically, if you fuck a succubus once, you’ll keep going back until you’ve got no soul left.”
“Ohh, shit,” he said quietly.
I put a hand on his shoulder and reassured him; “It’s ok though; I beat the shit out of it,” I said winking at him. He smiled, and I started stocking shelves.
A few hours later, my phone rang; being a true millennial, I ignore 99% of phone calls. What asshole calls when texting is an option? This time I picked it up because it was Cassie calling.
“Hey Cassie, what’s up?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Dante! They’re coming for me!” she shrieked.
“What? Who’s coming for you? What are you talking about??” I panic shouted into the phone as I jumped to my feet.
“I don’t know, but they have magic. I just saw a vision of three of them showing up here and forcing me into a big black truck,” she said trying and failing to remain calm.
“Stay where you are! I’m coming right now,” I replied as I jumped into my car. Like most cities in the US, mine was not designed; as the population increased, more and more things were built wherever they fit, and outside of a small district that used to be the entire town a couple of hundred years ago, it was built with cars in mind. Every new building or apartment complex is required by law to have parking spaces for some percentage of the maximum number of occupants; thus, even though there’s only 20-30,000 people living here, it occupies enough space for five hundred times that number. My point is, to get to Cassie’s house from the store, I had to sit through ten stop lights just to get to the highway and then fifteen more to get to the street she lives on. Normally, that would take fifteen to twenty minutes, but I intended to make it in less than ten. I sped through the city as fast as I possibly could, going through gas stations at intersections to avoid red lights and tailgating people like an asshole. As soon as I made it to the highway, I floored it. My little Civic was more than ten years old at this point, but it had never let me down; it accelerated to nearly 100 miles per hour with only a little bit of shaking and one or two weird sounds.
Unfortunately, everything I touch turns to shit: there was a cop waiting at a speed trap. The cruiser whipped out onto the road after me, its sirens blaring. I pulled over, and of course, Officer Douchebag stepped toward me. I may not have been an acting spellsword as of late, but I never forgot one of the principles they taught me: be prepared for anything. Every inch of my car was covered in sigils which were invisible to the naked eye; it as bullet-proof, fire-proof, lightning-proof, and a bunch of other ‘proofs.’ Additionally, I had several scrolls prepared in the car; combat magic is limited by a practitioner’s memory and imagination. A very specific spell requires extremely complicated sigils within sigils within sigils with extraordinary detail; that’s just not something that’s easily remembered or imagined in perfect detail in the middle of combat. Scrolls on the other hand, can be made beforehand. A scroll is exactly what it sounds like: paper (or animal skin) with runes already drawn on them. Some spellswords carry around scrolls with them all the time, but I was never one of them. They’re too much of a hindrance; however, a car has a lot of storage space.
As Officer Douchebag was walking toward my car, I rummaged through a compartment built into the driver’s door until I found the scroll I was looking for. I hid it behind a bunch of old CDs I bought when people still used CDs and made sure to keep a finger touching it.
“Where’s the fire?” was of course the first thing that came out of his mouth before he even reached my window. “Hey, I remember you! Are you drunk again?”
“No, I’m just in a hurry, and I didn’t realize how fast I was going,” I said looking him in the eye to show my eyes weren’t wandering or bloodshot. He stared at me for a moment, and once I could tell he realized I wasn’t inebriated, I pumped pneuma through my finger and into the scroll.
A red sports car suddenly shot down the other side of the highway going at least 150 miles per hour while someone shot an automatic weapon out the passenger’s window into the air. “Slow down son,” Officer Douchebag yelled as he ran back into his car. I was back on the road headed toward Cassie’s before he crossed the street; the scroll I used created an illusion of the car. I had never used it before, but it worked beautifully! Unfortunately, they’re one-time-use only, and it would take me hours to recreate it. Even worse they can’t be tested without destroying them, so I never know if they’re going to work until I try them.
I managed to make it to Cassie’s house in only fifteen minutes despite the police interference. She ran out of the door before I stopped the car and hopped in the passenger seat. “Ok, now tell me exactly what you saw,” I said to her without a greeting as I whipped out of her driveway with no destination in mind.
She closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly before replying, “Three men all wielding swords on their hips barged into my house; I ran for my gun, but…”
“You have a gun?” I questioned her. That was surprising; I knew Cassie pretty well, and I would have never guessed she had a gun. “I thought only guys compensating for their small dicks had guns.”
“Spoken like someone with supernatural powers that make an assault rifle look like a nerf gun. Besides 80 million American own guns!” she spat back at me.
I smiled; there was something special about Cassie. “Ok, ok. Continue. You ran for your gun and then what?”
“Before I could grab it, a gust of wind threw me to the ground, and then they grabbed me, pulled me out to their truck, and pushed me into it,” she stated as she slammed her fist on the dashboard.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked incredulously.
“Trying to kill this stupid fly!” she replied. A cold chill ran down my spine; I looked around, but I didn’t see it.
“Is it really big and black?” I whispered.
“Yes, how long has it been in your car? You should roll down the windows,” she said still waving her hand around.
“I don’t know, but there was a fly like that in my house last night. The night after a group of practitioners sent a succubus after me. It’s probably nothing, but it would put my mind at ease if you could do a reading and confirm it’s just a bug,” I murmured trying to keep the panic out of my voice.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Her nostrils flared like they always do when she’s aggravated. “Well, you’re going to have to slow it down then.”
“Fine,” I said with a smile; I raised my hand, a light blue sigil appeared over it, and the temperature fell by fifty degrees instantly. Frost began forming on every surface in the car. I had hoped to freeze the fly’s wings? I don’t know; it wasn’t my most well thought out plan, but it worked: Cassie swiped her hand through the air closing her fingers over the bug. She was quiet for forty-five seconds after which she gasped and opened her hand pulling it away from the insect.
“That’s not a regular fly!” she shrieked. I pulled over, closed my eyes, and used the demon’s sight. There’s really no point in opening your eyes with the democculus activated other than intimidation I guess. These people were already trying to use Cassie to get to me; there was no need to show them I was carrying the magical equivalent of a nuclear bomb in my soul. With the demon’s eyes, I saw a dark power possessing the fly; furthermore, I could see the trail of energy leading from the fly to somewhere far away, presumably to the caster controlling it. The instant I noticed, the chain was cut, the energy dissipated, and the fly fell out of the sky dead. “Is it dead?” Cassie asked.
“It was always dead; someone was using necromancy to control it and see through its eyes. What’s worse is both the car and my house are enchanted; any spell originating from outside should have failed the moment it entered.” I said pensively. I got back on the road and started driving. “Athena is a necromancer and a very powerful one at that; it’s unlikely her servants are very capable though. Practitioners with talent are almost always snatched up by some organization or another even with the Gnosilepides gone. I should be able to easily dispatch the three guys coming after you,” I finished glancing at Cassie.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“As I see it, we have two options. I can disappear, go somewhere else, another town, another state. It’s very unlikely anyone would come for you with me gone but not impossible; alternatively, we could let them find us. I’ll handle the goons and persuade them to tell me where this Athena is,” I said with a smile. “I prefer the second option.”
“You think you can handle a powerful necromancer? When I touched the fly, I felt something… dark and evil,” she shuddered.
I flashed the demon’s eyes at her; it was the first time I had ever beheld her. Her soul radiated righteous energy; it was strong and resolute, immovable. Neil’s was the only one I had ever seen like it; Cassie was the only person to which I had ever revealed my… condition. I was afraid she would reject me: fire me, send me away, but instead she hugged me and told me how sorry she was. Cassie was a truly good person. “I have something darker and eviler within me,” I growled before allowing my eyes return to normal, pushing the demon’s power back into its hole in my soul.
“Option two it is!” she said without missing a beat. I guess looking into the eyes of an archdemon couldn’t faze Cassie Parker. “That still doesn’t answer my original question though; where to?”
“I guess we’ll head back to the shop. That’s the first place they’ll look for me; I’ll try really hard not to burn it down,” I quipped with a smile.
She smiled and replied, “You do that.”
When we got to Strange Attractions, Cassie closed the store and sent Carlos home despite his protests.
“I want to see a magic fight!” he whined.
She gave him a reproachful look replying, “And I want you to live to see your 16th birthday!”
“Fine, but I could have helped,” he muttered under his breath as he left the store.
Now, all we could do was wait. Hours passed and nothing happened; Cassie and I entertained ourselves by playing games: twenty questions, poker, hangman, etc. I was about to win a round of hangman (my word was larynx) when a black pick-up truck pulled up right in front of the door. I looked over at Cassie, and she nodded. Three men stepped out of the truck; they were all huge with their heights ranging from 6’4’’ to 6’6’’, and the smallest among them could have picked me up and thrown me without straining. The driver had a shaved head, wore a blank, red t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and large shorts. The other two were brothers, maybe even twins; they looked identical with long, messy brown hair, and they wore generic jeans and wife-beater tank tops. I noticed each of them were holding their hands oddly, and up closer inspection, they had the same pentagram tattoos I had, but theirs were fresh. The driver’s tattoos were swollen and raised; the others may have as well, but I wasn’t close enough to tell. Additionally, each of them wielded identical short swords sheathed at their waists.
“Hello Dante Solace,” the driver spoke loudly, almost yelling. This was bad; they knew my real last name, not the fake one I had been using for over a decade. That means I wasn’t just some random magic user they wanted to recruit; they wanted me. “I am Ares, this is Artemis, and this is Apollo,” he said gesturing toward the brothers. Artemis is a woman, and I’m not sure if that was supposed to be some kind of macho guy insult or if they didn’t bother Googling their new names no doubt chosen to emulate Athena. “You are invited to join the Gnosilepides!” he shouted the last word. “Our job is to protect people from monsters!” I had a feeling Athena didn’t inform Ares about anything he didn’t need to know.
“I’m good, thanks,” I replied.
“What?” Ares spat at me, narrowing his eyes.
“I’m good. No thank you; you can go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.” As the words left my mouth, I prepared a spell expecting a violent reaction. Artemis and Apollo seemed to be doing the same; they had crouched down and were flexing their hands.
“Athena wants me to bring you to her, so I will even if that means beating the shit out of you first,” he said with a smile. This was clearly the outcome they had desired.
“By all means try,” I responded smiling myself. I didn’t know if these “Gnosilepides” knew I was a real spellsword, but they were confident in their ability to beat me. Ares brought his hand up, and with a flash of an orange sigil, he shot a fireball right toward me. With a wave my own hand, I summoned a wall of water in front of me. When the fireball struck the water evaporating it, all three of them had sigils already active ready to strike, but I wasn’t there. I had jumped up into the air, and as I fell straight for Ares, I summoned my sword. By the time he saw me, it was too late; he attempted to raise his shield, but before he could, I sliced through his shirt and across his chest. He recoiled away from my blade in pain, and I turned and kicked him in the chest. I kicked him hard: he flew through the air colliding with Artemis knocking them both on the ground.
“ARGHHH!” Apollo screamed as a large chunk of the parking lot dislodged itself from the ground and shot toward me. I quickly brought up my shield, and the rock shattered against it; my shield wasn’t even close to breaking, but I was shocked at the speed the boulder was travelling at. I readied my next spell, but before I lowered my shield, a second boulder struck it even bigger and faster than the first. And then a third! I looked over to see That Ares and Artemis were coming back to their senses; if I stood here with my shield up with all three of them launching rocks at me, eventually I’d run out of steam, and they’d kill me, or even worse, they’d take me to Athena. The instant the fourth boulder broke to pieces, I dropped my shield and ran with all of my speed right toward Apollo.
I was halfway to him before he even realized it; he panicked and looked around for several seconds before the brown sigil in front of his hand disappeared and a pink one replaced it. That was a bad decision; a shield sprung up around him, but unfortunately for him I was within it. I kicked his feet out from underneath him, grabbed his head, and slammed it against the concrete. I was treading a very fine line: I wanted to make sure he was knocked unconscious for at least a few hours, but I didn’t want to kill him. I’ve killed people before but only as a last resort; I didn’t want to see this guy’s face in my mind every time I closed my eyes for a few weeks. It seemed to work though; he was still breathing, but his eyes were closed, and he wasn’t moving.
I looked up just in time to see Ares unleashing a wall of fire speeding toward me at around twenty miles per hour. I don’t know what you imagined when you read a “wall of fire,” but this was a wall of fire: it was twenty feet tall and wider than the store. I could have jumped it or possibly even ran out of the way, but that would leave Apollo to get cooked, and more importantly, it would burn Strange Attractions to the ground with Cassie inside. I couldn’t make a shield big enough to contain the blaze, so I did the only other thing I could: I made a wall of water with the same dimensions. As the two collided with one another, the water instantly vaporized, and steam shot out in all directions. The steam would kill me just as fast as the fire would have; well, maybe not but dead is dead, so I with the flash of another sigil, I created a gust of wind blowing all of the steam toward Ares. I dropped to one knee: that was a lot of magic to do back to back. I wasn’t running on empty… yet, but I was a bit light headed and out of practice.
{Shut up,} I thought-replied. He was right though; there’s no way these guys should be this powerful, what’s more I had noticed something else: they were using basic sigils. There are basic sigils for the four elements, but to do something more complicated, a practitioner will add additional symbols making the sigil more complicated. For instance, to create a wall of fire, the basic fire sigil will be in the center with runes adorning it to basically tell the flame what shape it should take and to what extent. Technically they are unnecessary; the shape, size, and style can all be controlled with how pneuma is added, but the additional symbols make the spell much more efficient. For Ares to summon a wall of fire with only the basic fire symbol, it would have taken three maybe four times more pneuma than if he used the appropriate sigil. He wasn’t the only one either; when Apollo shot the boulders at me, he was using the basic earth sigil. There were only two possibilities: either Athen had found the three most pure powerful potential practitioners in the world that had somehow slipped through the cracks of all other magical organizations, or more likely, they were somehow drawing arcane energy from another source.
As the steam cleared, a slightly burned Ares ran right toward me his sword in hand. I summoned my sword to block his slash, but he was strong. Ridiculously strong. In a single motion, he knocked my sword out of my hand very nearly slicing my throat open. The second the sword lost contact with my hand, it began to fade into nothingness. Ares launched a barrage of slashes any one of which would cut me into pieces, but I easily dodged them all. He may have been physically strong, but he didn’t have the training I did, and his technique was sloppy and obvious; if I had to guess, I would have said he had never picked up a sword before a few days ago.
{I don’t need your help to beat a few amateurs!} I thought hoping I was right. I needed to be smart: I feinted to the left drawing an attack from Ares from that side; I moved closer to him from the right avoiding his blade and headbutted him in the face as hard as I could. I felt the bones in his nose shatter; as he fell to the ground grabbing at his bleeding face, I held up my hand a blue sigil appearing in front of it and a bolt of lightning sprung from it surging into Ares’s body causing him to slide ten feet on the pavement and into a hole created by one of Apollo’s boulders. A thought suddenly occurred to me: where the fuck was Artemis?
“Wizard!” a voice hissed from behind me. I turned around to see Artemis with Cassie in his arms and his blade to her throat. “You’re coming with me, or this bitch dies!”